Seasonal Activities
The ice pressure ridge remind us that agency is not a property that is possessed by individual readers, researchers and authors. Our ways of becoming knowledgeable always correspond intra-dependently with many other agential forces, both human and non-human.
Springtime is always a busy season in the Arctic. After the cold, dark winter, this is the season in which people start initiating community activities like fishing derbies and other competitions again. In Coral Harbour it is also the season in which the sea ice breaks up, and certain travel routes become unpassable, until the ice starts building up again. During my first week back in Coral Harbour much of Leonards attention went to the building of an extra large qamutiq that could carry a cabin and be pulled by multiple skidoos towards Qaquutaaq - a landmark spot for good arctic char fishing.
Dependence
As two weeks pass, it becomes increasingly clear that Leonard will have little time to work with me on the wayfaring ideas. He has family responsibilities that play out within limited seasonal windows and he is simultaneously dealing with health related issues that require him to expend his energy carefully. Attempts to connect with other people in the community are furthermore somewhat restrained, due to how the communication lines with organizations like the hamlet and the Coral Harbour Hunter's and Trapper's Organization have been established to flow through Leonard.
A visit cut short
I end up staying in Coral Harbour a little over three weeks this trip. Although I was able to visit Leonard several times over this time, I decided I would not pressure him with the more formal procedures of interviews or other forms of data-collection. Besides, I had started to suspect by this moment that my research question did not so much require the collection of data as it required methods of attentive presence, and meaningful practice.
I ended up spending a significant amount of time with the people that I had met the previous year in Coral Harbour. In particular a couple from the south, who had spent many years teaching in the community and were raising a child there. She and I talked a lot about the social dynamics of living up north in a small community. He and I talked a lot about the land-based skills that he had managed to learn over the years, including caribou hunting, qamutiq building and pulling a qamutiq by skidoo. He also learnt how to sew. A skill that is usually considered for women, but that he had mastered to the approval of other Inuit community members. The other person I met with multiple times over those weeks was one of Leonard's nephews, a highly educated Inuk, looking to explore how science could be contribute to the needs of the community. He had assisted with the previous research activities, including the remote TEK mapping interviews and field-based sampling.