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Ann Hanson

There was a good thing about having whalers as ancestors. Being an Inuk means to be able to learn something in no time at all.
When the whalers first came up here, they used to bring all sorts of different things. One of them was the accordion. They brought it with them on their ship. The voyage was so long coming up North that when they had nothing to do, they played it.
It was the first time that Inuit had ever seen an accordion player and heard the music. It didn't take very long for Inuit to learn how to use it. Leah Nutaraq told us stories about the whalers. She was one who caught up with the whalers in Cumberland Sound.
When the whalers arrived, Inuit went to see them. There were quite a few people on the ship as it was big. There was a white man carrying an accordion and he played music and sang, and the Inuit started to like hearing him sing. The man asked the young children to dance but they were shy. Leah Nutaraq wasn't a very shy person at the time, she was 8 years old. As the man started to play the accordion and asked again the children to dance, none went up but Leah, thinking that she might receive a gift. That was one of the stories that Leah told.
While talking about the accordion player, there were a lot of people in Kimmirut, it was not only in Kimmirut, who learnt how to use an accordion. I heard about my mother playing as well, I could play it, but not very much.

W. Gillies Ross
Cape Mercy, on Cumberland Sound, is approximately 150 miles from the mouth into the head of the gulf.

During the winter, the edge of the ice would be south of the Sound. This is consolidated ice floes, and fixed ice attached to the coast. After you’ve got floes concentrated but in motion. This is fairly stable. The whales would come up to this ice edge. They may even have wintered at the mouth of Cumberland Sound. As the season went on, and the spring melt occurred, this ice edge would retreat, and the whales would enter the gulf. But at that time the whalers were not there.

The Inuit told Penny and others that there were two times to catch whales at Cumberland Sound: May and September-October, because in the summer they go out and north and they come back in the fall.

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Meeka Mike

Being a tranlator, I used to ask questions to elders. I grew up with my parents and grandparents. They were worried about what children were being taught at school. I remember wondering if everything was going well with the Qallunaaq government system when Pangnirtung was becoming a community.
Becoming older, I used to ask my parents how did we live before the Qallunaat arrived? When we started going to school, we were told that we were going to school for a good reason: to have a better and easier life. I wondered what kind of better life was there? We had to go to school so that we may have jobs, have more things and not running into problems. This was the Qallunaaq life style and we did not know their culture or where they came from. My parents especially wanted to keep the Inuit life style alive and they told me that we ate because we hunted for food. That made me understand better the school system which said that we were going to have a better life with no sickness, and that is how we have to live now and we were told that Inuit sickness was not good. I thought about how we lived when I was a child and when there was no Qallunaat. I thought of how good it used to be before the white people arrived. I would not be here today if we had a terrible life back then and if there was very bad sicknesses. Then I would not be here today.
When some Qallunaat were interviewing the elders, I understood that Inuit had a good life, and that they survived the sicknesses that the Qallunaat had introduced here. Inuit almost vanished from Cumberland Sound because of that.
When Mark (Stevenson) and I were researching and counting the qammait in Kekerten we counted about 40. There used to be many Inuit back then, we did not count all the qammait but we estimated that there would have been about 400 Inuit in Kekerten back then. The Qallunaat had recorded that there were about 400 to 500 Inuit. There were Inuit as well in Tinijjut near Pangnirtung. Inuit were scattered around the sound. I asked Mark before, how many there would have been if the Qallunaat did not bring sickness up north, he said that Inuit almost vanished.
I know the people from Pangnirtung and where they came from and even those that I don\'t know of, I was told of their family and relatives, brothers and sisters. So we counted them all and estimated that there would have been about 1200 to 1400 people in the 1800\'s. We estimated the children to be about 240; today we have 300 children. In those days the whole population of Inuit would have been about 1400 altogether. They were dying off when the Qallunaat were first coming up here. This was so uncomfortable to discover, knowing the estimated number of Inuit at that time. We were afraid to loose our land thinking that someone will take it away from us. That was a concern. Today 100 years later, the population of Pangnirtung is approximately1400 to 1600 people.

