'As an Inuvialuit, it's an honour': Tuktoyaktuk hunters reflect on beluga harvest
CBC
Katrina Cockney was near tears recounting her "majestic" first beluga hunt that she recently embarked on alongside her husband and son.
"I was really excited," she said, showing videos of her family on the boat and successfully shooting a beluga whale near Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T.
"As an Inuvialuit, it's an honour ... Being able to practice what our ancestors did."
Cockney says more women should experience it for themselves.
"I've always helped my family prepare the whale, but I've always wanted to experience it myself," she said.
"In my younger generation, we've always chosen to prove that you know women can be equal to men and you don't have to be a man to go hunting," she said.
Tuktoyaktuk carver Roy Cockney Jr. said this season's beluga harvest kept him busy on dry land.
"The boys went whaling and I waited at the camp," he said.
"I filled up their freezers with dry fish, whitefish, muktuk and dry meat — it is a good summer."
Cockney Jr. says he used dried whale and other harvested animal bones in his carvings, carvings that got him accepted to his first Great Northern Arts Festival in Inuvik.
Enoch Pokiak, also from Tuktoyaktuk, similarly uses all parts of harvested animals.
He and his family went whaling earlier in the month of July near Hendrikson Island, by Tuktoyaktuk.
He is currently in the process of preparing muktuk and making the uksuk, whale oil.
He says that growing up, nothing from a harvest went to waste including bones which would go to the dogs.