arctic springtime - and more snow

Just wanted to let you all know that yes, springtime is on it's way here in Inukjuak, and I have photo evidence to prove it.

Here are some tundra plants that I took pictures of on an amazing and uplifting walk on the weekend, on a balmy springtime day...



...and now, just a few days later - more snow.

HA!

What a sense of humour the nature has up here!

Heh...

nerd OUT!

whoooosh - and a week goes by in a flash

I can't believe that it's been a week since I posted - I'll blame sporadic internet access and a very busy time - and it's only week TWO!
We continued working on our masks - and some pretty amazing creations have been coming alive under our fingers.

Here we're using papier-mache to build our masks and in the next photo we're cutting out the eyes. I feel really good about encouraging these kids to use tools, and do things for themselves - a few of the younger ones start out by saying "I can't do it!", but after some encouragement to do it on their own I often get to say "Hey! You said you couldn't do it but you did!" I LOVE saying that.



Masks are really incredible things - you get to make whatever kind of face you choose! Even before they're painted, they are fun to put on and feel different.

We painted the masks with a base coat of white paint - to cover up the print of the Scholastic catalogues we used in the papier-mache. That base then frees us up to be able to use all kinds of light or dark colour to finish off our masks.





We've been playing some pretty awesome games too. The girls from Kangirsuk taught us a game called Mrs. Mumbles, where you make a face like someone without their dentures and try to ask the person sitting next to you "Have you seen Mrs. Mumbles?" without peeing your pants from laughing. It took us almost a half an hour to make it all the way around the circle when we played this, and some of the girls were laughing so hard they were crying...

We also started making some hand puppets - sculpting heads out of more Scholastic catalogues and masking tape, covering them in papier-mache and painting them.



This is what the hand puppets will look like - head and body together - and some may even have clothes!



And these are some of the heads in process - some painted and some on the way...



It is still very amazing being up here. The snow last weekend was a bit of a twist, as my home rhythm is full of daffodils and tulips and springtime. Add to that a dramatic northern event - last Thursday a man was lost out on the tundra. AND THEN IT SNOWED FOR FOUR DAYS. Early Monday morning however, he was FOUND. He'd spent the blizzard out in the elements, keeping close to his snowmobile (it had run low on gas, which is why he got lost in the first place) and had burned parts of his t-shirt to stay warm. He's apparently fine, and was on the radio telling his story that very morning.

Ummmmm. Wow.

This is something that happens to people up here. Makes me not want to leave the school.

Ok - one last thing. Since the puppet project is only open to the kids in Grade 3 and older, over the past few days I've been working with the Grade 1s and 2s in their classes making paper-bag puppets to include them, and to also get a bit of a little kid fix. Working with older kids and youth has been pretty great - but I've been missing the younger ones - being in school has really gotten me into a groove.
The sessions were only a half an hour long, so there wasn't much time to take many photos, but I'll leave you with this monster that I used as an example, and inspired several creatures with pointy tongues and multiple eyes.



Nerd OUT!

hah! it's SNOWING! Welcome to the Arctic...

Hello May 7th - it's snowing!

Last evening, on the way home from the school I took this photo of some really beautiful clouds.

I should have guessed that they were carrying something special for us. I was chatting with a woman in the Co-Op yesterday who said that February and May have swapped places!
The Co-Op was for a long time the only commercial centre in any Northern community. It's a huge department store, carrying everything from groceries to hardware to furs to carvings to bicycles - here in Inukjuak there are the Co-Op and the Northern - a chain store that provides another choice. The Co-Op is pretty cool - it's home to the bank, the Post Office, Hunter's Support, and a carving shop.
Anyway - back to the present that the clouds brought us - SNOW. I don't know why I'm so surprised - we were told to expect this kind of weather...but still! It's pretty hilarious to hear about t-shirt weather back home and then not be able to see across town because of the blizzard here.
It's hard to see in this photo - but fine snow is drifting down and blowing all over. The boy next to the snow mound in the schoolyard has tied a rope around his waist to pull the little qamutik (snowmobile sled) he's got behind him.