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W. Gillies Ross

In the 1840s, the whale hunt was not very successful until people began to think about it and came up with the idea of spending the winter in Cumberland Sound.

That wintering in Cumberland Sound was the invention of an American crew, the crew of the McLellan, who put a dozen men ashore at Qimmiqsut. A square, stonewalled building still exists there that I am fairly certain is the house in which they lived. They used Inuit methods, they adopted Inuit clothing, but of course they had their whale boats and their whaling harpoons and their whaling gear. They caught approximately seventeen whales in one winter, all in the following May.

Penny was the next one to winter there at Nuvujen. He wintered on board his ship. He had some experience in this, because in 1850 he commanded a search expedition for Sir John Franklin. He took two ships into Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, and they spent the winter frozen in the ice with other ships, all looking for Sir John Franklin. That gave him confidence, and he said. “Why don’t I do that in Cumberland Sound?” And he did, with great success.

His system immediately took advantage of Inuit labour and expertise. The whaling crew had their whale boats but they found if they put one or two whale boats under the control of Eskimo crews, they were very efficient. They did not pay them, not in money but in manufactured articles such as food and tobacco and so forth.

There are ruins of Penny’s whaling stations at Kekerten. There is now a historic park there. From a base up at Kekerten, Penny had his whale boats and whaling crews taken out to the edge of the ice. At that time, it was 20 miles away. They took all the whaling boats and some tents. They lived in the tents, cooking their own meals. When they spotted whales in the waters, they would go out to catch the whales. They would bring them back to the floe edge, which is firm, butcher them in the water at the floe edge, take the blubber off, load it on Qamutiit and take it back to Kekerten to be stored on board the ships. He had 22 dog teams in Qamutiit going back and forth every day. It was when he thought of wintering there that he had his big success. That example was followed by many other ships, and brought in a completely new epoch of whaling.

Dorothy H. Eber

Near Cape Haven, which was one of the whaling stations, there was a place at Singaijaq where some wooden houses were left abandoned after the whaling ended. When the people who had lived at Singaijaq departed and left the houses vacant, they left their squeezeboxes there, in fact they left many of them. They left them there all winter because they were afraid they would get broken as they travelled around. Then at some point in the year when they were passing through the Singaijaq area, a lot of families who were going hunting in different areas would stop there and they would have music and dancing all night with the squeezeboxes!

People left their squeezeboxes in these houses there until about 1939, when they really understood the whalers weren’t coming back. Then the Inuit started taking down the wood from the cabins and using it for tent floors and so forth. I interviewed one woman whose mother had left her squeezeboxes there in the cabins, and she told how they eventually took the two squeezeboxes away. One got ruined, she said, because the children just broke it up, but the other one remained in good shape for a long time. That music that was heard onboard vessels and in camps was so important; people still play the squeezebox in Nunavut.

For a number of years they rock-nosed down the coast and then they eventually discovered Cumberland Sound where they found that they could winter over by freezing in their vessels. There was whaling there for many years, eighty years or so. Later, they established the shore stations which altered Inuit life totally too. Then the Americans joined them and started whaling there too. A lot of Inuit either worked for the Scots or for the Americans.

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Andrew Dialla

When I was a little boy I always knew I was not a real Inuk, my skin is white and when I started going to school they would have us take showers with other kids. Billy and I had white skin while the other kids were very Inuit looking with nice tan skin. That was when I started to realise that we have a Qallunaaq ancestor.

I used to ask my mother who our grandfather was, and she used to say that our grandfather was a great whaling ship captain. That my dad's father was a white man; that our grandfather was a white man from Scotland. My mother used to talk about that and she would show us a picture. We always had a picture where he was wearing sailors clothing and a cap and holding a cigar. A good looking man. Apparently, he was our grandfather according to what our mother told us. Our father never spoke about this, only our mother would tell us the story that he was our grandfather and that his name was Taylor. My mother said our grandfather was from Scotland and that he would come to our area and would give things to my father. He would bring things for dad, things for his son, like clothing and food and even a gramophone at one time.

