High Arctic Relocatees Outreach to Qaanaaq, Greenland November 6-11, 2010 (part 2)

The Canadian government's official apology on August 18, 2010, to the 1953 High Arctic relocatees who were relocated to Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord, Nunavut, (which have become Canada's two most northern communities) was the catalyst in prompting Canada Awakening Ministries to facilitate a Charter flight with Kenn Borek Airlines to reconnect the Canadian relocatees with the Greenlandic Polar Inuit who were also significantly affected and impacted by that policy.

Kenn Borek Airlines has a scheduled flight every Thursday and Saturday from Resolute Bay to Grise Fiord, return. Therefore, it was decided to bring a team that included Vae Eli and Lima Nanai from Samoa in the South Pacific Islands along with Roger Armbruster from Niverville, Manitoba, through Resolute Bay on a day when they could connect with Allie and Susan Salluviniq and Louisa Gillespie in Resolute. They would all then take a scheduled flight from Resolute to Grise Fiord, and from there join Larry and Annie Audlaluk from where they would charter a flight with Kenn Borek Air from Grise Fiord, Nunavut, to Qaanaaq, Greenland.

So arrangements were made for six people to fly from Resolute Bay to Grise Fiord on Saturday, November 6, on a scheduled flight and from there on to Qaanaaq with eight people on a chartered flight, with the return flight from Qaanaaq to Grise Fiord and Resolute Bay taking place on Thursday, November 11.

Qaanaaq, Greenland, is home to some 650 people, some from Denmark, but they are mostly the descendants of the original peoples of the land, which includes the Polar Inuit, but also some who have family connections in Pond Inlet, the descendants of those who migrated from Pond Inlet to north-western Greenland in the mid-1800s.

This is the local symbol of the community of Qaanaaq as seen on the outside of the local Municipal Office building.

This is the inside of the State Lutheran Church in Qaanaaq, where services are held at 10:00 a.m. on every Sunday.

There is also in Qaanaaq a small house church that is presently pastored by Tukummeq and Arqiunguaq Qaerngaaq, who were both led into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ by Samson and Pauline Larson (Greenlandic believers from Central West Greenland) in November of 2005. This couple, along with the 15-25 believers who meet in their house, have been mentored by ministries who teach on "healing the pain of the heart" workshops, such as YWAM minister Errol Martens, and also by a pastor from a local church in Nuuk, Greenland, John Ostergaard Nielsen.

Tukummeq (on the left) declares: "We used to be alcoholics...Now it is like a light has come on. Jesus has opened our eyes. The Holy Spirit has come into our lives." Tukummeq teaches school in Qaanaaq, and Arqiunuaq is a full-time hunter. He has brought in more seals, walruses, polar bears and foxes than he can remember.

Their family is part of the famous Polar Inuit hunters, and they still hunt narwhales with harpoon and kayak. Their nuclear family is pictured here, from left to right, Arqiunuaq, their son Erik, Tukummeq, and their daughter Marie.

So when the Kenn Borek Air Charter carrying the High Arctic relocatees from Resolute and Grise Fiord landed at the Qaanaaq Airport on Saturday, November 6, 2010, some 40 of the community's residents were standing outside, waving enthusiastically, even before the passengers could get off the plane. Many of them had walked the 3-4 miles from Qaanaaq to the Airport to warmly welcome the guests. Among those at the Airport were Arqiunguaq and Tukummeq.

The Polar Inuit have a proud heritage, and it is obvious why they will want very much to preserve and redeem what is precious and valuable in their culture, traditional clothing, and way of life.

This includes redeeming the Greenlandic Inuit Drum, which is being restored to its original purpose to glorify God!

This is as light as it gets in Qaanaaq in early November, even at high noon. They will not see the sun again until next February 17.

Amazingly, these Inuit communities (Qaanaaq, Grise Fiord and Resolute) still speak basically the same language, and can understand each other quite well without a translator. Here, right on the first evening of November 6, 2010, Larry Audlaluk from Grise Fiord, who was three years of age at the time of the High Arctic Relocation, is apologizing from his heart to the Polar Inuit for the role that his family had played in the policy that he knew had caused pain to them as well when they were pushed away from their traditional hunting and fishing areas on Ellesmere Island.

This is the Greenlandic head of the Canada Committee, responding to Larry Audlaluk on the evening of November 6. The Canada Committee is the group that exclusively looks after any exchanges between Qaanaaq Polar Inuit, and Inuit from Grise Fiord/Resolute Bay/Pond Inlet in Canada.

On Sunday, Monday and Tuesday evenings, November 7, 8 and 9, the meetings were led by the house church group at the local community centre. Larry Audlaluk reported with thanksgiving, "The whole events went beyond my expectations. I had no idea what was planned prior to the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday meetings. I have never seen the Holy Spirit work the way He did each night! I have been involved in exchanges every year from 1973 to 1990." Yet he had never seen anything like this!

