Up Here magazine

After spending several years of her childhood in British Columbia, Jesse Larocque was feeling disconnected from her Métis culture. So, when it came time to move back to Yellowknife at 16 years old, she had a specific goal in mind. The Northerner turned to her great-grandmother, Violet Beaulieu, who helped her learn how to sew and bead. Larocque got quite good at. So good that, in 2017, Larocque began her own collection of jewelry under the brand name Northern Breed.... Read how this Métis beader connects to her ancestors through jewelry:

The idea for the podcast started with a Facebook page created at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, called Caremongering Inuvik, where locals could ask for or offer help to others in their community. It's since evolved into project offering a contemporary way for Kisoun and other Gwich’in and Inuvialuit Elders in the Delta to carry on the tradition of storytelling. Read more on our website:

"I was back in the North for the first time since my family moved away, nearly 50 years earlier, and I was surprised at how much I remembered. The ever-present buzzing of a seaplane’s piston engine brought vivid recollections of my father, who flew for Pacific Western Airlines from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s." "I left this place as a small child, but its impact on my family hasn't been forgotten." Diane Mar-Nicolle reflects on her early childhood in the North and how a return trip stirred up memories from long ago. Read online at:

Before the deadline for the Sally Manning Award, here are some past winning entries and runner-ups to get inspired by. Going back to the 2016, Tanya Roach won that year’s award with Larga Love, a story about finding a piece of yourself in the unlikeliest of places: https://buff.ly/39HxSNE Who will be first place this year? We invite you to submit your best stories before January 31, 2021. Learn about further details at https://buff.ly/3ojXjJe

How are eskers formed? What’s in their core? Why are they so regularly spaced throughout the tundra? And why are these long ridges all roughly the same size? While there are a handful of theories that attempt to explain these questions, the truth behind these ecological crown jewels of the Barrens is certainly a tantalizing mystery. Read about this head scratcher at:

Fifty years ago, we watched the birth of the Dene Nation. We were a scrappy bunch of rebels trying to protect what was ours. This is the story of how a great northern people took control of its destiny. Photo by Tessa Macintosh

Beautiful! What an amazing video.

The COVID-19 pandemic landed hard on the mineral exploration community in March. It left carefully laid plans for 2020 in tatters and a sense of the future entirely uncertain. Will junior miners make it to the other side intact? Well, they just might.

What an amazing day in Tsiigehtchic! Thank you so much to Lawrence Norbert and @skyward.wanderlust for telling us their stories and showing us around this beautiful and welcoming community.

Some of the artwork on display inside the Great Northern Arts Festival’s headquarters in Inuvik, including: a piece carved out of slate from Ulukhaktok by Nunavik artist Alec Tuckatuck; carvings by Joe Nasogaluak, of Tuktoyaktuk; paintings by Dene author Antoine Mountain; and a bronze bust of one of the original GNAF artists, (and master whipper) Simon Tookoome.

The North has been coping with the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic for seven months now. While public-health risks appear to be largely containedassuming we all continue to follow the rulesthe pandemic’s impacts continue to roil the economy. Is there a way through this? No one can say for sure. But major economic sectors are identifying the key components of recovery strategiesor at least strategies that will help them survive. Here, we interview leaders from six sectors as they look to the road ahead.

Nunavut may get its first pot shop soon, beavers take up residence in the North and Indigenous fashion designers are reaching for the stars. All in this week’s Up Here newsletter. All in this week’s Up Here newsletter. https://buff.ly/3kC8Z8b

As Inuk interdisciplinary artist Jesse Tungilik can attest, stepping outside of one’s safe place can be well-worth the challenge. The Iqaluit-based artist’s full-body sealskin spacesuit stands as his most complex project to date. Conceived as part of a future-themed artist residency at Concordia University in Montreal last year, the suit stitches together traditional material with space-age ideas, pushing Inuit culture beyond Earth’s boundaries. Inuit have always been a very technology-interested culture, says Tungilik. I saw the sealskin spacesuit as a natural evolution of Inuit technology. If you look at the traditional Inuit clothing, the foundation is fundamentally the same as a spacesuitprotecting humans from a very hostile environment.