Thinking thinking thinking about learning up here - what is appropriate, what is needed, what the expectations are and need to be...huh. No easy answers, and I'm lucky as I'm an option - presenting a choice to participate in something fun and enriching (hopefully!). Onwards...

Nerd (brrr!) out!

masks week...and more thoughts

This week has turned out to be pretty much about masks, which is great, and the kids have made some really beautiful things. But before we get into the masks, I'll tell you a little preschool story.

I was walking out to the waterfall on Tuesday before heading for the school, and I saw a group of really happy kids off the side of the road. They looked so happy that I had to go talk with them. It's kinda hard to see them in this photo - but it does show the land nicely...if you click on it you can see it better.



Annie and Elsie had brought their 4 and 5 year olds out to pick last years red berries, freeze-dried by the winter. Everyone was smiling and scampering around picking exquisitely tart berries (I tasted them - kinda like cranberries) and having a good time in the sunshine. Talked with them for a while, and I may go on over and do some puppet stuff with them too - it was really great to be around younger kids, and made me realize how my life has really focused in on preschool, and how comfortable I am with that age-group in particular now. It felt AWESOME!

But then, so did the rest of the week, pretty much...

We continued working on our paper plate masks, elaborating them and coming up with rudimentary characters...such as Qulliq's cat...

and others...

We played some fun games this week too. The group is still all girls, although we had one boy come and play some games with us, but he couldn't convince his friend to come in so he ended up leaving, even though he was really having a great time - I could tell by his huge smile. Things are pretty gendered here, which is cultural...and when I think about it, I'm glad to be providing something different for the girls to get up to. I have a feeling it's a bit weird for them to have a male educator showing them this stuff - and I think that's pretty great. World wide there is such a challenge to ensure girls are even allowed ACCESS to education - so I feel pretty good to have about 28 of them coming to the workshop.

The first two photos are of a mirroring game, where kids in pairs follow each other, build body awareness and create physical vocabularies. The last photo is of a new game to me - the kids call it Snakes and Ladders, and it's a relay race we played in the gym today. The kids sit with their feet touching in a long ladder-like line, and one by one pairs race each other to one wall, around the ladder, and then as fast as they can up the ladder to the next pair and sit down. The first side to complete it wins. WOW! Lots of enthusiastic screaming to this one.

That big face in the background of the first picture has some potential - we'll see what it becomes. I made it this afternoon to show the kids what else we could do. And look at all those bins!! Those are our once lost, now found treasure boxes - thank goodness we found them, their contents have already made the workshop a million times better.

This is how the papier-mache masks progress - we build them on plaster casts of faces from previous years - alternating paper to make them strong and also so we know which parts we've done. Then we build up different features on the mask and do a final layer on top of that to seal them all in. Tomorrow hopefully everything will be dry, and we can cut eye-holes and paint them! Zowee!



I'm feeling more at home here...and becoming more friendly with both teachers and folks around town - walking everywhere and smiling at my good fortune to be up here experiencing all this really helps.

Ok - supper time - more soon!

Inukjuak catch-up, training week ends and the first day of puppets

Welcome back to Inukjuak, everyone! This sign is outside of town on the road to the airport, and I thought it fitting to start off this mega-post with it. I have a lot of photos and a lot of things to say, tell you or tell myself I don't really know.

It is so amazing up here - it is warmer everyday, and although it freezes every night, the snow is disappearing at a crazy rate. It's spring in the North, or getting close to it.

We ended the training week with a big feast on Saturday, where vegetarian me and my fellow artists made CARIBOU STEW and various other things, and ate RAW FROZEN CARIBOU, too. I knew coming up here that this trip would require a different sort of diet than I keep at home, and so far the experience has been truly amazing, and un-pass-up-able. When will I get to eat this kind of food again? I'll tell that story another time, but first I want to tell you about the rest of our week getting to know each other and sharing skills.
Lisa, our fearless leader, really did a great job getting us all riled up about our respective programs, and we played games and did hands-on workshops every day for hours on end. We amassed a pretty hefty list of fun games, and shared puppet-making, shadow puppet, play-making and movement skills with each other and the other facilitators.

In my last post, there was a photo of us working on an art activity - it was an earth blanket, a concrete vision of what makes a good learning environment. This is what it looked like when we were done - pretty awesome, hey? So many colours, textures and viewpoints.



