Tummikka-My Footprints in the Snow

This is my story of living among the Inuit in the high central arctic, on a spit of land named Maguse River (Usugangnaq), which was located in Nunavut - formerly the Northwest Territories in Canada. . It was the Fall of 1953. I helped pack up what few possessions we had, and left from Minneapolis with my husband Tom and our 6 month old daughter Linda. This is the story of a 22 year old wife, mother, and language learner who struggled to understand who she was, why she agreed to follow her husband Tom to the arctic, and what she discovered about who she was and who God is. I discovered what it's like to abandon every human desire in order to live with people in a different culture. The experience was life changing. I struggled like any women raised in America would struggle who gave up her dreams of a home with a white picket fence. It meant learning another language, viewing life from someone else's point of view, and living with others in an isolated, small space. For a person who needed to be in control - I was thrust into a situation in which I had no control. I was faced with how different we thought about life, the mystery of the universe, God, what the difference was between clean and dirty, the role of a woman, not only in the Inuit culture but the role of a women in a Christian world. If every human being had to spend time in another culture there would be no wars. I learned from the Inuit the gift of hospitality and of generosity, of what it was like to go hungry, to suffer from the cold, to laugh and enjoy life. What a gift they were to me. This book takes you through the first two years of my journey to the Arctic, and the dramatic effects it had on me. I had to learn to abandoned every concept and preconceived idea I had about myself, and what my expectations were about others. I was given this high privilege of meeting a people who for centuries had lived in tents and igloos. Who suffered and died without medical help. A people who had very little knowledge of the land to the south of them. We thought we were going to bring them out of the dark ages. Instead they taught me some important truths such as hospitality, generosity, the desire to learn, to not worry about tomorrow, to not be wasteful, but to make use of what they had in order to survive. I fell in love with the Inuit. They loved to laugh to play, to tell stories, to experience something new, to have faith and to hope. I learned some life lessons that are still part of who I am today.