The land provides medicine and health
Today, we're learning from Evie Aninilianik, an 82 year old women from Pangnirtung. Evie also happens to be my Inuit mother, as she adopted me many years ago, in the summer of 2001.
Evie is full of amazing stories, especially about traditional medicines, which healed Inuit in the old days. There's a local mushroom used for small cuts, as well as special teas, which help healing. But for a big cut, Inuit would use rabbit lungs that were deflated and crushed, and that would be an excellent dressing for healing. The medinces were kept in a wooden box on the women's side of the sod house, igloo or qammaq.
Throughout the interview, Evie expressed how she was concerned about the health of animals in a changing world, particularly caribou and polar bear. The caribou are starting to show white spots in their meat now, which is different from the past. And, given the intense interest in polar bears globally, scientists are tranquilzing and tagging them for scientific research, and Evie was concerned about this. She believed it was disrespectful of the animal and made it unsafe to eat.
These stories are common across Nunavut. Evie's words captured the sentiment of many Inuit communities. The land and its animals provide medicine and health for Arctic people. Yet, due to climate change, the environment and politics of the Arctic are changing, and traditional and scientific wildlife management is becoming increasingly polarized. Evie was clear, however: "I would tell them don't do that to our food. As Inuit, bears are our food".
