Qajaq Building With Maligiaq Padilla

Book Your Place On This Very Special Workshop by Saturday, February 18th!

If you're serious about taking part in this extraordinary class taught by Maligiaq Padilla please get in touch with True North Boats immediately. They need a firm commitment from all participants absolutely no later than Saturday, February 18th. 

*Payment arrangements are a possibility

*Affordable lodging for out-of-town students available.

In this intensive workshop you'll make your own tailor-fitted, high performance Greenland sea qajaq based upon the measurements of your body. Maligiaq Padilla learned his building techniques from Inuit elders in his home village of Sisimiut, Greenland and enjoys sharing this knowledge with others.

Qajaqs built by Padilla are housed at the Greenland Sisimiut Museum, the Inuit Gallery of Vancouver, the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC, and the Kativik Cultural Center in Nome. He is the only person in history to win ten Greenland National Qajaq Championships.

This is an extremely rare opportunity to learn the ancient craft of Greenland qajaq building from one who has lived it fully. 

Class space is very limited, so we encourage you to contact True North Boats soon.

True North Boats (707) 834-3893

Mind's Eye Manufactory (707) 786-3393

393 Main Street, Ferndale, CA 95540

• Find Us On Facebook • Follow Us On Twitter • Read All About It • Visit Our On-Line Store •

'Never Alone' - Indigenous Digital Game Development

Never Alone - Game Trailer from Never Alone on Vimeo.

Never Alone is the first game developed with an indigenous community, using traditional native stories in a beautiful and compelling educational game. Read more via The Guardian.

 

Ron Brower, Sr., an Iñupiat Elder and Cultural Ambassador to the Never Alone project describes the importance of making a videogame to pass traditional knowledge to the next generation.

• Find Us On Facebook • Follow Us On Twitter • Read All About It • Visit Our On-Line Store •

Surviving Alone in Alaska

Heimo Korth is the last man standing in 19 million acres of Alaskan wilderness. His neighbors are polar bears and caribous. Say good bye to civilization and see how they do it in the arctic circle on the last frontier in America. 

In 1980, Jimmy Carter established the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the Alaskan Interior, cutting off 19 million acres of prime boreal wilderness from the mitts of fur trappers, oil tycoons, and would-be lodge owners alike. Only six families of white settlers were grandfathered in and allowed to keep cabins in the refuge—of them, only one still stays there year-round living off the land. His name is Heimo Korth, and he is basically the Omega Man of Americas Final Frontier.

• Find Us On Facebook • Follow Us On Twitter • Read All About It • 

Inuksuk

An inuksuk is a stone monument found throughout the arctic regions of Canada, Greenland and Alaska. The singular of inuksuit, it means "in the likeness of a human". Hence why many of the stone cairns that have been erected often assume the shape of a person. Created hundreds of years ago, an "ee-nook-shook" can take different forms, each with unique cultural significance and purpose. They are often used to mark special places and a familiar inuksuk is a welcome guide to a traveler in a featureless and forbidding landscape. 

Still being erected today, inuksuit are lasting symbols of resilience in a harsh, often unforgiving environment and have evolved into a distinctive art form. These sculptural representations are seen as among the most important objects placed by humans in the vast Arctic landscape. As a consequence, they have become a familiar symbol of the Inuit and of their homeland. Inuit tradition forbids the destruction of inuksuit as they are frequently venerated as symbolizing an ancestor who knew how to survive on the land in the traditional way.

In this way, inuksuit come to serve many purposes, both practical and mystical. An inuksuk can serve in a spiritual capacity to indicate where life is renewed. where spirits reside, where judgements or decisions are made, and where celebrations are held. They come to symbolise places of death and remembrance also. Inuksuit can also be signposts for safe or dangerous crossings, treacherous water, falling rocks, caribou crossings, good hunting and fishing locations. Amongst other things, they have become an enduring means of communication by the Inuit people through the generations that have been, and are yet to be.

So compelling was the desire of the Inuit to create inuksuit, that they not only appear on the earthly landscape but also in legend and stories - as figures that emerge from the movement of fingers playing string game or in a winter sky constellation. Some of the 'old' inuksuit are mentioned in the travelling songs passed from generation to generation in order to help hunters remember a series of directions on long trips. Often these inuksuit are venerted regardless of their function. Even today, the appearance of a familiar inuksuk on the horizon is a welcome sight when one is a long way from home.

Whether they symbolise their maker, act in a practical capacity or are the object of reverence, inuksuit function as helper and messengers created by an infinite arrangement of stones. They are an integral part of life outdoors, as an unspoken language and endure as indelible signatures upon the landscape.

Monday Morning Wave

World champion big wave surfers, Garrett McNamara and Kealii Mamala rode into surfing history last week when they towed into a monster tsunami created by Child's Glacier in South-Central Alaska.

Seward, Alaska

• Ressurection Bay


• Seward and Goodwin Glacier


• It just might happen........


• Resurrection Penninsula


• Just a nice house


• It all began here


• Mt Marathon........they run up it apparently


• Yoly's Bistro.....you'd be a fool not to eat here


• Moby Dick Hostel.....a comfortable stay


• Exit Glacier

Whittier, Alaska

• Anchor down at the.........


• Some say "there's nowhere shittier than Whittier"


• The Buckner Building


• US Coastguard


• Buffalo Burgers - Yummy!


• Leaving Whittier


• The Tunbridge Team


• Kittiwake Colony


• Passage Canal


• Sunset, Prince William Sound

Alaska

Four Quarters of Light

Brian Keenan's fascination with Alaska began as a small boy, while reading Jack London's wondrous, "Call of the Wild". With a head full of questions about its inspiring landscape and a heart informed by his love of desolate and barren places, Brian Keenan sets out for Alaska to discover its four geographical quarters, from snowmelt in May to snowfall in September, and en route, finds a land as fantastical as a fairytale, but whose vastness has a very peculiar type of allure...From dog-mushing on a frozen lake beneath the whirling colours of the aurora borealis, to camping in a two dollar tent in the tundra of the arctic circle, Brian Keenan seeks out the ultimate wilderness experience and along the way, encounters hard-core survivalists who know what struggle and endurance mean, from their daily battle with nature to exist. He discovers that true wilderness is as much a state of mind, as it is a place. And ultimately to make Alaska home, one must surrender to it.

This is a wonderful book that brings alive the daily struggles of those who have chosen to live in Alaska. It is full of colourful descriptions of the people and the environment in which they live that draws you in and makes you feel like you know them personally. It also describes a very personal journey for Brian Keenan and moved me to tears on a number of occasions.

Its certainly put me in the mood for my first big adventure to this wild place. Something I'm looking forward to immensely