Day Three: The Narwhal Legend

Our new favorite airline is First Air and for good reason. Not only did we get the standard complementary beverage but also hot towels for our faces, a pretty tasty breakfast and warm hot chocolate chip cookies (you better believe the chocolate was perfectly gooey!) But nothing could top the sight of arriving in Baffin Island: the sea ice looked like rebel blue gingham that had lost its pattern but not its simplistic beauty. The fine blue lines of the water crisscrossed and broke up the stark white of the flat ice. With our faces nearly pressed against the glass and our jaws down to our fold-up tabletops we watched as the austere glory of the white horizon rose into the rippling curves and jagged landscape of Baffin Island. Blue and white zigzags had given away to black rocks peeking through a thick silvery sheet of white. It was everywhere! The clouds were gossamer curtains hanging in wisps over the falsely calm carpet of frosted tundra and majestic fiords. I wish you all could see it—nothing can compare to that first glimpse of pure beauty.
(by the way, Joe wants everyone to know that he had nothing to do with writing that last bit of poetic verse...in fact, I think he was asleep--Allison)

But before our first sight of Baffin there was the three hour flight out of Ottawa. Fortunately there was a copy of “Above and Beyond: Canada’s Arctic Journal” in the seat pocket (Joe, again, was still asleep.) And even better, there was an article on narwhal tusks that detailed an interdisciplinary study of science and native knowledge. One of the Inuit men with the study told the legend of the narwhal’s tusk. In short, a blind boy’s mother treats him unfairly after he helped protect them from a polar bear. But when he and his sister went down to the lake the blind boy was taken up by a loon and carried off underwater only resurfacing three times. On the third resurface the blind boy was suddenly able to see. The loon took him home and with his new sight the boy could see how his mother had wronged him. The next time the family went to the bay to spear beluga, the mother asked the son to spear a small one for her. Instead, the boy speared a big one and his mother was dragged under. She couldn’t pull herself free and as she stayed under her hair twisted into the spiral of the narwhal tusk. To this day, narwhal are still surrounded by beluga just as the blind boy’s mother was.

While I enjoyed this aspect of the article what I found exceptional was its connection to Inuit culture and how it related to scientific studies taking place in the north Polar Regions. The legend itself reflects the importance of respect in Inuit culture, especially for those who are more defenseless. This respect also emphasizes the sensitivity of the relationship between the Inuit and foreign researchers. As the author Dr. Martin Nweeia states, he “realized from the beginning of [his narwhal research] that the Inuit are the people who know the narwhal and environment best” However, despite its validity in scientific communities, native knowledge is a vastly untapped resource. Dr. Nweeia and others have come to realize how complementary scientific and native knowledge are. And this integrative system is founded on mutual respect.