A full house in the local community centre came out for each of those three nights, in which there was participation with freedom from both Canadians, Greenlanders, and South Pacific Islanders in testimony, in song and in dance unto the Lord!

By the Monday night of November 8, the elders from the Polar Inuit in Qaanaaq began to step forward to release forgiveness to those Canadian Inuit who had been instruments in pushing them and their ancestors out of Ellesmere Island. Prayer for healing and restoration followed in a spirit of mutual humility, repentance, reconciliation and restoration of relationship.

Each and every one of the High Arctic Relocatees hugged and spoke directly to each of the Polar Inuit elders, in response to their forgiveness. Love was flowing like a river that night, and hearts that had been hardened by a sense of rejection and abandonment began to soften, and to vibrate once more.

Later that night, this picture was taken of some of the Polar Inuit elders with the Canadian Inuit from the High Arctic, after their reconciliation. There to witness and to bless this process from the South Pacific Islands was Vae Eli, a chief from Samoa, who is in the back row on the right, and who leads Island Breeze Canada along with Lima Nanai.

With the blessing of the elders, what a joy it was to see the next generation of Polar Inuit youth begin to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The touch of God's Presence is at the core of what is needed to heal these wounded and traumatized lives, many of whom have been abused and mistreated, but who are opening their hearts now to the heavenly Father to worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

During the meetings, this young man boldly and openly shared his testimony about how God had delivered him from a life of gangs, drugs and violence. Nobody could refute the wisdom and spirit by which he spoke, as everybody in town knew him, and could not argue with the testimony of a changed and a transformed life!

On Wednesday evening of November 9, Tukummeq read this letter from a Qaanaaq resident to the Canadian Inuit on behalf of the people gathered: "Thank you for coming to our community, a community that is distant from other communities. Thank you for showing us peace, something that makes us rest. You brought something great to us, while you are here."
As Louisa Gillspie later wrote, "It was such a surreal trip with the Lord leading us all of the way... Larry had this dream of going to apologize to the elders in Qaanaaq before more will pass away, and Larry himself will be too old to do this. It was an honor to be a part of this team, as my dad was a regular connector with the hunters of northern Greenland."

In the above picture, Louisa can be seen with her father in the early days just before the relocation, she on the far left (at 1 1/2 years), and her father on the far right.

Louisa continued, "After the apology, there were about 10-11 elders who responded, and accepted the apology, and forgave us. I sensed my dad was one of the 'cloud of witnesses' in great joy. I 'saw' him in a sealskin parka, and snow pants and kamiks. It was such a joyous occasion!!!! Thank you so much for your prayers."

Louisa is on the far right of this picture, with some of the Greenlandic Inuit elders who had just released forgiveness.

Louisa Gillespie added, "I also have a new spiritual brother in Vae Eli, a Samoan warrior. What a love of the Father he carries! He came to breathe in our garden, and connect with the Greenlanders."

This was a reference to the scripture in Song of Solomon 4:16, "Awake, O north wind! And come O south! Blow upon my garden, that its fragrance may flow out."

On this picture, Vae Eli is in between Louisa's brother Allie and his wife Susan Salluviniq, with Lima Nanai, another Island Breezer, on the left.

Louisa Gillespie went on to say, "I connected with many youth, as they were drawn to the anointing that the Lord gave me to drum and to throat sing. I connected with a young lady who taught herself to throat sing, and a young man who beatboxed (a form of verbal percussion) as I throat sang. It was such a breakthrough for their sound to come out. The last night there was a man who looked at the drum, and said he probably could make one!!! Thank God for the gifts that we had to communicate with."

The last evening of Wednesday, November 10, was again organized by the Canada Committee, and this time it was held in the large school gymnasium. The evening opened up with an excellent rendition by the Greenlandic choir under a Greenlandic flag.

We were told that more people came out to this than even come to the community Christmas events in Qaanaaq.

The evening was a time of mixing and mingling, interacting and engaging with one another from both a churched, and a non-churched background. It was a time of connecting on different levels--spiritually, socially and culturally. This picture shows an example of one part of the evening where the people played games. Activities like this really caused the walls to come down, and for people to get to know one another without their defence mechanisms being up.

The whole evening went from around 7:00 p.m. until midnight, and included a fireworks display outdoors. Near the end of the evening, Larry Audlaluk started giving gifts of appreciation and pictures to the elders in the community, renewing old memories and making new ones.