I was basically obsessed with him, I would try to think of how could he not, and why didn't he ever come back. Did he die over there? We had no idea. Do we have relatives over there? Did he remarry over there? Or did his ship sink and he died that way? Maybe there was no way to find him? That is what I always thought.


My father never told us anything about his father; it was like we never had a grandfather from our father’s side of the family. But only through our mother's story did we find out. As I was growing up I always used to think, maybe there is a way to find the people he used to work with. Our grandfather has probably passed away by now, maybe if I can find a child of one of his fellow seamen, I would be satisfied. That would be enough for me to find someone who could tell me something about what kind of a man was my grandfather.

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Andrew Dialla

We used to be told that our grandfather was a white man from Scotland. I used to be obsessed with finding out whatever happened to him. I truly wanted to know this when I was growing up. When we went to school in Iqaluit, it was great to have access to a greater number of reading material. We had ready access to many more books. Books documenting the old whaling days. That was when I started finding out what they had been doing in our area. That was when I started looking for addresses to newspapers in England and Scotland and did that for many years. Whenever someone from England came into town and whenever someone from Scotland came into town I always went to them and asked them if they knew of any addresses of newspapers in their town, so I could write to them. So I wrote a bunch of letters over the years basically introducing my name and mentioning who my grandfather was, and asked if any relatives were still alive. But I never received any replies. The only reply I ever received was from one retired Minister, who sounded like an old man by the name of Gavin. He was the only one to ever write to me but it was not a good letter. All he said was that the name Dialla is a bastardisation of Taylor! A name that was taken by a fatherless boy. The Anglicans only told me this bad thing, so I didn't like them after that. I decided to search somewhere else. Whenever I travelled around and found people with the surname Taylor, I would always ask them if they knew their ancestry, maybe we could be related. But years later I realised that there are a great number of Taylors in the world, very many Taylors. I realised how naïve I had been. That I thought I could meet a fellow Taylor after so many years of separation.

It was only when the internet became a reality that I started getting some answers to my quest. There are many ancestor search sites available for those who want to look for people from their past. They are very good sites but they did not help me with my search. Each site would say they found so many names, but if I wanted to open any of them, I would first have to give my credit card number and pay for it to open it. It was very discouraging for a while.

But one day I found a great site where there was a list of newspaper addresses in one page, a listing of numerous newspaper addresses. So I wrote to all of them, I think there were more than 20 addresses, and sent each of them the same letter. Stating that my name is Andrew Dialla and that my grandfather was Captain John Carrington Taylor and said that if you knew him or if your grandfather knew him I would love to hear what kind of a man our grandfather was. But no replies seemed to be coming so I just waited and checked once in a while to see if new ancestry search sites had opened up.

But two years ago, in the month of December, I received a letter from Scotland, from England actually. The letter was from a John McGuinn and as soon as I opened it I read "John Taylor was my grandfather and I grew up at his house." When I read that, I was extremely overjoyed and even yelled out! However in the same letter he also said that he doesn't really believe his grandfather would do something like that because he had been a very good man, and probably would not have done that with an Inuit person. But, we had two pictures of our grandfather, the man that we acknowledged to be our grandfather, because we knew he was our grandfather. So we had the two pictures. I first digitized them and emailed them to John McGuinn, those two pictures. When he wrote back, this is what he wrote, "I opened the pictures and at first I did not really believe you that it is my grandfather, but when my mother, this is what John wrote, when my mother and my wife looked at them my mother right away said, That's Daddy." It was very exciting to hear that! I had already told John " if you do not believe me, a sample of my blood can be taken or a scraping taken from my mouth so that a DNA test can be done to see if we are related. But after I sent the pictures, John wrote back saying there is no need for a blood test, you are my cousin! I was very happy to hear that. So, he is my cousin now, we always refer to each other as cousins now.

