This is part five of Land Crafted: a five-part video series exploring entrepreneurship in northern Canada.

Bernice and Justin Clarke’s home, with its open kitchen, cozy wood stove and enormous TV, could just as well be in Saskatoon or Halifax were it not for the heaps of maktaaq on the kitchen island.

Friends and family are gathered around taking slices of bowhead and narwhal blubber with their crescent-shaped ulus, carving off bits of frozen caribou, and picking at a whole Arctic char. It’s mid-morning on a quiet Saturday in Iqaluit, and Bernice is in her element.

“We’re very much still tied to the food and the land here,” she says. “It’s very healing when we’re eating together. It brings us close together.”

Bernice has been on a journey the last several years as she’s rediscovering the power of Inuit traditions. A new chapter began when she started making body butter as a hobby and giving it away to her friends. Meeka Mike, a family friend, suggested that she incorporate bowhead whale oil into the products, and took it a step further by delivering a bin full of blubber to her front door.

“I think Justin was a bit hesitant at first,” Mike laughs. But she explained to the couple that there was a long tradition of Inuit using the oil to clean their skin, and that her own grandmother had used whale oil to make soap.

Word got out quickly, and when Uasau Soap arrived at craft fairs, their products would sell out almost immediately.

“I think she came back with about $450 profit,” Justin recalls, still impressed, of Bernice’s first craft fair.

Both Justin and Bernice were convinced. The company now sells products across multiple lines, many of which incorporate whale oil, and some of which use blubber from bearded seals and plants from the tundra around Iqaluit.

It’s a bold idea in a world where marine mammal products  — even those from limited Indigenous hunts — have been treated harshly by activists and governments. Yet Bernice says reactions to her using whale oil in her products has been mostly positive.

“I’ve even had vegans tell me it’s a beautiful story,” she says.

“I haven’t had anyone come to me that wasn’t happy with me using the [oil]. They’ve actually been really supportive. And if I do come across anyone that is against me using the oil, that’s their belief, and I’m not going to try and change their mind. I’ll explain my story. They have their beliefs and I have mine — and I’m very strong in mine.”

The business has grown, but it has also allowed Bernice to feel pride in her culture, one that was deliberately and systematically oppressed through colonization. She and Justin both have jobs outside of the soap-making, but are working on building their business so that it can grow and spread to support other families.

“It’s accidentally given me so much vision and strength, and a drive to really get deeper into my culture,” she says.

“And that’s through —” she smiles, and tilts her head, “blubber!”

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This is part four of Land Crafted: a five-part video series exploring entrepreneurship in northern Canada.

Smoke swirls up from the abalone shell in Amanda Baton’s hand. It hangs in the sunlit living room as she walks through the space, purifying it with the burning sage. The ritual aspect of smudging, as much as any properties of the smoke, has helped her stay sober following years of struggling with addiction — but today, an addictions counsellor herself, she can’t practice smudging in her Yellowknife, N.W.T., office.

“We’re not allowed to have anything that can smoke, that has that scent,” she says. “Some people think it’s too overwhelming; they have a sensitivity to it.”

On the other side of Great Slave Lake, in Hay River, Misty Ireland has been working on a solution to that problem for years. Jumping from hotel to hotel, hospital to hospital as her brother and father fell ill, Ireland was frustrated at her inability to smudge in those spaces. “No smoking” signs are everywhere today, and the rule extends to sage and other plants burned for ceremonies.

She started applying her knowledge of essential oils to producing sprays that could mimic some of the scents she couldn’t produce the traditional way.

“Based on stories that elders have shared with me, I started to develop some sprays that we could use when we can’t burn a smudge,” she says.

Misty Ireland’s business, Dene Roots, is taking off — bringing Dene tradition with it. Photo: Jimmy Thomson

The hobby soon became a business, Dene Roots, with the blessing of elders in her community. That support was essential to Ireland, who is sensitive to the tradition of not selling medicines.

That practice has become common, especially through platforms such as Etsy, where stores with names like “ModernVoodooShop” with no Indigenous ownership sell products associated with Indigenous traditional medicine like bundles of sage, cedar and sweetgrass. Ireland is a rare instance of an Indigenous person participating in that economy, in part because of the stigma around commerce.

