Inuvik, part III: in town & interesting conversations

Today I poked around town, doing errands and getting a feel for the place.

Homes in Inuvik, NWT

I did some more phone calls, went to the Poste to mail a letter (that's you, Kim), then walked around town some more, investigating the streets and buildings.

Inuvik

It's industrial. Not even industrial chic, just industrial. The town was built from scratch in the 1950s as an alternative to Aklavik, a village to the west, which didn't have room to grow.

Piles under the Gw'chin Tribal Office building

The biggest issue in construction is building on and protecting the permafrost beneath. If the permafrost melts, the buildings will lose their integrity, and sag and tilt like the ones in Dawson City that were built during the Klondike Gold Rush.

So ALL buildings are on piles. Roadbeds are 6-9 feet thick to provide insulation. The airport runway is raised (that is a LOT of rock that got moved). In some cases the piles are drilled down into the permafrost, like pilings in the Bay Area's bay mud.

"Utilidor" system

Utilities (water, sewer) are all raised above ground, using "utilidors" — pipes encased in galvanized metal that are all above ground. The pipes are actually heated during the winter to keep fluids flowing, and this way they don't melt the permafrost. The network of pipes is quite startling, and necessitates bridges, culverts and passageways over the pipes. It does make one think about the network of pipes in the Lower 40 that we just don't see!

I visited the Centennial Library and a gift shop. Recoiled at the prices of the native handcrafts. I'm sure they are worth it, but $100 for a small sealskin animal ornament is beyond my budget, as is $250 for a pair of fur mittens. Sorry, readers, if you were hoping for such a gift!

I did get an "Inuvik, NWT" patch ($5) for my patch collection. It is probably the most unique one that I now have!

At the gift shop, I saw a poster that said there was going to be a workshop on making porcupine earrings at the visitor center that afternoon, so I hot-footed it over to the Western Arctic Regional Visitor Center for the class. It turned out to be VERY popular, so I was lucky to get in. It wasn't really what I was hoping for, but we did get to mess with porcupine quills, and the earrings I made are certainly unique.

Earrings class

I look forward to working more with quills in the workshop I'll be taking at the Adaka Festival in Whitehorse in about 10 days.

After the class, I went for another walk, battled mosquitoes, and made another call (hi, Vera!). Then went in search of a quiet, sunny place to write.

Two interesting conversations

I found an interesting park down by the water. It was where the jet ski yahoos had been showing off the night before, so I thought they might come back and would be fun to watch, rather than just hear the roaring of the engines.

There were families BBQing and much coming and going with boats and pickup trucks and people and children and even an ATV or two. By this time it was Friday evening, so everyone was out enjoying the sunny, warm weather.

Ronald
I wrote for awhile (desperately trying to catch up) and a robust looking fellow (Caucasian), came up and said, "Do you know anything about that car with the kayak on top?" I looked up with some surprise, and said, "Yeah, it's mine!"

We proceeded to have a VERY long conversation. "Ronald" was working for the Canadian weather service/government launching weather balloons. Originally from Montreal, he'd lived in Inuvik full-time for the past four years. He was an adventurer, whitewater runner, firefighter, search and rescue guy. He was intrigued by my boat (hear that, Fran Sticha??). He said it would make a good whitewater boat because of its round bottom. I replied that may be, but it doesn't track worth crap.

I asked if he did much paddling around here, and if there was a good place he'd recommend? He sort of shook his head; I guess there are more people into speed boats and fishing boats than kayaks here. He is trying to get paddling partners (I didn't bite), because he said it's hard to set up shuttles with just one person, to which I can totally relate, but I still didn't bite. He said there was a group of women paddlers that he was trying to get to know better, but they were leery of a guy, and bemoaned the state of affairs where women are "afraid" of men.

One of the take-aways was that he's looking into getting new boat. Some adventure companies run trips down the McKenzie River, and it is too costly to drag the boats back to wherever they started from, so they sell them at a big reduction in Inuvik, the take-out point. Sounds like an interesting way to get a boat, similar to driving rental RVs at the end of the summer back down to the States along the Alaska highway. (Turns out a lot of people like to drive one way, or rent in AK only, so rental companies are stuck with a lot of vehicles in AK over the winter when no one else there wants them.) So the rent them at steep discounts at the beginning and end of the summer. Could be an interesting trip: ferry up through SE Alaska with a bike, then rent an RV for the trip back at a stiff discount. Food for thought!

We talked about politics, how to pronounce "Tuktoyaktuk," and native life. He had dated a native girl and said he learned so much from her. They had been out on a nearby lake in the winter, and a blizzard was closing in. He told her he didn't want to go any further out onto the (ice-covered) lake, because he was afraid of the whiteout and that they wouldn't be able to see their way back. She told him that there was not problem, that they would find their way back by the wind-drifts. The wind always blew from a certain direction, creating snowdrifts, and one could just follow them back like a road.  Or the time when they looked at markings on the snow that didn't have any footprints, and he wondered what had happened. She was able to interpret that it was the wingbeats of an owl that had snatched a mouse.

