Aboriginals want culture reflected in any renaming of Northwest Passage
By Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service
November 14, 2009 3:02 PM
http://www.vancouversun.com/Aboriginals+want+culture+reflected+renaming+Northwes\
t+Passage/2224361/story.html



Undated handout photo of Aaju Peter, a Greenland-born Inuk who has lived on
Baffin Island since the early 1980s, with Devon Island, Nunavut, in the
background.
Aaju Peter never imagined her chin tattoo would become the subject of a
parliamentary debate about bolstering Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic.


But there she was last month, at a House of Commons defence committee hearing,
witnessing the testimony of Inuit leader Paul Kaludjak as he pressed MPs to
consider the views of Nunavut's aboriginal population - and to honour the
millennium of Inuit history in Canada's North - before proceeding with plans to
rename the Northwest Passage the "Canadian Northwest Passage."


Peter's facial tattoos - including two thin blue lines inked beneath the
49-year-old Inuk's lower lip - represent the revival of an ancient Inuit art
that was largely lost after European missionaries arrived in the Arctic in the
1800s and voiced disapproval of the practice.


Part of a wider reclaiming of traditional Inuit culture and identity in recent
years, the tattoos also have a surprising link to the Northwest Passage and to
Canada's ongoing challenge to assert control over what this country considers
"internal waters" but which the rest of the world - most notably the United
States - sees as an "international strait."


That jurisdictional challenge is what's prompted the proposed addition of
"Canadian" to all official references to the passage.


The renaming idea, advanced as a Commons motion in early October by Conservative
MP Daryl Kramp, was meant to symbolically bolster Canada's sovereignty over the
shipping lanes through the country's Arctic islands.


At a time when retreating sea ice and dreams of Arctic oil riches are fuelling
unprecedented global interest in the polar realm, the bid to unambiguously
identify the disputed passage as a Canadian waterway quickly won expressions of
support from all three opposition parties and appeared to be headed for prompt
adoption in the nation's legislature.


But wait, said Kaludjak. The president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the land-claim
agency that oversees the complex provisions of the federal act that created
Nunavut in 1999, pointed out that the territory's indigenous organizations -
principally the Inuit Heritage Trust - are explicitly mandated under the
land-claims process to review proposed changes to geographic names throughout
Canada's vast, northeastern domain.


And the Northwest Passage, he pointed out, is already known among many Inuit as
"Tallurutik" - a name derived from the tattooing ritual among Canada's Inuit and
a related landscape feature on Devon Island at the eastern entrance to the
passage.


"On Devon Island, there's a side of the mountain that look like tattoos of a
woman on her chin," NTI states. "Talluq is a chin in Inuktitut and tattoos on
the chin on a woman were called tallurutiit. That's where the name comes from.
The elders said that from a distance, you can easily see this."


Peter knows the place well, and visited it again this summer before moving from
Iqaluit to study law, with a focus on the future of the Northwest Passage, at
the University of Ottawa.


"I've been to Devon Island many times, and it does look like chin tattoos," said
Peter, a Greenland native who moved to Canada in 1981.


"Snow forms on the side of the cliffs and really helps to show those markings.
They look like humungous versions of a woman's chin tattoo."


She knows four other Inuit women who have had their faces tattooed, embracing an
indigenous art form that - until recently - could only be seen in sketches
illustrating early European explorers' journals of their Arctic travels.


Peters says she was filled when pride as she heard Kaludjak explaining to MPs
the origins of "Tallurutik" as a potential Inuktitut name for the Northwest
Passage.


"I was sitting beside him, and for him to present this, in my presence, I almost
fainted. I thought that was incredible, a very, very special moment."


The reclaimed power of naming among all of Canada's aboriginal communities is
now widely seen as long-overdue recognition of their long-standing presence
throughout all parts of country and the injustice of replacing native place
names with the English and French designations by European colonists.


It's why there's a controversial proposal to rename B.C.'s Strait of Georgia the
Salish Sea.

And it's why Canadians have - only in recent decades - come to know Nunavut's
capital as Iqaluit rather than Frobisher Bay.


Yukon MP Larry Bagnell, the Liberal critic for northern affairs, initially
backed Kramp's motion and has previously championed similar efforts to clearly
stamp the Northwest Passage as a Canadian waterway.


But he's now urging a compromise approach that somehow acknowledges the historic
Inuit presence along the sea route - which happens to be a key pillar in
Canada's case for Arctic sovereignty.


Kramp says he's now open to considering ways of incorporating the Inuktitut name
into documents referring to the waterway, which he still hopes will become known
as the "Canadian Northwest Passage."


He says he had "no intention to slight" Canada's Inuit by proposing the name
change, but feels he "shoulders some blame" for failing to consult northern
residents before introducing his motion last month.


So when MPs debate the idea for the second time later this month - the renaming
proposal is scheduled for a Nov. 27 debate in the Commons - there is certain to
be talk of dark streaks on Devon Island's cliffs and blue lines on Aaju Peter's
face.


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