THRESHOLD CONVERSATIONS 

John Noksana, Carolina Behe, and Mumilaaq Qaqqaq

JOHN: You take my grandfather's traditional knowledge, and today, if I tried to mimic it, do the same thing he did, I'd probably die.

MUSIC

AMY: This is John Noksana. He’s from Tuktoyaktuk, in far northern Canada, and he’s Inuit — one of the indigenous groups of the Arctic. He’s telling me about how climate change is messing with his hunting. Things he learned from his grandparents about when and how to hunt don’t always apply in a warming world.

JOHN: What was relevant at the time, and what you could do and what you could do today in the same time period is two different things. 

AMY: I called John to talk about food security. It’s a huge issue in the north, as it is for communities all over the world, especially during the covid pandemic. And usually when people talk about food security, money is at the center of the conversation: having the funds to buy the food we need. But for John, and many other Inuit people, the most important food isn’t purchased; it’s hunted. And that means food security isn’t just about money, or even mainly about money.

JOHN: To me, I think food security is having the capability or even the ability to get out and harvest off the land. Probably 60, 70 percent of my diet at home is from the land. 

AMY: And that means what’s happening on that land—and in the water—really matters. 

JOHN: The ice, the weather, you know, it melts quicker. It freezes later. I mean, I'll show you outside, it’s October 9th. I don't even get even a drop of snow. 

AMY: Wow.

JOHN: The puddles are not even freezing. It's crazy. 

AMY: John and I were talking on Zoom, you might hear his kids in the background. He picked up his laptop and carried it over to a window, so I could see what he was talking about. The scene outside reminded me of other small villages I went to when I was reporting for season two of Threshold, wooden houses connected by gravel roads. I think I caught a quick glimpse of a snowmobile. But like John said, no snow. The ground was completely bare. Tuktoyatuk is at 69 degrees north, that’s above the Arctic Circle. It’s weird for a community this far north to have no snow in October. 

JOHN: You never know from one year to the next now when it's going to freeze up or when it's going to break up. So, I mean, all these things are really important because it throws everything off. Everything is together and is one for us.

AMY: Welcome to Threshold Conversations, I’m Amy Martin, and before we dive in any further, I want to say hi to my co-host episode, Nick Mott. Hey Nick good to have you here. 

NICK: It's excellent to be here. 

AMY: So for people who are new listeners to this show, let me just give you a really quick roadmap here. Our main show is called Threshold. We take deep dives into complicated environmental issues. We've released three seasons so far. We are starting to work on season four. 

NICK That is correct. But we can't tell you what it's about. 

AMY: Yes, we're being very secretive. But what you're hearing right now is an episode of something we call threshold conversations. It's kind of like a subseries of our main show. So far, all of these threshold conversations have been one hosted, one guest just to kind of a straight up interview. This time, we're mixing it up a little bit.

NICK: We're both going to host. So not just one host. We got two and we're going to have three guests.

AMY: Right. So you'll hear from John Noksana in Tuktoyaktuk who you've already met. And you'll hear from Carolina Behe in Anchorage. She’s the Indigenous knowledge and science advisor for the Inuit Circumpolar Council in Alaska and she introduced me to John. 

NICK: And I'm going to introduce you to a woman named Mumilaaq Qaqqaq. She's an Inuit activist and politician from a little community called Baqer Lake up in Arctic Canada. And that's way over on the other side of that country from John.

AMY: And just to kind of set the stage for people here. Inuit territory covers a huge region. It goes all the way from far eastern Russia to Greenland. And there’s a lot of diversity between Inuit communities across that massive area—like, people have different ways of saying Inuit. It can also be Inu-eet, and you’ll hear us say it both in this episode. But there’s also a lot that’s shared across Inuit communities. Language, and traditions, ways of being in the world. And also a shared story of survival through a pretty dark history of colonization and oppression from outsiders.

NICK: Yeah, and unfortunately it’s not just history. Those forces are still at work today.

AMY: Yeah, and one of the places where those tensions really show up is around food. When you and I were reporting for season two of Threshold, I know we both noticed that  food came up a lot.

