I have never seen a people who so enjoy their own food as Inuit.

Last week, I wrote about my years at a residential school, and about being asked by a classmate what our teacher meant when she referred to “a harlot.”

Obviously, it was us. To the abusive Mrs. Aech, it was all of us girls. There was never anything wrong with the boys, but to this strange, bejewelled teacher from the South, Inuit girls were all harlots.

The word became a trigger for my plan to get out of this hell. I wanted to be anywhere else, anywhere myself and the girls around me were not constantly dubbed harlots and the Whores of Babylon.

By 350 A.D., the old Mongol-type culture of Tunit (i.e., Dorset) would certainly have noticed the arrival of strangers in their lands.

This was a younger, aggressive, more innovative Mongol-type people called the “Thule” and the swish of their sleds had already been carrying them eastward across North America’s Arctic for the last three centuries.

These new nomads were dependent upon marine mammals and the Tunit had never before conceived of the technologies they brought with them: dog-teams, toggling harpoons, large skin boats, lamps, waterproof stitching, countless specia

The blind son thrust the spear outward with all his strength, his mother's hands guiding him. In this way, again and again, he thrust at the bear, until he heard his mother cry,

“It's driven away!”

Not a word from his sister.

What the blind son could not know was that he had in fact killed the bear. The old woman raced over to her daughter and began to whisper harshly that her brother must not know.

“Think of all the food there will be!” the crone hissed. “He's of no use!

Scars are like stories written upon the flesh. We all bear them, each a reminder of a past event. Unfortunately, their nature is such that they never tell happy stories, which is why we keep our scars to ourselves, and we rarely ask about those of others.

If you look at the little finger on my right hand, for example, you will see a thin, somewhat curved scar. If you had seen it before it became scarified, you would be looking at a wound that nearly took off the fleshy pad of my finger. I got that at the hirluaq, in my early teens.

The hirluaq was next to our house.

China, being very old, enjoys as much mythic past as verifiable history. One of its myths tells of an Indian monk, known as Bodhidharma, who visited China's Shaolin Temple.

There, he supposedly found the Chinese monks in poor health, and consequently taught them various breathing techniques and physical exercises. It is said that the Shaolin monks eventually used such techniques as the basis for hand-to-hand fighting styles. Over the centuries, such styles gained renown and were eventually taught to non-monks, spreading over China, then all of Asia.

A great deal has been written about how Inuit love their children. In an exceptionally harsh world, any culture becomes especially preoccupied with its youngest generation, which only makes sense if you think about it.

After all, the more unkind the times, the more the survival of the culture itself comes into question. And there were times, among pre-colonial Inuit, when raising a child to healthy adulthood was quite an accomplishment.

I think I am safe in stating this as fact: Anyone who is unaware that Inuit are the consummate hunting culture has never heard of Inuit.

And since everyone knows that Inuit are a hunting culture, and since everyone knows that Inuit dwell in some of the coldest places on Earth, Inuit don't get a lot of questions about their traditional herbal knowledge. Most folks, in fact, assume that herbalism would be an alien concept to Inuit, that the Arctic doesn't hold enough variety, in its flora, to base a body of herbal knowledge upon.

Taitsumaniguuq:

On a dreaded winter's day, the sort that makes old injuries ache, the adults decided to lift their spirits by holding a drum-dance. One particular couple were off to the communal hall, leaving a grandmother to look after their boy. So it was that the old woman was alone and dozing, when she heard an odd noise near the entrance of the igluvigaq (snow-house).

There was no sign of her grandson.

I’m looking out the window and seeing sweet, golden sunlight — not that pale, bleary light that I’ve been seeing too much of lately.

The other day, I was stepping between a couple of large rocks, and happened to notice some tiny clusters of aupilaktunnguat (purple saxifrage) petals ready to uncurl. The snow buntings are back again, as are the seagulls.