The hoodoos on Bylot Island, just across from Pond Inlet, are the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. My mother was born and raised in Pond Inlet, on the land, in igloos and sod houses. Our family was relocated by the Canadian government in the 1950s. That was a very difficult thing for everyone. So Pond Inlet is our uninterrupted homeland, where we were happy, where we were surviving, where we were supposed to be. There’s a purity to it, a kind of pre-colonial sweetness. When I travelled there for the first time, I felt a very deep connection to it.
The hoodoos themselves are outstanding. They’re pillars of sandstone that are strong enough to stand on but soft enough that you can carve your name into the rock with your fingers. There was nothing running through my mind when I wrote my name on one of them, and that’s the beauty of being in a place that’s magical, cleansing and astoundingly beautiful — your neuroses disappear. When you’re in a big city, you’re crossing the street and you look and there are 500 cars and 50 people walking by and you’ve got to get somewhere before three o’clock and blah blah blah … all that’s gone up there. It’s a release of every stress when you’re out on the land. It’s like that peaceful feeling you have when you wake up but your eyes are still closed, and there’s just a couple of seconds before everything piles on you and you have to get up. I feel like that all the time when I’m there.