NICK: It came up like all the time. And, you know, it wasn't just like how close you are to a grocery store or how much you can afford or the price of food. There was this really nuanced and layered relationship with food that came up just over and over again.

AMY: And it was something that we wanted to dig into more deeply than we had time to do in in the season itself. And so that's what we're going to do here, starting with Carolina Behe of the Inuit Circumpolar Council and John Noksana. And I interviewed them together a few months ago, we’ll hear from Carolina in a second, but I’m going to jump with John again. He’s telling me more about his definition of food security within an Inuit context.

JOHN: You know, it's natural. It's 100 percent natural. It's what was instilled in us. You know, we take traditional knowledge and it's passed on orally, verbally, you know, and that follows us and guides us as to where we go, and what we harvest and what time we harvest. I do it myself. I touch it. I do everything with it myself, you know, me and my family. So you know that to me, that's food security, is having something put away that you can enjoy and your family can enjoy and you could share with whoever you want. You know, and the sharing is a big part of us no matter where you come from, whether it be in Alaska, or Inuvialuit Settlement Region, or even Nunavut for that matter. I mean, we all we're all we are we're all taught to share, you know?

AMY: Carolina, do you want to add to that?

CAROLINA: Yeah. I really,  I really appreciate what John shared, especially about the sharing part. This is so much more than nutrients and calories. It's so much more than how much money you have, although all of that is part of it. Like John just talked about, passing on from generations and sharing that sharing part is so important to maintaining food security. Yeah, there's just a lot more to it. 

AMY: Well, I think that for a lot of people who have never been exposed to this way of thinking before, these different ways of thinking that are incorporated here, it's kind of revolutionary that food, something that starts with a question of having enough food and the right kinds of food, like it spirals out into so much more about culture and history and family and and values. Carolina, I remember listening to you give a talk about this in Sweden, way back when I just getting started reporting for season two of our show, and I was really struck by the effort you were making to get the audience inside that mindset where things aren’t analyzed in separate pieces; where everything is understood to be connected to everything else.

CAROLINA: Mm-hmm, people are part of the environment. There's not a separation, and there's this really strong understanding of the relationships between different components. So it's really understood that you can't just look at berries and say this is what's happening and this is a decision we're going to make without understanding how that connects to everything else within that ecosystem. So then you can really understand why does the health of the whale depend on the health of the hunter, just as much as the health of the hunter on the whale. It’s because there's a connection there, the whale is giving itself to the hunter. There's a lot of responsibility and an understanding of the relationships amongst everything in that ecosystem. That includes not just looking at not just looking at physical pieces, like what's happening with oceanography. Not just looking at biology, like of what's happening with a beluga, or just with culture. You have to look at all of it together. It also means that you move away from single species management and look at things more holistically.

AMY: Yeah. John, what are some of the animals that you hunt and what are some of the foods that you are gathering off of the land? And can you speak to that interconnectivity that Carolina was just talking about? 

JOHN: Yeah, we we just we do fishing, we would take a fish in the summer under the ice, once the ice freezes, it gets three or four inches. We go on the ice. We were sitting at some of the ice where the herring, usually we take caribou, muskox, you know, I just basically subsistence hunt, I want to eat that so I don't go out of my way to go get a bear or, you know, I just strictly go myself to go out and harvest to consume. But there's, you know, like I come from a community of a thousand people and, you know, every day of the week, someone's out in the wintertime on a skidoo and a sled, out looking for whatever. Every day. You know, and whether it's 30 below or 13 below, someone's out. And, you know, it's a way of life. And it's just something that, you know, it's it's... you have to experience it, I guess, you know. And when I go harvesting and I'm lucky enough to shoot caribou or whatever I get, you know, I thank the good lord when I drive away, you know, thank the animal for giving himself up to me, it’s going to feed me, my family and whoever, you know, that needs a piece of meat or whatever. So, you know, it's know, it's it's it's something it's really hard to explain. And it's just you, you're one little thing and it's such a big space. And, you know, it's, it's beautiful. 

