#TheYearofBelief | #TYBsharpeningulus

Research Resilience: Sharpening Systems, Not Just Ulus

🌿 From the Land: Keeping Ulus Sharp While We Work

When we’re cutting fish or skinning a moose, it’s normal for us to pause and say, “Okay, this needs sharpening.” It’s not dramatic or ceremonial. It’s just part of the workflow. You sharpen when the blade stops behaving properly. Then you keep going. Then you sharpen again. That rhythm has been part of our hands since we were young.

Ulus are incredibly versatile.
When we’re working with frozen maqtaq or frozen meat, we hold the ulu straight up and down and use our body weight directly over the handle. With a sharp edge and the right pressure, the ulu moves cleanly through even the toughest cuts.

But with fish, everything becomes more precise. Filleting salmon means cutting sideways, with the flat of the ulu resting against the cutting surface and the angled bevel up. Our other hand rests lightly on top of the fish. That hand placement matters. Through the ulu, you can feel the ribs. You can tell when the blade is gliding over them or catching in the wrong spot. That feedback tells you immediately when the angle needs adjusting.

[Video: Our Auntie Naŋa in her home in Noorvik cutting salmon like the pro she is, even with a slightly dull ulu. You can hear our mom (her big sister) telling her to sharpen her ulu.]

And it also tells you when the ulu is going dull. The motion starts to hesitate or snag. Instead of that clean sideways glide, the blade begins to chatter against the ribs. That’s the moment you stop and sharpen.

Ulu blades have a single bevel. One side is angled; the other side is flat. Because of that shape, the sharpening technique is specific:

• a few steady strokes on the beveled side

• one or two light passes on the flat side to clear burrs

• no heavy work on the flat side, or you lose the edge geometry

[Video: Corina’s son Tyler sharpens an ulu]

A sharp ulu gives control, whether you’re pressing down through frozen maqtaq or gliding across salmon ribs. A dull ulu forces pressure, and pressure is what leads to injuries and wasted food. Our dad, Caleb, repeated that lesson regularly and without softening: “A dull ulu will hurt you faster than a sharp one.”

[Video: A tiktok Cana made where she sharpens an ulu to cut maqtaq.]

[Video: Contrast this with cutting maqtaq when the blade is dull!]

Some of our sharpening stones have been in our families for decades. Cana uses her namesake’s stone and the little board she used to cut qupaks. Corina remembers aunties pausing mid-cut to sharpen, wiping the blade clean, and continuing on without fuss. They didn’t make sharpening a big moment. It was simply part of staying capable.

These steady adjustments — switching between force and delicacy, feeling ribs through the blade, sharpening often — are part of the real skill. They keep us safe. They honor the food we prepare. And they remind us that capability comes from tuning into the work right when it needs attention.

🏛️ From the Institutions: Resilience as Ongoing Adjustment, Not Individual Toughness

In their 2020 article Resilience Rhetorics in Science, Technology and Medicine, tech comm scholars Cagle and Walker describe how resilience is often treated as a personal trait, something people prove through endurance. Institutions reward those who push through dull tools, unclear systems, and unnecessary obstacles, and then call it “resilience.” This framing hides the real strain it puts on people and shifts responsibility away from the structures that caused the problem. Cagle and Walter state:

[The] decoupling of resilience from interdependency and relationality is also suspiciously resonant with the classic American bootstrap logic, which burdens individuals with their success or failure in the face of difficulty or oppression rather than critiquing circumstances that create oppressive situations in the first place. (p. 2)

This critique resonates with the subsistence knowledge we grew up with.

When something catches while we’re filleting salmon, we don’t muscle through it. We don’t pretend it’s fine. The blade tells us what’s happening. Through the ulu, we can feel the ribs and sense whether we are gliding over them or if the angle is off. We can feel when the edge hesitates or begins to chatter. That’s the moment to stop, sharpen, and correct the cut — not to push harder and hope for the best.

A dull blade doesn’t make you stronger. It makes you unsafe. And it puts pressure on your body to compensate for a problem the blade should have handled. That is exactly what Cagle and Walker are warning us about. When institutions celebrate people for pushing through bad systems, they hide the fact that the “dullness” of the system caused the harm in the first place.

During Cana’s time at Toolik Field Station, this distinction was clear. The strongest research teams weren’t the ones who prided themselves on powering through long days, malfunctioning equipment, or confusing logistics. They were the ones who noticed small snags early, checked in with each other, and made adjustments before the work went off track. They sharpened their processes as they went. They communicated. They corrected angles. They treated resilience as a shared practice, not an individual performance.

This is the relational resilience Cagle and Walker are calling for:

• resilience that listens to feedback,

• resilience that adjusts in real time,

• resilience that questions why the “blade” caught in the first place,

• and resilience that refuses to let individuals absorb the cost of structural dullness.

Just as we protect our hands by maintaining the edge of our ulus, we protect our teams and communities by maintaining the systems we work within. Respectful Arctic research requires this kind of attentiveness. It requires teams who sense when something is off, who pause instead of push, and who adjust the angle before real harm happens.

This is resilience rooted in relationship and skill, not in endurance. It is a practice, not a personality trait. And it is the only kind of resilience that keeps people safe in both subsistence and research work.

🧭 TYB Framework: This Week’s Practice

Know Who You Are: What tools or practices do you rely on daily? How do you know when they need attention?
Do the Next Right Thing, Even Imperfectly: When something starts to snag, pause. Sharpen. Adjust.
Invest in a Community of Support: Bring someone into your maintenance process — a tool, a workflow, a plan. Shared checks prevent harm.
Reinforce Hope with Grit: Keep tending to the small maintenance tasks. They add up to long-term stability. (Cana here: this is THE THING I’m trying hard to work on in basically every facet of my life!)

This Week’s Challenge: Sharpen Together

• Choose one tool, habit, or system that needs regular adjusting.

• Spend time tending to it before it becomes a problem.

• Talk with someone you trust about what “feeling the ribs” looks like in your work — the small signals that tell you when something is beginning to catch.

Remembering Forward

A good cut happens because the edge is sharp and the angle is right. Research is the same. Resilience grows through steady attention, timely corrections, and the awareness that keeps everyone safe for the long work ahead.