He presented a plaque to commemorate the restoration of relationships to Jens Danielson who has much influence in government matters in the whole region. Jens responded with a moving tribute to Larry, and to the High Arctic relocatees. The plaque read:

During the course of the evening, among other gospel numbers, Larry and Annie Audlaluk sang Larry's testimony song that he wrote himself of how God delivered him from a life of alcoholism. Louisa Gillespie is accompanying them on the Canadian Inuit drum. Every time that the chorus was sung, his "thank you" to Jesus was repeated at least four times!

When the time came for the Kenn Borek Charter to fly back into Qaanaaq to pick up the team, this dear lady from Sioraupaluk, a small nonincorporated settlement of some 60 people that is about 40 miles further north from Qaanaaq, showed up to thank us for coming. We were given to understand that she had come all that distance just for this occasion. This was significant, because some of the Greenlandic Polar Inuit from Sioraupaluk were adversely affected and impacted by the High Arctic Relocation policy as well.

Some 40 people from Qaanaaq went all the way to the Airport to bid farewell, many of them again walking the 3-4 miles. The plane did not take off until around 3:30 p.m., and by that time of day, it was completely dark, but it was a touching scene for the passengers to look out of the window, into the dark, to find that the Qaanaaq residents had lined up along the fence. What they saw was a number of people synchronized in waving their flashlights in circular motion, shining a light into the darkness. Several of us on the aircraft had flashlights that we also rotated in circular motion on the window, deeply feeling a heart connection that no manmade boundary can ever sever.

Since returning home to Grise Fiord from Qaanaaq on November 11, 2010, Larry Audlaluk has written, "Amen! Praise the Lord! How can I ever repay you and your church for the help that you and the two brothers from the South Pacific have given?"

We need to make clear that this story is not in any way a political statement to apply political pressure to the nation-states to harass them to change their political boundaries. This outreach was spiritual, not political. The need is for all of us, including the rulers of the earth, to humble ourselves under the supremacy of God, and to acknowledge the spiritual authority that still exists within the ancient boundaries of nations (ethnos) (who share a common language and culture) to bring reconciliation to their people, and healing to their ancient homeland.

Isaiah 40:22a declares, "It is He who sits (enthroned) above the circle of the earth." I like to think of that "circle" as the Arctic Circle, above which God sits enthroned above the earth, from where He is pouring out of His Spirit on the circumpolar regions, and from where it will come down to bless other nations and regions of the earth as well.

YWAM Founder Loren Cunningham and a British intercessor by the name of Lee Ann Thompson have had visions of a "ring of fire" around the Arctic Circle.

However we interpret that, we do know that the word of God has now gone from Jerusalem "to the ends of the earth," right into High Arctic communities like Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Island...

...and to Grise Fiord on Ellesmere Island, the most northern community in Canada...

...and to Qaanaaq, Greenland, the second most northern community in the world!

We also know that in the biblical world, and even scientifically, there is a continuum between "space" and "time." They are connected. The phrase "the ends of the earth" is also connected to "the end of time." The word "end" can refer to "the final part of a period of time," and it can also refer to "the place that is furthest away from the beginning of something"

Could it be that God has a special plan and purpose for the people living at the ends of the earth at the end of time?

Canadian High Arctic Relocatees such as Larry Audlaluk and Allie Salluviniq have already travelled from the "ends of the earth" back to Jerusalem to express their appreciation that the message that began in Jerusalem has reached them. Here, at the cradle of the great civilizations of the last 2,000 years, in the heart of the MIDDLE East, where East meets West, where the heart and the mind connect, where the objective and the subjective intersect, and where the spiritual and the natural and come together into oneness, Larry and Allie are at the Western Wall to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and for the peace and the healing of all nations (ethnos), right to the furthest corners of the earth.

Here, Larry Audlaluk is pointing out to a Jewish audience in Israel where he lives at the ends of the earth, as one who has also known rejection, abandonment and exile, but who also now has a story of healing and redemption, and a testimony of how God can restore the past, and give a meaning to the present, and a hope for the future. He can reverse any curse into a blessing.

"All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before You. For the Kingdom is the LORD's, and He rules over the nations" (Psalm 22:27, 28).

"Arise, O God, judge the earth; for You shall inherit all nations" (Psalm 82:8).

This was the sun at 1:00 p.m. on Friday, November 5, 2010, taken just before the journey to Qaanaaq, Greenland on November 6. To me it speaks of the dawn of a new day in the Canadian High Arctic from where the light of God's glory (that reveals the interior world of the heart) is now shining over into northern Greenland, even during the time of year when it is physically dark.

To the Canadian and Greenlandic Inuit of the North, the word of the Lord is, "Arise, shine, for your Light has come, and the glory of God rises upon you" (Isaiah 60:1).

This is an actual photograph of a sunrise taken at Grise Fiord, Nunavut. It reminds me of the promise in Malachi 4:2, "Unto you who revere My Name, the Sun of Righteousness will arise with healing in His wings." Can you see the Son arising?