AMY: Carolina, you helped to compile a really in-depth report about food security from an Inuit perspective. It came out here in the fall of 2020, it has 91 co-authors, one of them is John, lots of beautiful maps and pictures, and really interesting quotes from Indigenous knowledge holders. We’ll put a link to it on our website, and I encourage people to check it out. The title of the report is Food Sovereignty and Self-governance; Inuit Role In Managing Arctic Marine Resources. So what is food sovereignty, and how does that connect up with food security?

CAROLINA: So when we were doing the food security report, Inuit here in Alaska said very loudly the largest driver of food insecurity is that lack of decision making power and management. And that directly brings us to food sovereignty. and something that came out so loud in this discussion was Inuit already have their own management practices. Inuit have been in the Arctic for thousands of years. Those practices are not always at the forefront of these management discussions. Those practices, those knowledge, those values are sometimes within Alaska. They're not at the forefront at all. And that really needs to change internationally. They're not at the forefront. And that really needs to change. We need those practices from Inuit. You know, many Inuit communities already have a lot of the solutions that need to be addressed, but it requires adaptive, quick decision making that's holistic, that understands the connections between everything. So there's multiple, in this report, you'll see there's multiple pieces that try to help the readers understand how these things are connected. So if we're talking about what management practices to language, to climate change, these things are all connected to food security and food sovereignty. 

AMY: It sounds like what you're pointing to is the the ability to have food security, to have enough to eat and the right things to eat is connected so deeply to being able to make decisions. And that is, that is the threat here, that Inuit people have been put into a position of not having enough power over the decision making around their own food. Is that accurate? 

CAROLINA: Yeah, I think from ICC Alaska, we would say there's a lack of food security. There's a lack of food sovereignty. Because there's a lack of food sovereignty, there's a lack of food security. 

JOHN: Yeah, and I think another thing, too, is, you know, how we always balance life. You know, we've always been conservationists in our own right. You know? You know, when we see something wrong, we leave that alone and let it replenish itself, whatever it may be. Or, you know, if something's over-abundant we kind of control it, because there is detrimental effects with everything that happens, especially up in the north you know. You know I think since you know, like, we live in harsh, really harsh places, and we adapt. We always adapt. Aboriginal people, Inuit, have always adapted, no matter what. You know, we're facing climate change now, yeah, we're going to adapt.

AMY: Yeah, well, and I think it's so interesting what you're saying about the the how much things have changed in the traditional knowledge changing with it, because I, I don't know if this is true, but I'm kind of guessing that there's a stereotype that when people hear traditional knowledge, they think of something old, that is sort of stuck in time and scientific knowledge is something new that is, you know, cutting edge. But that was one of the really interesting things I felt like came from the report is actually from an Inuit perspective, it's almost more like the reverse might be true, that scientific knowledge gets solidified and hardened and, you know, written down into this these forms that that make it not able to change, but that the Inuit knowledge is so much more adaptive. And did I read that right, is that kind of what some of the report was saying?

JOHN: I could concur with that because our traditional knowledge it's like everything else, you know, it changes over time. You gotta change with it, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.

CAROLINA: This came up a lot in the report because there needs to be a lot more equity given at tables for indigenous knowledge, and for indigenous knowledge to inform decision making. And also there's just seems to be this lack of understanding of that, that it really does have its own methodologies. It has its own processes. It has its own approaches, its own analysis processes. This is a very sophisticated body of knowledge built over thousands of years. You know, one elder said in a meeting here in Alaska when we were building this report, he said, well, all his adult life that he's been in, these conversations with scientists and managers come to the meeting and he's expected to know their laws, to know their rules, to understand their science, and they come without being expected to know anything about his culture. And so it's it's this unequal table there. So we really need to be asking questions about equity and how are we going to build equity. How are we going to get people to leave their egos at the door and really trust and respect the indigenous knowledge that is sitting at the table?

AMY: And one of the people who’s asking those questions about equity, and how to build it, is Mumilaaq Qaqqaaq. We’ll hear her conversation with Nick Mott after the break.

BREAK

NICK: Welcome back to Threshold Conversations, I’m Nick Mott, producer on the show. 

