Heritage Day

On Monday, March 1st, we celebrated Heritage Day at Tusarvik School. This was a great introduction to Arctic culture for me! There were several activities, such as making (and eating) bannock, tool making, drum dancing, storytelling, igloo making, traditional Inuit games, and dog sledding. It was amazing!
The bannock was made with flour, water, baking soda, salt, and lard (traditionally they used seal, walrus, or other types of lard, but now it is often made with Crisco). I guess it depends on what is available.
There were a couple of elders from the community there to tell the students about traditional tools and what they were used for. Most of the tools were made from animal bones, antlers, etc. They also talked about some of the games that they played with the bones.
There were a couple of ladies (elders) who sang/chanted while the students and teachers used the drums. Yes, I gave it a try, and I think I did a pretty good job.
In the gym we played some Inuit games. There was leg wrestling, balancing, tug-of-war, and a number of other games & activities.
A couple of elders told stories from their childhood. It was in Inuktitut, so I didn't understand what they were saying. I was lucky, however, to hear elders talking about days when they were younger at a workshop yesterday, but I will talk more about that in another post.
There were a couple of guys from the community who came and constructed igloos. It looked really hard! It was super cold outside, but I would say that this activity was one of my favourites!
We then headed down to the ice to let some of the students take a dog sled ride. It was really cold out on the ice (very windy!!). I had to take a group of students back to the school early as we were freezing! The wind chill was -43, which isn't that bad, but it was bad enough that some people got a touch of frost bite.
Anyways, being a new teacher in the community, it was fun for me to experience these activities with my students. They were great and explained a lot of things to me. Everyday I am learning more about the culture and traditions here and I am very appreciative of the opportunity that I was given to live and work in this community!