MIRING

PANGNIRTUNG/AUYUITTUK, NUNAVUT

On July 14th, the day we fly into Pang, an Arctic front blows pack ice far up Cumberland Sound. Villagers wrestle their boats from the ice-mired shore and salvage the beluga that hunters landed a few days prior.

Josee frees his outboard and taxies us to the end of the fjord. “Do the deepest crossings at lowest sun,” he warns, as we disembark on our trek across Auyuittuk. We do and even so we flounder up Akshayak Pass's meltwater funnel, sink to our knees in boggy tundra, battle waist-deep torrents. Moraines cave underfoot. Glacial lagoons breach gravel dams.

Auyuittuk: Inuktitut for “land that never thaws.”

In the village we meet aging elders. Inusiq tells us stories of living on the land when caribou were abundant and weather was readable. Evie teaches us to light a seal-oil lamp, her eyes lit with memories of the qaggiq, the communal igloo. Ian interviews them for his film on Qapirangajuq: Inuit Elders and Climate Change. “I worry,” Evie says to the camera, “if it all melts, will we have any land left?”