Before the break, we heard Carolina Behe and John Noksana talking about food security. But that led us right into these much bigger issues of sovereignty for Inuit people. And that’s what we’re gonna focus on in the second half of the episode, with Mumilaaq Qaqqaq. She’s tackling those sovereignty issues in a place she never thought she’d go: Canada’s parliament. 

MUMILAAQ: I'm here because people need help. I'm here because things need to get done

NICK: Mumilaaq is one of the youngest members of parliament, or MPs, in Canada - she was elected to the House of Commons in 2019 when she was only 25 years old, as part of the progressive New Democratic Party, or NDP. She’s the lone representative from Nunavut—a mega-huge territory way up in the north, close to Greenland. Nunavut makes up almost 40 percent of Canada’s landmass - but just shy of 40 thousand people live in that whole area. And about 85 percent of those people are Inuit. But looking at Parliament — out of 338 MPs in the House of Commons, Mumilaaq is one of just two members of Inuit heritage. I wanted to talk with her about what this quest for sovereignty looks like as an indigenous person working in a majority white institution with a long history of working to destroy and disenfranchise indigenous communities.

NICK: Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, thanks so much for joining us on Threshold Conversations.

MUMILAAQ: Thanks so much for the time and the space.

NICK: I want to start back in time just a little bit, before you were elected.  you’d been to Parliament before, for this big event where youth leaders gathered from all over the country. And one day, you met in a building next to the official halls of Parliament, and you saw something weird about the Nunavut flag. What did you notice?

MUMILAAQ: The Nunavut flag was upside down. Well, I couldn't I was looking. I was I know I wasn't supposed to touch it. You know, there's all these rules, but I was like, hello, this is upside down. What on earth?

Nick: I can't believe the flag was upside down.

Mumilaaq: Exactly, Right? And it was like in the third John McDonald building the most outwardly racist prime minister in the country, who was the first prime minister of the country, who openly, constantly said we need to get rid of the Indian in the child. This is where we saw the birth of really, really racist documents, really racist acts in Canada. So it seemed so fitting. It really did. 

NICK: Hmm. And now you’re working in parliament, right across from that building. Tell me about your journey into politics, have you always wanted to be a politician? 

MUMILAAQ: I would have laughed in people's faces if you ever asked me if I was interested in running for a member of parliament in this friggin beast that has done nothing but crush Inuit lives in all different ways, shape and form. No way. I wanted to get involved with that,

Nick: Mm hmm. If you would have laughed in the face of anybody who said you'd be an MP what was it that made you change your mind? What was it that made you run back in 2019?

Mumilaaq: And the very end of August? I had a friend message me asking to talk about politics,and I said LOL! And they were like if you’re not interested in politics I’m not gonna press. And a conversation can’t hurt, so I said let’s at least talk. So came over on a Saturday I think it was and we were sitting at the kitchen table and I was like oh dang, where is this going? And by the end of it, I said, so we are super crystal clear. You are asking me to run for a member of parliament for the New Democrat Party this year. For like six weeks, we're going to jump in to campaign and they're like, yep, that's it, OK, let me talk to my mom, let me do my research and I'll make a decision. So. I talked to my mom. Any big decision in my life is a discussion with my mom, first and foremost, she's my biggest supporter and she was super nonchalant about it. I was like, Mom, it's crazy. Your Twenty five year old daughter wants to run for MP. And she's like, I don't know why you're freaking out. You do things like this all the time. We support you. We love you. What do you want me to say? Don't do it. I know you're going to go and do it. So do it. Like she was. She was super chill about it. I just took it and I ran. And I've been running since and learning how to slow down and walk and look around me and say, OK, I can't keep running because everybody else is like a snail's pace here on the federal level. So that's not how it works.

NICK: Tell me about what it’s like to actually be in Parliament. When I imagine politics I picture like this really sterile, sort of formal environment? Is that what it’s like in there??

