Gino Akka binds the scarf joint in the gunwale of a Netsilingmeot kayak. A sliver of wood is removed and the wood bent and lashed together so the ends of the boat are lower than the middle. This is the opposite of the shape expected in sea-going boats. The purpose was to keep the ends of the kayaks low to the water in order to reduce the effects of cross winds on their handling. High bows might also be vulnerable to swinging caribou antlers

Tapping into the traditional knowledge:
Josie, the eldest of the Elders, said, 'Well, we don't know much about kayaks. When I was little, my father tried to show me how to build a kayak. But I was a young man and there were girls, and I wasn't that interested, so I didn't pay too much attention.' Mark said 'When I was young my father tried to tell me how to pull the engine from the car, but I didn't pay any attention either.' We all had a good laugh and then began to talk kayak building.

These are very old memories. The Elders that we were speaking with, they had actually lived, as children, as nomads, their fathers hunting caribou from those boats. And these guys had been shown by their dads, and their uncles and their brothers. But it was old. These Elders, at the time we were talking to them, the youngest of them was 72. Josie was telling us about how he remembered going from camp to camp, tucked in the bow of his father's kayak, seeing the water flow by on the other side of the skin. They used to transport family that way. The boats are really big; they're 20 feet long, and can be up to 2 feet wide. You could have two people inside - one in the bow, one in the stern - and the paddler, possibly back to back with his wife.

These guys remember dueling for women when they were teenagers and young men. To me it's unbelievable that this kind of knowledge exists. This memory exists in people that we can still speak to. And that's a resource that, unfortunately, is leaving us really quickly. You know, every time somebody like this dies, it's like a museum burning down, or a library. And what we found as we were building was that the memories were coming back.

Otto Apsaktaun, one of the three kayak-building elders of Kugaaruk Nunavut, works on sewing the nylon skin onto the stern end of the Netsilingmeot kayak.

How the Elders Taught:
We would do a lashing, and no one would say, 'No, no, no. Don't do it that way.' But we would lash a rib on one side, and then we'd see Gino, or Otto or Josie on the other side of the kayak, and they would be doing it differently. And they kind of glanced up at us, and we would see what they were doing. And they weren't saying, 'Don't do it your way; do it my way,' but they were offering it and saying, 'You know, you could do it this way.' Mark and I would be very aware of what they were doing differently. We'd go over, we'd ask questions about it, and then they were happy to explain, because we approached them asking for the information.

That's the whole way of teaching up there. You can ask somebody to show you something, but generally what happens is, the younger people watch what the Elders are doing. Maybe they'll ask a couple of questions, but they'll go off and try and do it themselves. Generally, when they run into a problem, they'll ask for help, and then the Elder will say, 'Well, do it this way,' or, 'Do it that way.'
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