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Meeka Mike

My name is Meeka Mike. I was born in Pangirtung. I used to work at Kekerten Island before it became a historic park. I was working with Marc Stevenson, the anthropologist/archeologist. He used to interview the elders who were born in the times of the whaling days. We used to work there digging the qammait sites of certain families. I was there when the elders were in their 80s and 90s. They were being interviewed about the whaling days, when the whalers used to come up to Cumberland Sound.
I did many things as a young person. There were a few of us who were hired by archeologists to do the digging of the qammait of the families that used to live there. When we weren't working, we used to go to the elders when they were looking around the sites. I approached them and asked them where my grandmother's and father's relatives used to have their qammait and they showed me.
There were about 35 to 40 qarmait that we counted. I had interviewed the elders but did not record them. I was doing that was on my own time.
Figuring out the number of qammait at the time, there would have been about 100 people living there. There were 300 to 400 people in the mid 1800s.
Our job was to excavate certain qammait, to excavate the walk ways, and to ask questions to the elders about what they thought when they were being interviewed by Mark Stevenson. He worked with all the translators and us. It was very interesting to hear about the whaling days and the methods they used, and how they were organized. Some of the parts when the men were hunting in the winter time at the floe edge for bowheads were interesting too. There were a lot of things I learnt. Mostly men usually had the knowledge. It was interesting. There were many polar bears that would come by when we were excavating. That was every day or every other day that polar bears would come but this was in the second year. We also had falcons arriving and they always landed in the same spot.
They also took us to sites in Qaqqaliarvik, the site seeing mountain, to tell us a story about how they used to hunt belugas, right down to the coast. That was about 200 feet down. They also brought us to the sites where the ships went and told us what had happened to those. There was one wrecked ship that we were able to see during low tide but we weren't able to touch it. The one right off Kekerten was visible. It was covered with dirt so it was hard to see. I haven't been there in a long time, so it's difficult to say what condition it's in now.
There were stories of how everyone helped each other when the Inuit men were out at the floe edge hunting bowhead without the Qallunaat whalers. The whalers used to hunt at their camps. There would literally only be women in the Inuit camps except for boys and children. The floe edge the floe edge varied over the years. It varied each season. They said that Cumberland Sound was the favorite place for the whales because of the open water, so the hunting occurred year round depending on the conditions in mid winter.

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Meeka Mike

The elders were asked questions about how it has changed Inuit life style when the Qallunaat arrived to hunt whales. They talked about the sickness that they brought and how the women went hunting seals during spring at the floe edge while the men were hunting bowhead whales. Inuit were not only hunting whales, they hunted anything and everything that they could catch, especially if it was useful to make oil. Because of that, they were able to trade for snow knifes, canned food, tobacco, tea bags. The women were not only fed, they had responsibilities as well. They were brought with the men to sow clothes and trade them. There was some extra clothes ready for the men in case something bad would happen to them. The Inuit kept the Qallunaat alive by helping them keeping warm and by doing other things that we don\'t know about.

The metal tools were mostly talked about. They used to talk about a harpoon gun, or an explosive gun, that was a dangerous gun. They talked about the things they had seen for the first time such as food that came from the Qallunaat.

The time the Inuit converted to Christianity is when the missionaries came to the North to convert the Inuit into believing in God. I cannot remember everything about how Inuit lifestyle was. It is not practiced anymore. Converting to God was one of the things that they used to talk about when things started to change.

People need to know about the whalers who came here to hunt whales and about the Qallunaat first arrival. Our children need to know and understand that. They need to respect Inuit life style and what was important to Inuit. Today is not the same as when I grew up. There are convenience stores and more services for them. They can play more games. They need to know the connection between the Inuit and Qallunaat including those stories that were good stories about where they had lived. We were always taught about the land where our ancestors lived before, and we still visit the places where they used to live. Even if we didn\'t get to all of them, we were always told how and where they used to live. Inuit need to know about the whalers who came up here and that it is not true that the Qallunaat were the first ones to explore the North.

