#TheYearofBelief | #TYBSlow

Preparing the Iŋaluaq — Slow, Repetitive, Exacting Work

🌿 From the Land: Preparing the Iŋaluaq — Seal Intestine

Preparing ugruk iŋaluat (intestines) is not fast work.
It’s slow.
Repetitive.
Exacting.

And it’s also deeply important.

Recently, Qaluraq was teaching Cana’s son Wells how to prepare the iŋaluaq—guiding him through one of the most precise and physically involved parts of ugruk season.

Wells was helping—but he was also learning.

At one point, overwhelmed by the sliminess, the smell, and the wormy contents of the intestines, he blurted out:
“This is disgusting.”

Cana gently but firmly corrected him:
“No, it’s just what it is.”

Because the truth is, cleaning seal intestines means removing worms, bile, and partially digested food.
It’s not glamorous.
It can feel a little weird if you haven’t done it before.

Corina says as she remembers the first and last time she was saukataq’d (scolded) for saying “ewww”:

Your first instinct might be to think ‘it’s gross,’ but you should never ever say it. Instead you learn to see it for what it is, an amazing source of nourishment for body and soul.

This work is part of honoring the animal.
It’s part of preparing food in a way that’s safe, delicious, and respectful.

And it’s a far cry from the sanitized experience of buying sausage in natural casings at the store.
Those processes are hidden—sanitized and packaged until the origin of the food is unrecognizable.

Here’s a 7-minute video of Qaluraq showing how to clean iŋaluaq:

Working with country food, preparing it yourself, means getting your hands dirty.
It means confronting life and death.
It means understanding your place in the cycle—not above it, but a natural part of it.

It’s a reminder that ‘behind-the-scenes’ preparation doesn’t always look clean.
Sometimes it looks like effort.
Sometimes it looks like mess.
But when done right, it becomes nourishment.

Not just for the body, but for the spirit.

🏛️ From the Institutions: Academic Habits and the Work of Survival

In her 1990 essay Postmodern Blackness, bell hooks offers a challenge to scholars working within academic institutions:

Many of us are struggling to find new strategies of resistance. We must engage decolonization as a critical practice if we are to have meaningful chances of survival even as we must simultaneously cope with the loss of political grounding which made radical activism more possible. (hooks, 1990)

This week’s TYB post centers on a practice—cleaning iŋaluaq—that demands patience, endurance, and a willingness to do the unglamorous labor of survival. It’s not flashy. It’s not easy. And it’s not optional for many ugruk-hunting families.

Neither is the work of radical relational scholarship.

hooks reminds us that our habits of scholarship should not be separate from our relationships with our communities.

Since I have not broken the ties that bind me to [my] community, I have seen that knowledge, especially that which enhances daily life and strengthens our capacity to survive, can be shared. (hooks, 1990)

Corina often puts it this way when talking to researchers interested in the Arctic:

How many books have you read and how many hours/days/weeks/months/years have you spent learning about the things that will make you successful in the work you do…now, how much time have you spent learning who we are as a People, about our culture and communication styles? How much time have you spent building a trust relationship with us?  (Something like that lol )

Here’s a 35-second video of Qaluraq boiling the iŋaluat:

Academic knowledge that isn’t grounded in time, presence, and deep commitment isn’t just incomplete—it can be harmful.

What hooks calls for is not just intellectual reflection, but habits of being that make research useful and meaningful for the people whose lives are so often studied and so rarely respected.

Cleaning iŋaluat is a habit of being.
It’s not theoretical.
It’s practical survival.
And it’s also cultural continuity.

It’s not fast. It’s not clean.
But it’s necessary.

And it’s a model for what equitable Arctic research should be:
Slow, repetitive, exacting, and committed.

🧭 TYB Framework: This Week’s Practice

This week, we focus on:

Know Who You Are
Where do your ideas of “clean” or “professional” prevent you from engaging the full mess of your work or community?

Hope Reinforced by Grit
Where are you being invited to stay longer in the work—even after a good ‘saukataq’ – to scrub a little harder, to stay a little messier?

Invest in a Community of Support
Who’s taught you to do the slow, repetitive, uncelebrated work—and how are you carrying their lessons forward?

✅ This Week’s Challenge: Stay With the Process

Think of a task or responsibility you normally rush through—or avoid because it feels too tedious.

Pause.
Commit to one step of that work.
Do it slowly. With care. With gratitude.

Then ask yourself:

• What am I learning about care?
• What am I learning about myself?
• What am I learning about the world I want to help create?

If it feels right, share using:
#TheYearofBelief | #TYBSlow
“Here’s the part of the process I usually rush through—but this week, I stayed with it.”

Post your ideas for first steps in comments, on our EAR Facebook Group, ARCUS’s Connect the Arctic portal, or simply talk to someone who’s taught you how to do this kind of work.

Remembering Forward

The work of cleaning intestines—like the work of equitable research—is not fast.

But it is exacting.

And it deserves our care and respect. <3

It reminds us that survival isn’t about spectacle—it’s about sustained attention to the things that matter.
It’s about sharing knowledge, not just publishing it. (<<Nice Dr. Bun!!)
It’s about reinforcing trust—not just citing it.

When we commit to this kind of slow, repetitive, exacting work, we create space for belief to take root.

And we honor the people, practices, and principles that have sustained us all along.