He finally left ("I was supposed to be going on a walk," he said), and the sun was starting to dip on the horizon. The jet skis were still doing wheelies on the river. A little dog ran around the park, but I've noted that there really aren't that many dogs here, in comparison to the Bay Area, where a park would be full of them. A party of people: men, women, teens, was at the far end of the park. I overheard a rather explicit conversation between a guy and girl (evidently friends, not lovers), talking about a girl they knew who had consensual sex with a guy, and then accused him of rape. The language was, uh, very graphic. I don't know if this was in response to the North Carolina "No doesn't mean 'No'" bill that was just passed. There was also some discussion about weed. And some smoking of cigarettes and marijuana. Just another Friday night in the park.

Then another guy came up. He was a handsome man in a bright blue shirt, dark skin, salt and pepper (mostly pepper) hair, and a very bad front tooth. He was cradling a steel bottle that I suspect was full of hooch.

Vince (or Bintz)

He started out by introducing himself with an exceedingly limp handshake as "Vince." Vince started out by remarking that I had been there for kind of a long time. I said, yes, I had been doing some work, but I had been talking with a passerby for quite some time.

I suspect that he was just a little bit drunk, but he wanted to make sure that no one had hassled me. I said, "No, I haven't been bothered by anyone." He stated that he was a native of Inuvik. "I love my land," he said expansively, waving generally over the entire landscape.

"My grandmother, she was one of the founders of this village, you know?" he said, not really expecting an answer. It seemed that he had some tales to tell, and I was interested.
"Really?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "She was married to one of the Scots explorers who came here. He was abusive, so she ran away from him and her home in Aklavik, jumped on a boat to come up river, and came here. She was the queen of Inuvik. She is buried here, you know?"
"Really!" I said.
"Yes, she never wanted to leave this land. She asked that she be buried here."

And it went on. I'll try to paraphrase, or come back to this, because the conversation was so rich. Vince really did know everyone, it was evident. Men, women, they greeted him, and he returned the greetings, even as we were talking.

"This is our place," he said, waving around again. "We like to gather and party here. The government, they try to tell us what to do. They tell us we can't have fires, but this is our home."

I told him some of the things I'd heard about the Alaskan natives (Trump just took away/eliminated a tribal council that would have had a say in affairs of the north; a council that had taken years to form.)

"Yes," he said. "We have lived on this land and know how to take care of it and all the animals and plants and fish and birds."

We got back to this afore-mentioned grandmother, his mother's mother, who had been married to a "Firth." "Oh my goodness, we have so many cousins in Scotland," he said. "One of my aunties has looked them up on Facebook! So many cousins!" He shook his head. I asked if he had gotten in contact with any of them, but he didn't need to. He had all he needed here.

"I learned so much from my grandmother," he said. Where to pick the best berries, how to do beading and work with hide, and fishing techniques. His grandfather (I guess his father's father) was a polar-bear hunter. Vince has learned all he knows from his elders. He knows how to trap fox and talk to the bears.

"I love my home," he repeated. "I've been as far as Whitehorse, and, oh my, all I wanted to do was to go back home. So many cars, so many people, all rushing around."

"My grandmother," he said, getting back to her. "She drank. And smoked cigars."
"I like to drink, too," he added, "But I don't do drugs. Alcohol, huh. Yes, it's a problem. Drugs are a bigger problem." I asked where they came from. He said, "They drive them in over the highway." In thinking about this, after, I suppose it could come in by air, too.

I asked him where he lived, and about his close family. "My mother, she is 77 years old," he said. She had 11 children: eight girls and three boys, but one of them, his mother's favorite, drowned last year in a boating accident. "It happened right over there. We are not over it," he said, visibly tearing up. I expressed sympathy, and said it was too soon. He agreed, and we lapsed into silence for a short time.

Vince is the second youngest and is 38. I asked if he was interested in getting married. "NO," he laughed. "I am too young! And I have so many nieces and nephews." He added, "I am so busy; I do all the beading and sewing and carving." I guess he doesn't have time for a wife!

If I can remember more, all add it, but it was a wonderful conversation. He ended it by welcoming me in Gw'chin, and thanking me ("tah-dak"), and reiterating his wish that if anyone bothered me, I should come see him about it, and Vince (and his family) would set them straight.

I was really moved. It was an incredibly wonderful experience.

I left to find a place to hole up for the the night. I swung by Boot Lake (where I planned to take a walk in the morning), but decided it was a little too exposed. I ended up at Jak Territorial Park, but not before taking some pictures of the peaceful setting at Boot Lake.

Boot Lake at about 11pm. The sun is still high up, and will not set.

The mosquitoes were fierce, it was warm, so I put up the mosquito netting and finally fell asleep.