"Two months I went and lived in two different Inuit villages in the winter. I wanted to understand what the winters were like. [Arctic] winters are so different from summers. It explains a lot of their lives. And if you don't go up there in winter, you don't know who they are.
The Arctic is a pretty small place, particularly as I got to know people. Only about 22,000 Inuit live across the Canadian Arctic.
It'd take me a long time to get from one village to another. They'd always be expecting me in the next village. They would tell stories, more so than with the average visitor because they knew that I was genuine: I was interested about learning their way.
Some of the elders told me stories about shamans, shamans who flew and would appear in igloos with blood on their hands as if they had vanquished an evil spirit.
One of the wonderful epiphanies was that my wife and I both wear stones around our neck when we are away from one another. We're not really as New Age as that might sound, but the stones were a way for us to stay connected to one another. I took my stones out in one hunting camp. It happens to be a tradition for shamans to collect stones, powerful stones. They believe that certain stones had magical powers. So I had this little tiny satchel of amethyst and rose stone and hematite—things of great meaning to the Inuit."
—Writer-photographer Jonathan Waterman
|