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Etuangat

Interviewer:
You grew up when there was whaling activity still happening at Kekerten. Can you tell us what you remember about the Scottish and perhaps the American whalers? Maybe if you start from when they first started coming to your area, what do you remember about the whalers?

Etuangat:
I never knew the Americans, I only heard about them, even though their old building was close by, even the beds were still there, they were in the attic above, that is what was left when I came around. I remember them a little bit but not very much. They had their sleeping area in the room above. I never had anything to do with them. Stories were all what was left of them and they didn\'t have any American Qallunaat left at that time.

Interviewer:
So how was the whaling station set up at Kekerten?

Etuangat:
With the other group that I had experience with, their gear, every summer during the beginning of August, would all be gathered and put into containers and dried up. All of the equipment in the boats, the whaling equipment would be put together. I started to realise that this is what was done every year. The boats would be brought to the front of the house and emptied of their content which was put into barrels. The boats would be placed in a neat row beside each other. Some people would be left behind to work for the whalers, not many people though, not even ten people. The people that were meant to work would be left behind on the Island. The people left behind would paint the boats because they had already been used during the spring hunt. They would just leave the boats there until the ships ariived, and I remember seeing the ships. Those few people would be the only people working at the station during the summer, all summer long, sometimes it would be only 6 people.

Interviewer:
The whalers that came from Scotland, did they only come here during the summer when it was boating season, or did they stay here all winter long?


Etuangat:
They never stayed over winter when I was there, although I heard they used to stay during the winter before I was born. But today, well, apparently I was born when some whalers were over wintering but other than that, I never heard of any whalers staying during the winter. But I was born when they were staying for the winter.

Interviewer:
Do you remember approximately how old you were, or were you a teenager when you started going with the whalers?

Etuangat:
I was not even a teenager then, I was still too young to go hunting by myself, but I was starting to hunt animals with the other guys. I was only hunting by going along with other hunters as their helper. I was made part of a whaling crew because they didn\'t have enough men. So they were trying to teach me. The boss man, he was trying to teach me, Angmarlik.

Interviewer
Angmarlik?

Yes, Angmarlik

Interviewer:
Was Angmarlik always the leader of the whalers?

Etuangat:
Yes, when I was there, he was always the leader, even when there were Qallunaat around, but they mostly seemed to just look after the white man\'s food.

Interviewer:
The Qallunaaq?

Etuangat:
Yes, the Qallunaaq, he didn\'t seem to be managing the whaling or sealing gear, or even the ammunition. It was only Angmarlik that was the real leader when it came to outdoor equipment.

Interviewer:
When you started noticing the whalers when you were still a little boy, what did you do when they were whaling?

Etuangat:
When they were whaling before I became a part of them, I was just a normal little boy doing what normal little boys do, and although I started taking part in hunting, I came around when their equipment was in very bad shape.....................

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Etuangat:
The rifles were in bad shape; I had to use my late father\'s old rifle, but could not use it all the time because it usually had no ammunition. I was made a part of the whaling crew when I didn\'t have much rowing experience, I wasn\'t even fully grown up yet and during those days rowing was the only way to travel. I must have ridden in a boat that was rowed but it was a hard part of being a part of the crew.

Interviewer:
They would hunt whales with no engines?

Etuangat:
Yes, I did not see any boats with engines when I was a boy, only when the annual ship came in and her small boat had an engine, did I finally see an ordinary boat that had an engine.

Interviewer:
How did the whalers catch up to the whales with no engines, when they were hunting them?

Etuangat:
Those whales would not try to get away if they didn\'t notice anything when they were not moving around and haven\'t noticed anything; they just float still, although they would be moving a little bit, when the weather was not windy. When they were not trying to get away and they just moved very slowly we could just go close to them. When they went below the surface we would wait for them to resurface. Do you understand the word qamajuq?

Interviewer:
I have no idea what qamajuq means.