Mumilaaq: I try really hard not to make my office feel like a like a like you're on the hill. I want you to feel like you're. Coming to me as a person and we're just going to chat as people, there's lots of furs, lots, I mean, more indigenous art and things like that. When I try and make it a very open environment that isn't so, I can't stand being called MP. I don't honorable or that's even worse, things like that. It's just I really try to make it more. Home slash school kind of vibe instead of such a political suit and tie. [sigh] To me, that's and that's I think one of the few ironies of the house is that men have to wear a suit and tie. And for women, we just have to make sure our shoulders are covered. So even things like that, I'll show my arms a lot just because that's not what you would think of when you think of a politician, it kind of throws people off, which is fine. But we also need to realize that we can make space for people like me and there needs to be space for people like me. And I'm just trying to really enforce what I believe in, which is politics can look, feel and be different.

Nick: Yeah, it seems like you've put in a lot of effort to create a very human and welcoming space. But do you feel welcomed and respected? Outside of your office

Mumilaaq: I constantly get stopped by security.I get stopped all the time. I mean, the most probably the most recognizable face on the hill. I've never seen somebody else walking around with face tattoos. So, you know, after the second, third, third time, I'm like, this is a little bit ridiculous. And it's really intimidating when you have a big security officer half jogging towards you like, excuse me ma’am. I'm like, oh, my gosh, am I going to get pinned down? Because they don't think I'm supposed to be here. I'm teeny, I'm small like, no, don't come off jogging at me, slow down, what are you doing? But it also just, it reflects my reality from a national scale to a small scale. My white mom knew growing up. When I, when I was down south for school and I was somewhere new by myself after dark, I always had to call her because my white mom knew if I went missing, who was going to look for me besides my family. And that's very much the world that a lot of us, most of us have to live in as indigenous women where it's scary to leave parliament. I've been shouted at. I've been called racial slurs. It's a different thing from a white woman, from man of any background to be in this kind of position  And that's just, that's my reality.

Nick: So of all the issues that you could be focusing on — now that you’re in parliament, what are your priorities?

MUMILAAQ: Ultimately, if I took all of my messages, comments, emails, discussions, housing is by far the number one issue on people's minds. And to be able to fully understand it, I knew I needed to actually go there and have those discussions with individuals. And in that I also wanted to have a really holistic. Idea of exactly what was going on? What does it mean exactly for an individual to have No access to safe space?

Nick: And you did go there and have those conversations. Last summer, you took a three-week trip to communities all over Nunavut to see how housing overlaps with other issues in the North, like suicide rates and poverty. Tell me a little bit about what that tour of the territory was like.

MUMILAAQ: The result of that was really heartbreaking and horrific. It was everything from having skin irritations since being a child to families having multiple children or siblings die by suicide in the home and because there's no housing in the community, they can't go anywhere else. I've heard of parents losing their children to the foster care system because their homes were deemed too moldy. So they were unfit for the child. And there was no other option for those parents to move into any other units. I heard just so many things where housing and the lack of that space is directly tied into it and. Having multiple individuals under the same roof and feeding into those frustrations and stressors, and it's just a continuous recipe for disaster, and that's why we continue to keep seeing these crazy numbers of suicide and abuse and violence and not that housing is the end all be all solution, but people need to have space. It's really heartbreaking, even just that, not taking into account all the other barriers that people have to overcome all the time. It's it puts people in a near impossible position to get out of.

Nick: Yeah. I read this piece you wrote online, and it sounds like after that tour, you were just totally burnt out. Like, so much that you ended up actually taking leave from the job for eight weeks. So late last year, at the height of this personal turmoil for you, you must have been faced with this decision: like, do I tell people about what I’m going through? What was figuring out what to do like for you? 

MUMILAAQ:  And I just wasn't sure how open I was willing to be about it, because this is my personal life and man, Christmas and New Year's wasn't fun because I was just riddled with how am I going to tell the world that I found myself in this position,

NICK: That position being anxiety, depression, losing sleep. And of course, the choice you ended up making was to be open. You wrote that essay I mentioned - and We’ll link to it on our website. You wrote super powerfully - and vulnerably - about how that tour was your breaking point. 

What went into that decision to be public about what you were going through personally?