What's with all the new wildlife residents in the North? Check out this week's circumpolar newsletter.

It’s been said great art comes from struggle and hardship. If this is true, then COVID-19 could be one of the art world’s greatest patrons. The pandemic has shuttered museums, cancelled concerts, and postponed releases. Galleries, art auctions, artist co-ops, and studio spaces have been closed. These places and organizations are still trying to learn how to operate safely. Here in the territories, largely spared from any cases of coronavirus, northern artists are adapting to a post-pandemic worldboth its challenges and opportunities. https://www.uphere.ca/articl/northern-arts-after-apocalypse

To the north, the water licks at the moss-dusted rock of the Canadian Shield. To the southeast, the lake unfurlsincomprehensibly vast and deeptoward a hazy horizon. If you squint your eyes, the seam between water and sky disappears. Nature doesn’t move over, bow down, or make space for you hereit swallows you up. And you’re only 10 minutes out from town. Photo by Pat Kane

Why don't these people believe narwhals exist? Plus, remembering 9/11 panic in Whitehorse, photographing slime moulds in Yellowknife, and melting permafrost explosions create a pit to hell in Siberia. All in this week’s Up Here newsletter: https://buff.ly/2FkmY3u

Part of the Qamanirjuaq caribou herd passing through Agnico Eagle Mines’ Meliadine Gold project near Rankin Inlet on a sunny July night in 2016. They came from the northeast, three herds joining and filing into a valley near the old scientific camp/sea-can storage area, bedding down for an hour, calves nursing, sleeping, playing. They then got up, moved across the road, and passed by to the west, walking through the main exploration area at sunset, in a haze of golden dust and caribou breath. The camp was shut down as it always is when caribou are nearno movement, no activity. Just the caribou, gilded by the low sun, with only the bleats of the calves, clicking of the fetlock tendons, and the occasional call of a raven. Photo by Page Burt.

Journey under the water, into the past, and out of this world in our September/October issue! In our cover feature, it’s the 10th largest lake on Earth and the deepest in Canada. It’s known as Tinde’e, Tucho, and Tu Nedhé. Settlers named it Great Slave Lake. Dive in to read about one of the North’s most important, life-sustaining bodies of water. A lake that is truly indescribable. Also in this issue, the story of the Dene Nation’s birth in the radical ’60s is one of of resi...liency against colonial oppression. Now, 50 years later, we present a look back at what this landmark Indigenous organization achieved, as told by two of the scrappy young rebels who were there at the beginning. Plus, trek through the stars to discover northern connections with the cosmos, learn how artists in the North are survivingeven thrivingin a pandemic, listen to some morel outrage in the Yukon’s mushroom burns, and hear how one man helped name a generation of Inuit. Available to subscribers and on newsstands next week: https://buff.ly/33b50sl

The salmon are shrinking and the bears are getting fatter in this week’s circumpolar newsletter: https://buff.ly/2F8oZzg

Except for Nunavut, which still doesn’t have 911, the Northwest Territories was the last jurisdiction in Canada to adopt the three-digit emergency number when it went live last November. How to implement this emergency lifeline in a territory with 30-plus remote communities and 11 official languages was what took government officials decades of debate and nearly two years of planning to figure out.

Want to learn about the North? Our community map collects all of Up Here's past stories, tagged by location. https://buff.ly/2DvoZsR

Everybody knows the beach option, says wedding photography Joe Connolly. That’s kind of the low-hanging fruit in something different you can do. But on top of a glacier? That photo’s worth braving the elements. https://buff.ly/31ypVEI

I can appreciate wanting to follow a GPS route. It would be less time-consuming than pouring over maps and discussing options. It would answer all of our questions... But it would also erode the sense of adventure. #HumbledByTheDonjek https://buff.ly/2EZGn9B

I’ve always maintained the mantra that we should be eating less, but better meat. Dawson City butcher Shelby Jordan is curing the Yukon: https://buff.ly/3j40C4J