When the Bermuda National Gallery included an exhibition of Inuit art in its current Winter show, which ends on Friday, it brought back many memories for Jill Amos Raine who, with her late husband David, spent a year among the Inuit in Canada's far north teaching English.

Here Mrs. Raine shares with Lifestyle's Nancy Acton some of her experiences and observations about the people who lived in the snow and ice-filled lands known as the Northwest Territories.

****

Fresh out of university in Liverpool, England where they took social courses and underwent teacher training and, determined to begin their working lives in a totally different environment, the young graduates accepted posts in Canada's Northwest Territories teaching the Inuit English.

Filled with a sense of adventure and purpose, they set off in a spirit of optimism and excitement knowing full well that what they were heading into was a culture far removed from anything they had experienced before.

The first taste of just how different life would be came when they boarded the little aircraft which would take them to Cape Dorset. At her husband's suggestion, Mrs. Raine sat up front with the pilot, with whom she immediately noticed there was something wrong: he looked half asleep, his speech was slurred and he lit a cigarette.

"Listen, I've had a hard night. I've been up partying all night and I need your help. I've got to get some sleep, so hold this stick and don't move," he said before passing out.

"I was terrified and for about an hour I held on before he came around in time to land between two hills," Mrs. Raine recalls.

Walking to their prefab home, the couple noticed Inuits walking around armed, and had no idea how they would be treated. At bed time, they locked their door and settled down to sleep. Soon, they heard the door open and the sound of footsteps inside. Alarmed but staying quietly put, they listened as the footsteps faded away. Apparently, someone had been shacking up there prior to the new occupants' arrival.

Hired as community teachers, Mrs. Raine was assigned to a class of five- and six-year-olds, none of whom spoke a syllable of English. The Canadian Government had decided that the Inuit should be brought in from their camps and resettled in communities where they could enjoy the benefits of their fellow countrymen: warmth, comfort and medical care.

"There were many instances of starvation. If the caribou failed to migrate they froze to death, but the Inuit weren't interested in joining communities. They had been nomadic all their lives," Mrs. Raine says.

Her first assignment was to teach the children the Canadian national anthem — something she felt was ridiculous. "Instead, we tried to understand each other, and for the first two or three months we became supreme actors. The first day I had a little boy in tears, and another child acted out childbirth," Mrs. Raine says.

"By Christmas, when we broke off for a week, I thought I had failed miserably because we were still acting, and no one spoke English."

When classes resumed in January, however, it was "as if a light bulb had switched on", with the students chattering away in English — but with a Bermudian accent!

Settling into Inuit life, the Raines soon learned just how different the culture was and adapted accordingly. A land frozen for most of the year, the long winters were cloaked in darkness, while the short summers had extensive daylight, making sleep difficult. Consequently, there was no official bedtime for the Inuit — adults and children alike simply slept wherever tiredness overtook them, including the Raine's home.

The lone Hudson Bay store stocked nothing the couple needed, so for a year money became meaningless — "a very nice thing, I can assure you," Mrs. Raine quips.

While the couple's prefab had a bath, the Inuit's frozen landscape and lifestyle precluded bathing or washing their hair. Instead, they brushed their hair every day, which made it shiny and beautiful. In Springtime, they cut big blocks of ice to melt indoors for water.

With no cooking facilities, all food, including caribou, seal and walrus meat, was eaten frozen and raw — a practice which earned them the name 'Eskimo', which means 'eater of raw meat', among westerners. However, the term is regarded as derogatory by the Inuit.

The Inuit were not indiscriminate hunters, but killed for sustenance and then only enough for their immediate needs.

"When a seal came up from a hole in the ice and was killed, the Inuit said it had been sent to them, and the first thing they did was pour water into its mouth because they said the seal needed it," Mrs. Raine says.

Hunters skinned and prepared their quarry on site. It was then wrapped in skins on the sled and taken home, where the carcass was stored in the open air, with bits being cut off to eat as required.

Like seal, caribou, which Mrs. Raine says tastes like "salty lollipop", was either eaten "as is", or its stomach was seared and filled with fresh meat.

The seal's skin, which was used for boots and clothing, was very tough in its natural state, so the women actually chewed it until it was malleable, which was why their bottom teeth were so ground down. It also took a great deal of skill for them to make sealskin shoes, which had to be completely waterproof.

The hunters sought their prey with guns purchased from the Hudson Bay store and generally travelled by skidoo, fuel for which also came from the same store. The Inuit were expert at making makeshift repairs to their skidoos — 'with chewing gum and string' so to speak.

Men undertook the hunting expeditions, which could last for days, during which they travelled miles; yet, without discernible landmarks, they always found their way home again. The Raines joined one hunt, and Mrs. Raine's job was to make tea. Ice blocks were cut and igloos erected for shelter— but without toilet facilities.

The men were expected to cut a hole in the ice, while women were permitted to relieve themselves indoors, but without privacy. To preserve her dignity, Mrs. Raine opted to go out into the freezing darkness, with wolves howling nearby, and be as quick as possible.

Due to climatic conditions, the Inuit never said 'yes' to anything, only 'maybe', and deferred all decisions until the last moment.

Unlike some other volunteers in the Northwest Territories, the Raines maintained an open-door policy, welcoming the friendly Inuit, including children, into their home at all times. As a result, they were well liked and made many friends.

Without children, however, Mrs. Raine was an anomaly. In the absence of transportation, Inuit women carried their babies in a pouch on their backs, and if a mother had a second child before the preceding one was able to walk alongside her it had to be given away. Consequently, Mrs. Raine was always being offered a baby.

"The Inuit life was so hard," the former English teacher says. "The only way they survived was by humour."

Areas of the Northwest Territories are rich in a variety of stones which the Inuit set off in kayaks to find, and then carve into beautiful pieces. Before beginning, they study a stone for a long time, looking for its soft and weak spots, then go to work, first with an ax, then a variety of files, then sandpaper, before using a combination of moisture and endless hand rubbing to produce the final shine.

In addition to the many fine examples in the current Bermuda National Gallery exhibition, Mrs. Raine also has her own impressive collection of carvings, including one created from a very rare stone.

After artist James Houston introduced the concept of print making to the Inuit in 1957 as a path to economic stability, the Northwestern Territories government subsequently formed cooperatives to produce, promote and sell Inuit art. Today, limited editions of original prints are sold throughout the world.

Mrs. Raine knew some of the artists whose work is currently included in the BNG exhibition, and notes that one woman, Kenoujak, whom she also knew at a time when she "just drew pretty things", went on to become world-famous.

Subsequent to her time in the Northwest Territories, three orphaned Inuit children enjoyed an "amazing" holiday in Bermuda, thanks to a project at Warwick Academy, and one of Mr. Raine's former students also visited the Island.

Despite describing the year she and her late husband spent among the Inuit as one of the most "up"of her life, they soon had grave misgivings about their mission in Cape Dorset at the behest of the Northwest Territories Government.

"We were changing a magnificent culture, and neither of us wanted to be part of that destruction, even though we knew others would follow us, so we only stayed a year. Otherwise, I'd still be there."

Perhaps she is right, for the artist now understands that a hotel has been built at the settlement, and some of the trappings of modern life, including cell phones and modern toys, have now invaded what was "another world".