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Class Picture in the Pond Inlet School

We hope that in its first ten years, our new government will make sure that we have more houses, good school buildings, more recreational facilities like a swimming pool and a heated arena, more services, such as a larger health centre, a permanent doctor in town, a larger airport terminal and longer runway, jet connections and more TV and radio stations. We also hope for more businesses like a taxi service, a bigger hotel with an elevator and a bigger mall with more stores, an arcade and new jobs. More people will have an education and go to college and university but we will still believe in the Inuit culture. More people will be living in Pond Inlet so there will be more cars, vans and trucks. We hope that the new government will help us have more tourists who bring in money, and we hope the prices of shipping and travel come down.

We expect that our lives will change in the next ten years because things will be cheaper and families will have more money because of more jobs. Next year we will have a new school building that is nice and big. There will be more services and things to do. Families will have more space because there will be more houses. The Inuit government will make laws that respect our traditions and the ways of our elders. We hope Inuit life will improve.

Pond Inlet is a small community of about 1200 people. The people in Pond Inlet are traditional Inuit who are friendly. It is a great place to live. For fun we have sports in the school gym, hockey at the arena, and at the community hall (we call it the C. Hall) we have square dancing, teen dances, Inuit games, army cadets and community feasts. Outside we like to go sliding on the hills and playing with friends and family. In the summer we go swimming in the creeks and ponds and many families travel by boat or ATV to go camping in June, July or August.

There is lots of wildlife (nirjutiit) around Pond Inlet such as narwhals, caribou, ringed seals, polar bears, weasels, snow geese, snowy owls, Arctic terns, murres, jaegers, ptarmigan, falcons, beluga whales, bowhead whales, orcas, walrus, Arctic char (a kind of salmon,) Arctic cod, Greenland sharks, lemmings, Arctic foxes, wolves and hares. Many people have dogteams. Some traditional foods are muktaaq (whale skin) caribou and seal meat, fish, igunaq (aged meat), blueberries, blackberries and different roots. Most of us like traditional food but we also eat hamburgers, ice cream and pizza.

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Photo of Pond Inlet

Pond Inlet is a beautiful snowy place on the edge of Eclipse Sound, built on the shore and on the north side of the hills and mountains. An old name for Pond Inlet is Tununiq, which means a place that faces away from the sun. In the winter we have three months when the sun never rises. In the summer we have three months when the sun never sets. We have beautiful mountains, icebergs, and glaciers that we can see across the sound. In August, when the ice clears, people travel by boat to go seal and narwhal hunting. From November to July most people travel by snowmobile and sled over the ice to go hunting.