Her mother, Margaret Ireland, dismisses outright the notion that Indigenous people have not traditionally participated in trade, pointing to the extensive trade routes throughout North America, and to the custom of offering gifts to healers.

“I know in the past these things have to be given, but it’s not just totally given,” she says. “You do need to pay that person something. And it’s usually tobacco or whatever you have on hand at the time.”

Ireland’s products have evolved beyond smudging spray into other essential-oil based scents intended to re-create the effect of being outside or to elicit particular moods.

Business is brisk. Driving across the frozen Hay River to the K’atl’odeeche First Nation reserve, Ireland is brimming with excitement. In the backseat of her car are 100 bottles of “all spruced up” spray, a scent she designed to replicate time spent outdoors or at a cabin, chopping wood. It’s her biggest order yet.

“We live in a really fast-paced society, and a lot of people live in busy bustling communities, towns, cities full of cement and they don’t get to live amongst the wild trees,” she says.

She believes helping people reconnect to their surroundings and to each other could start with something as simple as a scent.

“And it’s just the beginning.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This is part three of Land Crafted: a five-part video series exploring entrepreneurship in northern Canada.

Tania Larsson’s jewelry has become as much a must-have among fashion-conscious Yellowknifers as mukluks. But it’s gone far, far beyond her small northern city.

Her work has adorned Tanya Tagaq on the cover of Exclaim! Magazine. Her string of dentalium shells exhorting the audience to “Protect the caribou” was featured on the cover of Nation magazine.

And in April, she landed in the pages of British Vogue among a list of “Indigenous beaders who are modernizing their craft.”

Her handmade jewelry is a stunning blend of innovative design and traditional materials. Musk ox horn, rough and bland, is cut and polished into gemstone-like brilliance. Dentalium shells, once traded throughout North America as currency, form long strings that clack and clatter on necklaces and earrings. Tufts of caribou fur are turned into velvet on patches of moose hide Larsson tanned herself. Vintage hand-cut beads, plucked from a Renaissance-era Venetian back room, adorn it all. Diamonds, gold and silver take a backseat to these fabulous materials of Gwich’in tradition.

It’s not by mistake that Larsson has put her culture front and centre among such rarefied company.

“What I like to do is really research Gwich’in adornments — through museum collections, through talking with elders or knowledge-holders — and create pieces that are rooted in what we used to wear and the importance that we carried with adornments,” she says.

Larsson brings a professional approach to her work, having studied at the Institute of American Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and completed an internship at the Smithsonian Institute.

Tania Larsson sorts through caribou hair tuft jewelry in progress in her studio in Yellowknife. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

The result of that work is not cheap. And that’s by design.

“Whenever I would do markets and art fairs… I would see people nickel-and-diming elders and people who have been doing this work for, you know, 50 years, and they’re masters in their art practice,” she laments.

Larsson is not the only person to notice the way the public interacts with Indigenous artists. Mandee McDonald, managing director of Dene advocacy group Dene Nahjo, has seen the same trend.

“When you walk into an art gallery anywhere, you don’t walk into the art gallery and [say], ‘oh, this painting is $1,000; I’ll give you $500 for it!’” she says.

“But when you’re buying art off of an artist, and they might be in a little bit more of a vulnerable position in terms of their selling ability… It seems like some people think that is a more appropriate setting to try and haggle a little bit.”

The disparity had a lasting impact on Larsson.

“Seeing people trying to barter was very, very poignant for me. It really changed the way I saw pricing,” she says. “It’s not because someone is brown that their artwork should be less valued.” 

That moment changed the way she approaches pricing in her own work. She raised her prices and committed to never lowering them.

The strategy has proven effective. Larsson’s work is growing in popularity — she says keeping up with demand is her biggest challenge — while her prices rise.

“It’s amazing for me because as I’m raising my prices, my clients that were there from the start are still buying my pieces even though they see that evolution.”

This series was made possible with the support of EntrepreNorth; however, the organization did not have editorial input into the videos or articles published on The Narwhal.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This is part two of Land Crafted: a five-part video series exploring entrepreneurship in northern Canada.

