Ilatsiak - 50 - A Sense of Belonging

Fishing was an important part of the summer season’s work especially with Qayak’s people. David remembered one time in particular when they had first arrived and he wasn’t well known to many people, everyone had been working on the fish weir a little ways below one of the final sets of huge canyon falls in the river. It was a happy time and the fishing was good. He was unaware that his affection for Qayak was well known among the various families at the weir. As the men and women worked together to rebuild the stone pens in which the fish would be trapped, there was the usual splashing and pushing and jostling that went with the work. The water was cold and the rocks very slippery underfoot. It happened, that he and Qayak arrived together, at the same place in the wall to dump their rocks. David had his mind on Qayak, watching her every move, day-dreaming that she was so cute and now his family. Suddenly, he felt himself being pushed from behind, sliding towards the water. Then he was being lifted up and literally thrown like a helpless char into the pool! What was happening! Another body splashed down beside him! He heard the scream, Qayak was soaking wet beside him. Before either was able to get up and get to shore, people crowded into the pool with their fishing harpoons and began proding them just like they would try to catch the fish! Meanwhile everyone was laughing at them and splashing them.
“Throw them both on the beach together!” someone yelled.
Then another added, “Yes, let’s skin them and leave them to dry in the sun like dried fish!” So without any hesitation, the hapless couple was stripped bare and laid on the grass beside the stream. At first David was angry to be treated so roughly, but Qayak’s laughter quickly let him know it was a rite of passage, their acceptance into the community of familes. There was no privacy in this little world!
Qayak grabbed her bag and ran off as soon as she saw a chance to get away and hide. For his part and to pay them back for their silliness, David paraded around naked while he carefully lay out their clothes to dry on the willow bushes. Then he went looking for Qayak and offered her a caribou skin to wrap around herself while from a perch on the smooth rocks high above the river they watched the fishermen below work the weir. Fish after fish was plucked out of the pools and tossed to the women and children waiting on the shore. They were quickly gutted and turned inside out before being laid out to dry in the sunshine.
The incident that day changed much for the new couple as they began to make their life together in the small community. After all that had happened to him during the past few years, he felt very close to these people and decided to work hard to do whatever he could to help not just his own family, but also these people around him. In the background he sensed a feeling of being apart from these people because of where he’d come from, while simultaneously feeling a closeness one would naturally expect to have among among people you’d grown up with.