Stories from Our Land - Family Making Sleds

Hunter Joshua Atagooyuk stands by a seal's breathing hole. He hunches over, silent, waiting. The sun crosses the sky, hours pass, yet Atagooyuk remains, waiting for the right moment to strike.

When Bonnie Ammaaq was a little girl, her parents packed up their essentials, bundled Bonnie and her younger brother into a long, fur-lined sled called a qamutik, and left the government-manufactured community of Igloolik to live off the land as had generations of Inuit before them. For eleven years their home was not just the small shack called "Outpost Camp," but the whole territory, vast, wild and beautiful, that lay outside its door. Nowhere Land is a quiet elegy for a way of life that exists now only in the memories of Bonnie, her brother and parents, and the few others still living who experienced it. For them, the wild open tundra was not just somewhere to live, it was Somewhere, and the settlement of Igloolik, their home ever since, with its dinning snowmobiles, flat and snowy landscapes and relative hustle-bustle, is strictly Nowhere.

In Pangnirtung, two elders reminisce about the dances held in their community 50 years ago. One of the elders is master accordion player Simeonie Keenainak, and pretty soon he is making toe-tapping music with his instrument. In this celebration of the pleasures of music and dance, Keenainak plays for the enjoyment of friends, family and the community at large.