The signposts on the road to Mayo, Yukon, have a little icon of a mine cart on them. The cart is overflowing with ore intended to represent silver — after all, the highway, 22A, is known as the Silver Trail. That name hearkens back to the region’s history, steeped in the silver and gold mines that brought prosperity to the region in the late 19th century.

Back then, mining was the only game in town for Keno, now a museum-like ghost town, and Mayo to the south. Today that history is repeating itself with the opening of the Victoria Gold project between the two tiny towns.

That renewed gold rush is creating a flurry of activity as new companies form, people snap up land and there’s a job for everyone. That means higher prices and higher salaries, so for those in any business but mining, the upswing starts to look like a liability. It is putting new strain on some facets of the economy even while it helps others.

“I grew up with entrepreneurship around me,” says Joella Hogan, a member of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun First Nation in Mayo. With her father and brother both owning businesses, Joella set out to have a business of her own.

“In my head I always knew that I would have a side business eventually.”

Joella Hogan is the owner of the Yukon Soap Company. Photo: Eric Pinkerton / EntrepreNorth

But she wanted to stay in Mayo, in her traditional territory.

Hogan bought Yukon Soaps, an established local brand, as a way to explore her entrepreneurial drive without having to leave her community.

“When the opportunity came up to buy this small soap-making business, I really saw it as an opportunity to re-connect our people to the land,” she says.

The shelves overflowing with curing soap in her basement are a testament to how successful she has been in that venture. With support from the community, including young people willing to help her harvest local plants and package the soap, she is building a small business in a town dominated by the vagaries of a much larger one.

As is the case for most of Mayo’s businesses, the mine is among Joella’s customers, regularly ordering soap from her.

The business has grown enough that, recently, Hogan felt it was time to move it into its own location in the heart of Mayo.

“I want to be a bigger part of the community; I want a presence downtown,” she says.

But the mine has set off a buying spree downtown. Speculators are holding on to prime real estate in the run-down town, hoping for big returns as the mine is built.

“If you drive downtown Mayo, there’s a lot of empty lots and vacant old buildings,” she says. It’s an understatement: row upon row of abandoned buildings lean precipitously on streets that once teemed with the last generation of gold miners. Up the highway, in Keno, much of the town has become a living museum — a testament to the kind of prosperity a gold rush brings, the kind that’s here one day and gone the next.

After weeks of hunting, Hogan happened upon a good candidate among the high-priced lots. She jumped on it, and has begun planning for the construction. There, too, she will face challenges: many skilled tradespeople in the area have been hired by the mine, meaning contractors are hard to come by. Nevertheless, she is pressing on with her vision.

“I want it to be Mayo’s soap business,” she says.

This series was made possible with the support of EntrepreNorth; however, the organization did not have editorial input into the videos or articles published on The Narwhal.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This is part one of Land Crafted: a five-part video series exploring entrepreneurship in northern Canada.

Prominently displayed on the fridge in Nooks Lindell and Emma Kreuger’s kitchen in Arviat, Nunavut, is a hand-drawn poster covered in stickers. It reads “NIPI” followed by the equivalent Inuktitut syllabics, ᓂᐱ. Nipi is their son’s name — and Kreuger and Lindell want him to grow up knowing where he comes from.

It’s a childhood Nooks didn’t have a chance to have himself.

“When I moved to Ottawa I was only seven, so it was a pretty major change,” Lindell recalls. He spent the rest of his childhood there, trying his best to blend in.

“I’m not sure why it was, but it seemed like it wasn’t cool to be Inuk,” he says. “You don’t really see Inuit on TV. … You just want to speak in English and play sports.”

When Nooks returned to the North, it was as a fully assimilated southerner. His Inuktitut was gone, and the essential experiences of an Inuit childhood — learning to hunt, drive a snowmobile, tie a qammutik — had passed him by. He had developed a dependency on alcohol and drugs.

Art, he says, corrected his course.

Hanging out with his brother in his Iqaluit shack one day, Nooks made his first ulu, a traditional Inuit woman’s knife.

“It was so ugly,” he laughs. And it took three days. But he got better. And gradually, art became a way to replace the substances that were driving a wedge between him and his culture.