Mumilaaq: if I went away because I was in such a state and came back and wasn't clear about what had happened, how would that make me any different from anything that we've seen before? How would that make me? Actually, fulfill what I'm trying to and walk that walk instead of just talk that talk,

We've always been lied to, Inuit have always been misinformed, misguided, It's just we continue to be lied to, continue over and over again to be shown that we don't matter.

But it was so important to me that my constituents knew that I was willing, really, really willing to have politics look, feel and be different, like I've been saying from the beginning. So I couldn't just do nothing. I couldn't just not talk about where I was or why I was away for two and a half months, for whatever reason it would have been. I couldn't not have that transparency. I couldn't do what continues to be done to us every single day.That's not how I operate.

Nick: Yeah. Yeah, that seems to really reflect the whole spirit of what you're about in parliament, you know, trying to bring humanity into the politics, that's that must have taken real courage. 

I want to shift focus to something else that happened after your tour. At the beginning of every Parliament, one of the highest officials in Canada gives this big talk that lays out the most important issues for the session ahead. It’s called a Throne Speech. And in this hour long speech, indigenous people were mentioned just very briefly, at the end.

Hearing that speech, you had a really strong reaction to how indigenous people were prioritized - and you gave a response the next day:

SPEECH: the lack of basic human rights for indigenous peoples results in death. And we are dying and have been before this pandemic. I did not have expectations of this throne speech, Mr Speaker, because since the day I was born and we have heard promises of a good life, of positivity, of being able to contribute to society in a healthy way, to have basic human rights. And we continue to have those promises broken to us. I will start to have faith in the federal government, Mr Speaker, once you have the opportunity to live a life filled with dignity and respect. I will start to have faith in this institution once I see indigenous people have the right to self-determination. Mr Speaker, when will this federal government stand for Inuit and provide at least basic human rights, at least basic housing? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Nick: And you said that you'll start to have faith in the federal government once in which people can live with dignity and respect once there's real self-determination, and I found that phrase, start to have faith. Really interesting, since now you're part of the government, too. So you're part of this institution that you don't yet have faith in. What's that dynamic like for you? How does that play out?

Mumilaaq: I mean, it's, it's the truth. It's just I just talk about exactly what's happening. And I've stood in the house before and I've said, no, I'm standing here in an institution that was meant to kill me. And you can feel how much that really strikes people. And I'm not sure if that's because they, it's not a view that they've necessarily shared or if it's just not a perspective they've ever seen or known of. There's a power that. In truth, that I bring. And in being able to talk about it in the way I do in the strong way that I do is something that changes the energy of the room. And I think that that's what I'm trying to show people, that we have power. We can, we have ability to be able to change those mindsets. And sometimes it's simply standing in an institution and saying this place was meant to kill me. And still try to still try to. This and oppress Inuit. And in being able to do that, that is more strengthening and fulfilling than anything else, because ultimately we, we're not supposed to be here, we really aren't. They tried really, really hard to get rid of us. And it's phenomenal to think about how my grandfather, my grandparents were born on the land and raised on the land, lived off the land, my dad was born on the land, raised in a growing community. And somehow in two generations, they produced me. L Somehow, Inuit are making more Inuit like me. That are so strong and vocal and willing to put themselves out there, it's phenomenal what has been done in the last 30 or 40 years in turmoil, but it's phenomenal how much we have really found strength and found ways to say. If you we're still here and it's we're not able to go anywhere, and that's what I really have to focus on and that's what I really lost sight of in October and being in a place where. You feel like you're alone against this big beast is really intimidating and really daunting and to look at 60, 70 years of turmoil and lack of basic. Basics from the federal constitution to be able to say we're still here is something that's really enriching and something that's really moving and something I definitely lost sight of there for a bit, because it can be a very daunting place and can feel very lonely. But if I'm not feeling those kinds of spaces, then not showing that we can build those kinds of spaces, then they will continue to be majority white spaces that don't work for the majority of the population. And that needs to change. We need to see change.

Nick: Well, I think that's a beautiful place to end this conversation, So thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today.

Mumilaaq: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. 

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