We did a shadowpuppetry workshop, where I got to show some of the great things I've learned from all the amazing shadow and light artists I've gotten to work with. Isa did some cutting on a scenery piece that we made of Inukjuak - maybe I'll get a photo of it to put up on here - it's pretty magical.






The next day Natasha led us through a movement workshop and it was pretty hilariously fun - we did some great non-dance dancing! As you can clearly see, we are boogieing down to our own choreography.



The next day we worked on more puppets, this time sculpting paper with masking tape and covering it with paper-mache. As you can see, we totally rocked it, and our birds are very very great.





Isa's hummingbird kinda takes the cake. He took it home to hang up for his 5 month-old daughter to play with.

So that was the training week pretty much - we gelled as a group and got some pretty great hands-on knowledge. Over the rest of the weekend, we hung out together wandering around Inukjuak until folks left for their various destinations - Lisa back home to Fredericton, Natasha and the girls to Kangirsuk, and today those of us left here in Inukjuak dove headfirst into our own program.

Today was a pretty great day - yesterday I did a ton of setting up, as I mentioned yesterday. Came in this morning to finish up, and we got underway this afternoon, after school. We had 24 KIDS come!!! We had one boy, but he was 13 and the sheer number of girls was too much for him I think. We're going to work on finding some other guys to work with him, and give him some more advanced puppet work to do - maybe he'll be our shadow puppet guy! We'll see.
We played games and spoke all three languages all the way through, as we have kids who either only speak French or Inuttitut. Most of the kids are in Grade 3 and 4, and that suits me fine. We'll figure out ways of involving the younger kids - but since most of the work will happen after school-hours it makes for way to long a day for them. We'll figure it out.



We made really simple masks out of paper plates, to ease us in to creating and masks - tomorrow we'll decorate these and put them on and maybe even break into groups to tell some simple stories with tableaux. We'll see how that goes. Anyway, things went pretty smooth - HOORAY! Having three other folks facilitating with me sure helps - yay team teaching (in three languages no less!)



The photo above is the Inuttitut syllabic alphabet. It was brought to Nunavik by a minister in the 1800's, and is the same symbols used in written Cree. The fact that the community contains three languages is pretty wild, and pretty significant too. There is a real collision of cultures going on, each with it's own priorities, expectations and values, and school is one place where it's really evident. Announcements are made in three languages, and a lot of work is put into finding common ground between all three to make a place for learning and teaching to happen. It is so so so so sooooooooo complicated up here - I am constantly thinking about it, and really am blessed when I realize that my teaching team reinforces this common ground searching. Pam, Isa and Louisa Louie (the older teen assistant) are all Inuit, and that makes a huge difference - I can't imagine trying to do this without them.
So I'm putting a lot of thought and energy into making this accessible to everyone, and am grateful that kids are pretty much kids all over - we all like to create, tell stories and have fun, and that's common ground I can build on.

I'll leave you with some more photos of Inukjuak - stunning, beautiful and wild place!!


This is where the school has me staying - my own two bedroom pad! Half of this house is mine while I'm here, and it's turning out to be a bit of a haven for me.


This is the view of the Bay and the Island, just south of town. All that white is water, and may melt while I'm here. Then Inukjuak becomes a lakeside village.


A shot of downtown Inukjuak.


3 crazy artists - Lisa Ross our fearless mastermind, Natasha Eck Kangirsuk artist extraordinaire, and me.


This is the beautiful waterfall on the opposite side of the airport from town. We walked there with Lisa when she flew back home on Saturday - it's so beautiful I want to go visit it as often as I can - and I can! It's only about a 35 minute walk.

Ok - enough - I've been in the school for almost 12 hours today! It's time to go home and make supper and collapse. Wish me luck for the upcoming days, and I'll post more soon!

Nerd out...

here we go!

Whooo! I'm tired!

Yesterday we finished our leader training program, and started scattering either back down south or to our respective communities - I'm the lucky one who gets to stay here all by myself in a community pretty well prepped for this project. YAY!