Etuangat:
Waiting for it to resurface, hoping for it to resurface. They would have everything ready at that time, the harpoon would be set up with the line and harpoon tip attached. Everything would be ready and they would just wait. When the sea was very smooth with no wind, we would have to use paddles instead of oars because the whales can hear oars if they splash too much.

Interviewer
So they would paddle slowly towards it?

Etuangat:
Yes, while it is afloat, when the sea was flat calm they would get it like that, by paddling. However if the sea was not calm and had some waves they would use oars instead. I was part of a group that was told to just row! They had us row very hard while the whale was still afloat. One time I was part of a crew and the whale we were after was right there beside us, I was made to move from my position which was in the place where the ropes were kept. I had to move and someone took my place there. Here I am starring at the whale and they keep telling me \"harder!\", but I kept glancing at the whale, and they kept telling \"Just Row! Harder!\" Maybe because I was too young at that time? I was too naive. Then the whale was right there very close to us and he shot it, and he could harpoon it as well if he wanted to. Then the line would start going and take a while to reach the end which was tide up to the top of the bow in a slip knot that was also attached to the main long rope. The main long rope was threaded through a loop on top of the bow of the whale boat. But when the first line ran out, there was a tremendous tug.

Interviewer:
From the sudden pulling?

Etuangat:
Yes, from the sudden hard pulling of the whale, and we would be no where near the line when the knot reached the loop at the bow, the driver of the boat would be busy keeping the line in order, the line is running through the length of the boat, he would just hold it down like this.

Interviewer:
So he just held it like this?

Etuangat:
Yes, he would do this, because the line is going like this, the line would run through here, while this part was going like this, and meanwhile there is another man getting water from the sea and pouring it onto the rope.

Interviewer:
Pouring water?

Etuangat:
Yes, he would keep getting water from the sea, and whenever he slowed down there would be a lot of smoke coming from the part of the boat where the line went around it and it would really be moving fast. The other boat would be with the boat with the whale right away so that it doesn\'t get left behind, yes.

Interviewer:
So the only person to harpoon the whale would be Angmarlik?

Etuangat:
Someone else, Kullu, Kullu got that one.

Interviewer:
What was Angmarlik\'s position?

Etuangat:
Yes, he was a part of it, he would become a part of it, and he had been a harpooner for a long time.

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Joavie Alivaktuk

Joavie:
I will explain to you what was done here by stopping in different places. I will slowly tell you the story I heard from our elders.

Interviewer:
Let\'s do that.

Joavie:
I tell the story to people including Qallunaat, it is mostly Qallunaat that come here although some Inuit come here too, but Qallunaat are more numerous during the summer, but Qallunaat don\'t come here in the winter.

Interviewer:
So people don\'t live here anymore?

Joavie:
No, no one lives here now, but close by there is an outpost camp where people live all winter, but it is not part of this island.

Interviewer:
It\'s got mosquitoes aye?.


Joavie:
It is one of those places where there are usually many mosquitoes, it is an old settlement, and there is a lot of growth here. Like I just said we will be stopping in places and I will tell you about them, but first of all I have to inform you, like I inform the Qallunaat visitors. In this place I must ask you not to pick up anything that looks old, because whatever was left behind here, we want it to be seen by future generations. They are owned by everybody. I also ask people not to discard garbage anywhere; there is a waste basket in the boat. We have to try to keep our land clean and not see things like this, or bones. The intention is to keep them there forever, and I ask people not to walk off the boardwalk because there are sensitive artefacts just below the surface. I will talk to you as we go along.

The whale oil would be sent out by ship, in those days the oil was the reason for whaling. This area was a main work area and these are baleen that are ready to be shipped out all lashed up, and things always need to be repaired so this person is fixing something. There are also boats there lying upside down, whaleboats. We can see the boards they used to pull them onto shore later, we can go look at them down there. When we make our stops you can ask me any questions you have.

Interviewer:
Yes, what about the people that worked on shore, Inuit used to be the helpers for the Qallunaat? Or, were they chosen first, or were they already here, how did they all end up here together, the Qallunaat whalers and the local Inuit?

