Noah Piugattuk Story

 At age 9, Zacharias Kunuk is taken away from his family and brought to Igloolik, so he can attend the Federal Day School and learn English. "This was the saddest day of my life" he recalls.

 ᓄᐊ ᐱᐅᒑᑦᑐᖅ ᐃᓅᔪᓐᓃᓚᐅᖅᐳᖅ 95ᓂᒃ ᐅᑭᐅᖃᖅᖢᓂᒃ 1995ᖑᑎᓪᓗᒍᑦ. ᖁᔭᓐᓇᒦᖅᐳᒍᑦ ᐃᓚᑯᓗᖏᓐᓂᑦ ᐱᔪᓐᓇᖅᑎᑦᑎᓯᒪᖕᒪᑎᒃ ᐅᓂᒃᑲᐅᓯᒃᑯᑦ. ᖁᔭᓕᓯᒪᖕᒥᔪᑦ ᐃᓄᐃᑦ ᑕᑯᓐᒐᒃᓴᓕᕆᔨᒃᑯᓐᓂᑦ ᐱᔪᓐᓇᖅᑎᑦᑎᓯᒪᖕᒪᑎᒃ ᓄᐊ ᐱᐅᒑᑦᑑᓚᐅᖅᑑᑉ ᐊᔾᔨᙳᐊᖏᓐᓂᒃ.

When Noah was nearing his death, he could not eat anymore, and even had a hard time swallowing water. He was craving muktuk (Bowhead whale skin and blubber). He asked that a whale be caught for him, and they managed to catch one. He was able to eat again.

Louis Uttak recalls the smell of paint from the first four wooden houses built.

The first wooden buildings were built in the Avajja area. They smelled like paint even when you were on the beach.

Policemen and Priests would come from Pond Inlet to Igloolik. They were “very rich” and had helpers.

Life became very different when schools and government arrived. People would lose their family allowance if they did not send their kids to school. For Louis Uttak – it was scary times.

Noah Piugattuk recounts the story of how he was born in the first igloo of the season at a place named Sarvaq.

 Noah Piugattuk remembers the time when white people wanted to rename his land and started coming.

Health complications with Noah Piugattuk's wife made them move to town.

Inuit lifestyle was different in the past. They did not have a lot of entertainment, but they would play games.

Girls played with bones from the seal flippers and made houses out of them.

When all the chores were done and the caribou was skinned, they would play string games at night to pass the time.

Noah Piugattuk died in 1995 at the age of 95 years old. Thanks to the generosity of his family for sharing the stories of his life. And thanks to the IBC archive for providing Noah's interviews.

“I learned to stand up and be outspoken because I watched my parents not speaking up.”

Noah Piugattuk sits in the fancy Ottawa Hall before their dinner. He is wearing his kamiks and a suit jacket.

The missionaries created a separation between Anglican and Catholic Inuit. In Igloolik, which had both a Catholic and Anglican side, Inuit were discouraged to visit their religious opposite side. They were also not allowed to marry each other outside of their religion.

The drama class, accompanied by two elders, one of them being Noah Piugattuk, visits Ottawa. They do not have good clothes for the official dinner – so they get a cheque to shop for clothes.

Noah Piugattuk was a skilled storyteller. He also was patient with the youth and took the time to understand the younger generation.

When the Governor General of Canada visited Igloolik, the Drama Club was supposed to perform a play for him. Unfortunately, he had to leave before their play started, so he invited them to Ottawa for a visit.

When Land Claims was being signed, Inuit started realizing they had rights and could control their own lives.

In Noah Piugattuk’s camp, Kapuivik, they had created a way to separate hunting duties by having caribou hunters and seal hunters.

 Zacharias Kunuk recalls learning English at school.

After enduring two years of their children being taken away and living in town, Zacharias Kunuk’s parents finally move to town to be closer to their kids.

Zacharias and his siblings are brought to town to be baptized.

In the 1950s and 1960s the government started to relocate Inuit. One major relocation was from Inukjuak, Nunavik to the High Arctic settlements of Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord.

Zacharias Kunuk discusses the cultural clash between Christianity and his culture.

In 1992, Zacharias Kunuk wanted to know more about Ayaya songs. He found out that the songs are riddles, because in Inuit culture they cannot say elder's names or direct animal names. Instead of saying "polar bear", they would say "the big white animal".

Zacharias Kunuk, a distant relative of Noah Piugattuk, is born in Kapuivik in 1957.

Noah Piugattuk started bringing back drum dancing and storytelling in his last years. He said that, unlike what the church was teaching them, not everything was only good or only bad, and Inuit traditions could not be just bad.

Jenny Vestey Vernon is a researcher who lived in Igloolik in the late 1960's and studied Inuit settlment patterns. She notes that women did not have easy lives, and many of them needed medical attention. When they got older, a lot of them moved to town to be nearer the Nursing Station.

People would call the phone ‘Radio Latin America’, because the woman running it had a strong Spanish accent.

A planner comes and makes a plan of Igloolik like a Southern town. Then he moved some of the houses which had been built in a chaotic manner, and moved them onto the streets he had drawn.

Noah and his first and second wife have many kids that do not survive. Eventually their Maliki is born, who lives now in Repulse Bay.

One time Noah Piugattuk caught a lot of caribou, and he did not know what to do with all of it. He made an Ayaya song out of the experience.

Noah's first wife Tatigaq dies. He takes for a wife a woman who is starving because her husband is not taking good care of her. Her name is also Tatigaq.

When Noah Piugattuk was getting very good at hunting with a bow and arrow, rifles arrived. He then learned to hunt with a rifle and made his own bullets.

The Priest and the RCMP came to tell Noah's family that they needed to forget shamanism and their traditions, and convert to Christianity. 

Michelline Ammaq tells the story of when Noah was young, the ice broke up and he and his sister and her baby were stuck on the floating ice. He saved them by walking on the thin, newly formed ice.

When Noah was young and had a nose bleed they will let a puppy lick his nose, so that he will have good luck with polar bears.

When Noah was a baby, his mother would pretend to make him walk through a window made out of intestines, so that he will become good walking on thin ice. They also tied a wolf tendon onto his kamiks to make him a good runner.