We took Natasha and the Kangirsuk girls to the airport today, and then I came into the school (YES! On Sunday!!) to prep the room and unpack all our once-lost but finally found supplies bins (another big YES!). The room is sort of ready, and I still have tomorrow morning and afternoon before we launch the first workshop out into Innalik School waters.

I wish I had more staying power right now, to put up pictures and tell you more...I will soon, but I'm going to go back to my house now, have supper and relax to get ready for our big day tomorrow!!

Wish us luck!

nerd out.

inukjuak...oh inukjuak

Ok - here I am!! We've managed to get internet in our room in the school, and we've just had a mightily successful Day Two of the training week/skills share, and I'm tired but I want to get some word out that awesome stuff is happening, and maybe even get some photos on here! The internet connection is REALLY SLOW, tho - so it might not be many!

Nunavik is an amazing part of the world. We're in Inukjuak, and it's pretty amazing. There are about 1 200 people who live here, and the majority of those folks are Inuit. Inukjuak is above the treeline - so we're here on tundra, and it's mostly frozen at the moment. The village has a handful of roads, and people get around mostly on foot, by four-wheel ATV, or snow-mobile. There are two department stores, the Co-Op and the Northern, and they sell everything from clothes to produce to appliances. It's pretty quiet, and the house that I'm staying in is right smack dab in the middle of everything.

Our hosts - the school and some key teachers - have given me my own house to live in, which has pros and cons. While it's right around the corner from the school, and I can go home and have quiet and peace very easily, it's also a little lonely and by not billeting with someone I'm missing out on some important social connecting. I'm working hard on trying to make those connections, and it'll happen, but at the beginning it feels like just a little too much peace and quiet. That could change once the program gets underway, though.

We're doing a training week, and the folks who'll be working with Natasha in Kangirsuk have come to Inukjuak so that we can all bond. We're playing a lot of games, and all sharing how to do all kinds of theatre-related art activities. It's going pretty well, except for the fact that no one can find the 15 rubbermaid bins that were left up here from the previous 6 years of this program that contain all the accumulated supplies, puppets and materials we were sort of banking on using. I'm rolling with that punch - it's pretty typical of community arts, especially when done remotely like this - and we're making do. If anyone wants to spend a lot of money and donate some random art supplies to us, however - please feel free!! Just email me and we'll work it out. We'll take anything! hahahahhahha!

I feel pretty honoured to be up here, and for the most part everyone is really welcoming. It's pretty wild to see the collision of several cultures trying to work it out - and that's exactly what's going on here. Inuit culture and the dominant western culture of Canada and North America are - newsflash - REALLY DIFFERENT. Different expectations, understandings of time, priorities, values...it is really complex. So - we just roll with how things come, and try to become friends. That's what I'm focusing. As I mentioned in my last post, there are THREE languages being spoken constantly here - Inuttitut, English and French. It's a lot to wrap my head around, and I feel lucky that I can at least speak the last two.

My team is pretty amazing too - Pamela Epoo, who is a primary gym teacher here at the Innalik School, and Isa, a young man from the community will be my primary folks - Isa and I will be side-by-side full-time, and Pam will join us after school and when she can during her spares. The kids'll be with us for a couple of hours after school, and that's when we'll be doing most of our work with them, so as not to disrupt their school days.

It's a big thing I'm involved in up here...but so far so good! More later!

Here are some photos though - to wet your whistles...


Nunavik from the air!


this was my first view of the village - coming in from the airport.



a closer view of Inukjuak.


The school and some houses at night - it's light here from 5.30am til about 9.30pm - loooooooong days and getting longer.


Some random things found on the window-sill of the kitchen where I'm staying - rocks and...teeth? Probably dog teeth - there are a lot of beautiful husky-type dogs here.


The Nunavik Theatre Arts Program Facilitator team at training week - or at least some of us - that's Lisa Ross, the artist-organizer who got us all into this, Isa from Inukjuak (my right-hand, right-on dude!), and Maggie, Sarah and Misty from Kangirsuk.


Here we are working our art-vibes to the max - working on different pieces to quilt together into a tapestry that expresses our ideas of an ideal learning creative experience.

More to come for sure, but I've got to go eat supper and rest up - big day of movement and more puppet building tomorrow ---- wow wow wow!

northy nerd out.