“When I got sober, we decided to start Hinaani,” he says. Hinaani Design became his outlet, a way to express, explore and celebrate his Inuit identity through art. The shirts, hats, leggings, jewelry, bags and other products all reflect an aspect of being Inuit — from simple words and sayings to representations of traditional Inuit tattoos.

There are barriers to growing the business out of a small hamlet like Arviat, on the western edge of Hudson Bay. The business is based on the internet: it’s an online store and orders are shipped directly from the manufacturer to the customer. But that means a lot of bandwidth, for uploading images, dealing with customers and keeping up with social media. Internet access in Nunavut is some of the most expensive and slowest service in the world, so operating a web-based business is naturally a challenge.

Then there’s the limited market. There are only around 65,000 Inuit in Canada, and incomes among Inuit are significantly lower than the Canadian average — and that’s not even accounting for the high cost of living. But Nooks, Emma and their business partners Paula Ikuutaq Rumbolt and Lori Tagoona are determined to keep their products accessible.

“It has to be affordable because a lot of Inuit don’t make very much money,” Nooks explains. “We don’t have a lot of disposable income.”

Inuit have embraced the brand. The first item to be recognized across the North, and one that’s proudly displayed today on the bodies of Inuit everywhere, was a simple design.

In block letters, it proudly proclaims, “INUK.”

This series was made possible with the support of EntrepreNorth; however, the organization did not have editorial input into the videos or articles published on The Narwhal.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Canada’s North can be a difficult place to live, and a much harder place to make a living as a business owner.

The odds are stacked against small businesses here: costs are high beyond anything most Canadians can imagine, for everything from rent, food and heat to internet and basic supplies. Skilled labour is snapped up by lucrative government and mining jobs. Venture capital is absent. Markets are tiny, so even a great, affordable product may have a hard time finding its audience.

It’s no wonder that most northerners choose to work for someone else.

Small businesses account for a smaller share of the economy in the territories than anywhere else in the country, according to Industry Canada. The same agency found that there are just 61 exporters of goods — mines, mostly — throughout all three territories.

Yet this year I have had the privilege of meeting an ambitious cohort of Indigenous business owners who are beating those odds.

It’s been eight months since I filmed the first interviews that would become the basis for the videos that will be released starting this week. It was a chilly September afternoon at a retreat centre outside Yellowknife. Since that day, these videos have taken me to all three territories, with visits to Whitehorse, Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet, Yellowknife, Mayo, Keno, Hay River and Arviat.

The project has been a golden ticket into more kitchens than I can count (to be treated to musk ox lasagna, moose sausage, narwhal soup, raw beluga and caribou, and some spectacular coffee) and, more importantly, into the minds and workshops of these entrepreneurs.

The stories of how their businesses began are often challenging in the ways that many stories of modern Indigenous life are challenging. There are stories of rediscovering, reasserting and protecting identity; of struggling with modernity, history and tradition; of slow internet and fast changes; of standing up to colonial attitudes about art and craft.

Reporter Jimmy Thomson in the field in Arviat, Nunavut.

These businesses are making soap, jewelry, scents, clothing and more, using materials and inspiration from the land. That in turn is reinforcing their appreciation for the unique environments of northern Canada. Whether it’s bowhead whale oil in a body butter from Uasau Soap, a caribou antler earring from Hinaani Design, beadwork embedded in a soap bar from Yukon Soaps, spruce oil in a Dene Roots spray or musk ox horn brought front and centre on a piece from Tania Larsson, these businesses are elevating northern materials to products that celebrate the best of their environment.

And now, they have help. This series came about because these entrepreneurs have been part of a program called EntrepreNorth, which is supporting them in ways not often available to northern businesses. The business owners have access to mentors, workshops, networking and other resources designed to lessen some of the obstacles they face in starting a business in such a harsh environment.

EntrepreNorth invited The Narwhal to come along for the ride, and so I packed my bags and spent much of the long northern winter on the road.

We hope you’ll come along as well.

This series was made possible with the support of EntrepreNorth; however, the organization did not have editorial input into the videos or articles published on The Narwhal.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.