So July 9th is likely the most celebrated event in the summer, if not the year, here in Nunavut. The celebration marks the date when two major acts were passed by parliament allowing Nunavut to separate from the Northwest Territories over ten years ago. It's kind of a big deal.
(The best part-- it's only a week away from Canada Day-- ie 2 back-to-back long weekends! WOOT!)
The Nunavummiut celebrate this day with a vast array of family favourite events-- sail boat races across the tiny in-town lake, egg-races, egg tosses, bannock making, three-legged races, face painting, helium balloons, and a whole lot of food!!!!!
It was a day packed with activities from top to bottom, and I was able to experience my first square dance. Check out a couple of pics below to see what all the fuss was about...
Here is a pic of an elder making bannock on the beach of Williamson Lake. There were several different stations, and let me tell you, they all made DELICIOUS bannock (naturally I had to test them all for comparative purposes).
Though many of the elders are uni-lingual, bannock is pretty much its own universal language.
Delicious and HUGE cake to celebrate the day. (For context, this cake took up an entire large folding table. It made me think of Cake Boss, how on earth did they make that thing so large???) Also I love that it's a bilingual cake!
The band was playing and the music was great! The music up here has a very down-home, old country sound (it reminds me of my favourite soundtrack of all time-- Oh Brother Where Art Thou). Johnny Cash is a favourite of many here. This style blended with the Inuktitut sounds is really just so beautiful and relaxing. I have some video of them playing, as well as some of the other bands that played (there were like 5 different bands).
Most of the festivities took place outside of the middle school. There was sooooo much food and free goods (I gots me a hat and a sweatshirt, woot!) There was probably a turn out of about 1800 they guessed (in a hamlet of 2400, where over half of the population heads out on land for summer). So not bad.
And below, a taste of the FUN of square dancing. It's not quite like any style I've seen before, but man was it FUN!!! It was just amazing, everyone already knew all the moves, when the music started, they all just started dancing. Also, the hilarious thing is that the dance didn't start until 1030 at night, and didn't really get going until about midnight-- not at all what you expect from a town where nothing is open past 8pm.
Okay so the video didn't load. And I'm heading out. Maybe I'll try to post it later. But believe me, it was amazing.
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