Joavie:
When people lived here before the whaling, they had an Inuk leader, the leader of the people. That is the way it was here. It was not just the Qallunaat that hunted the whales, nor was it just the Inuit that hunted the whales. They hunted the whales together, by helping each other. The Qallunaat whalers were not very interested in the meat, but the Inuit who lived there were, especially the maktak (whale skin). But the Qallunaat whalers were after two parts of the whale, the blubber and the baleen. Now here, these things, we can use them to imagine what our ancestors used to do. Down there..............I will tell you the rest down there, and there are other things over here too.
Interviewer:
Now in Kekerten we can see the things that were left behind, the things people used to use and the way they used to live, now these things in front of us, these bones, are they bowhead whale bones?

Joavie:
Yes, these are bowhead whale bones; there is a shoulder blade of a small one and part of its lower jaw. We can see that it is sawed, that is because in those days whale bone was used for things. They would make tent poles out of them and sled runners and cross pieces. Later on when Inuit started the co-ops they would collect bones to carve so they could make some money. That is why there are very few bones at Kekerten. The Inuit also used the bones.

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Joavie:
Yes, the baleen was used for the manufacture of umbrella ribs, in making whips for horses, and corsets for pressing in your stomach. Maybe those Qallunaat that were fatter than others wanted to look thinner and that is why they used corsets. They are not used around here. The blubber would be removed and this area would have been used for processing the blubber. The large pieces of blubber would be put into these kittuunnaqs (large square pots), that is what they were called....kittuunnaq, so it would be used for the large pieces. During this time of year, if a whale was caught, and before the ship arrives, they kept the blubber in those square pots and waited for the oil to seep out. This process would take a longer time. They would always put the larger pieces into those. But the blubber would be processed using these two cauldrons, they would boil it in a camp fire after cutting them into smaller pieces. This process took a lot faster than the square pots. They would then put the rendered oil into barrels and then shipped to the Qallunaaqs land. They would then process it into oil to be used as grease for machinery and processed into lamp oil and some of it would be processed into soap. It was processed into different things. The whale bones were also used by the local Inuit. They used them for qamutik runners and cross pieces for qamutit, and also for tips of paddles. So the bones were used around here and the meat would be taken too and sometimes they would cook it in a campfire and also dried and used for food by the Inuit. The dogs would need to be fed too so it was also used for dog food. So the whole whale and all its contents would be used in the past. They hunted the whales before the oil explorers came here, only after the advent of oil exploration did whaling come to an end.

Interviewer:
What is this?

Joavie:
Also over here, we will see other things, those are where people used to work at.

Interviewer:
What about this, it looks like an old tenting place, is this an old house foundation?

Joavie:
Yes, the Americans used to work here, it was where the Americans had their building, and it was also a home for their workers and also a place of work. We are now at the place where the Americans had their building. There is a flag here too but it not very visible here. They were here in 1860 when the Americans had 26 pretend stars on their flag, today they have 52 pretend stars because they have 52 states.

Interviewer:
What about this, is this an old qammaq place?

Joavie:
Yeah, it is an old qammaq place for Inuit. The person who used to live there now lives in Pangnirtung. Now you probably wondered about where the old buildings went. This place where we are right now is an old qammaq place that was made out of old ships and the old work buildings. In those times Inuit, our ancestors picked up whatever they found, pieces of wood and they would never leave them behind if they moved away to another place. This qammaq was also made with some of the wooden parts taken from old ships and also from what the Qallunaat left behind. Those metal parts are from old ships and some parts are from old Qallunaaq buildings. Some of them are no longer here, when they moved away to another place, they took them with them.

Interviewer:
What about this one, when would it have been left behind?

Joavie:
Perhaps around 1925 and part of 1926 when they no longer lived here, it was left behind.

Interviewer:
Whose old qammaq place was this one?

Joavie:
It was the first qammaq for our dear elder in Pangnirtung, Etuangat, he was born here and spent his childhood here.