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Qayait (Kayaks)

This story is how Inuit built kayaks in the spring.

In the beautiful springtime, the men hunted seals to get skins for covering their qajait [kayaks]. The women were in charge of cleaning and preparing the sealskins so they were ready to be used on the kayaks.

The seals were used for many other purposes, as well. Women made pouches out of sealskin, and stuffed them with meat, so that the meat could be stored and eaten later. The men melted down the seal fat to make puuqtait [seal oil], which was stored in sealskin pouches.

Artist: Noah Echalook The men melted the seal fat over a fire that was lit in half an old oil drum. It was the job of the women to gather willow twigs for the fires. Willow was their only kind of wood to burn. Inuit live where there are no trees.

Sealskins that were going to be used for kayaks were cut in a special way. The seals were strung up by their front flippers and their belly buttons, and the skins carefully slit.

The women had to clean all the hair, flesh and fat from the sealskins. To do this, they heated some water until it was boiling, and then soaked and swished the skins in the boiling hot water. This process was called kiatsijuq. Some women were better at the job than other women. Some women could not do things very well at all, and some were very good at removing all the fur and fat from the sealskins without burning themselves with the boiling water. They also had to do a lot of scraping to get all the hair off!

The young women were awak­ened very early in the morning to chew the edges of the skins, to prepare them for sewing. Some edges they had to wet-chew [kinitiq] and some edges they dry-chewed [kiiliq]. Then the skins were sewn together [uigujut]. In the next step, the skins were taken down by the shore to be washed. Finally, the qajaq frame was placed upside-down on the ground. Then the skins were laid over the frame, and sewn to it.

Artist: Leah Qumaluk The women sewing the skins onto a qajaq would rest their elbows on comfortable pads, which were made out of caribou skin, stuffed with feathers or bits of fur.

While they worked, they sometimes chewed on bits of seal that were considered especially delicious – the front flippers, the tail bones, and the seal beards.

When the qajait were finished, it was time to go fishing for Arctic char. They caught the fish in nets set off the shoreline. The men would collect the fish from the nets, and fasten them securely by their gills on the front and back of the qajaq with the tarqait [sealskin straps].

Everyone would go down to the shore to meet the arriving qajait loaded with fish. If the day was calm and there wasn’t any wind – the air would be thick with mosquitoes, and everyone would be waving them away from their faces [aqsaitartuq].The women would carry the fish up the slope from the shore, and split and clean them. They would still be furiously waving off the mosquitoes as they went about sharing the fish with family and community. Inuit lived a very good life; a life full of joy.

Excerpt from: Unikkaangualaurtaa (Let's Tell a Story)