Masak (1930-2013), whose English name was Alice French, was born to Alaskan parents on Baillie Island. Her mother Sanggiak died of tuberculosis when she was young, and she and her brother Ayounik were sent to residential school in Aklavik. She recounts her time in residential school, when she had few opportunities to return home, in her book My Name is Masak. When she eventually returned to live with her father Anisalouk, a trapper, she had to relearn Inuvialuit skills and knowledge from her grandmother. Her second book, The Restless Nomad (1992), recounts her process of reconnecting with her family and traditions after residential school, her life as a wife and mother, and meeting her second husband.
In the opening section of My Name is Masak, she talks about her birth on Baillie Island and the way babies were welcomed at that time.
My name is Masak. I was born in June 1930, on Baillie Island in the Northwest Territories. Baillie Island was quite a big settlement at one time, but now it has washed away into the Beaufort Sea. Not the whole island is gone – just the buildings that once stood on the sandy point: the trading post, the Roman Catholic and Anglican missions, the shack where the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were, and the [Inuvialuit] houses.
My father, Anisalouk, was born and raised in the Unalakeet, Alaska. His father was a Laplander; he spoke both English and [Inuvialuktun] to his family at home, so by the time my father was old enough for school he knew quite a bit of English. School was compulsory in Unalakeet when he was growing up. He went as far as Grade 10.
In 1923 my father came to Herschel Island on the Nigalik, the Canalaskan Trading Company ship. From Herschel he went to Baillie Island to work as an interpreter for the police. He added to his wages by doing a bit of trapping.
My mother, Sanggiak, was also an Alaskan [Inupiat]. She was from the Anaktuvik Pass area. After their marriage my parents settled on Baillie Island. They were known to the white people as Charles and Lily Smith.
At the time I was born, there were many taboos for pregnant women. My mother would be careful how she dressed during this time. If she put something on backwards she might have a backward child. If she put something on inside out, the baby would be born with a skin problem. She did not play string games or make cat’s cradles; this would cause her baby to have a cord wrapped around its neck which might strangle it at birth. When she went to bed she always pointed her feet towards the doorway so the baby would know its correct way into the world and not come feet first.
There was no hospital on Baillie Island, so my mother had me at home with an [Inuvialuk] midwife to help her. As her time approached she got things ready. She had a fresh caribou skin to kneel on, and scissors and thread for cutting and tying the cord. She did not make clothing and diapers until her baby was born. This would have made her seem too sure of having a live birth. It would have been tempting fate to decree otherwise.
After I was born by mother was careful not to look into a mirror while she was holding me. She believed, like the other women in the village, that a baby had special sight and that it might see things that a grown-up could not see. If I had seen my reflection in the mirror as a baby I might have had a distorted view of myself, or of my mother who held me.
On the day that my mother’s labour pains started, she gathered together the things that she would need and placed them under the bed. Then she sent my father out for the midwife. If there were other men or children in the house, she sent them away to visit. Only the women stayed with her. She went about doing her housework as usual, preparing food for the visitors who would be coming to congratulate her and my father afterwards. While my mother and the women waited they drank tea and talked about everything going on in the village. They said nothing about the coming child. It was taboo to speak about the arrival of the baby.
When it was time for the baby to be born, my mother placed the skin on the floor and knelt on it. The midwife knelt behind her and held her around the middle to support her while she pushed the baby into the world. When I was born, the midwife caught me and told my mother that I was a girl. I am sure she hoped I would be a boy. Boys were much preferred over girls. Boys became hunters and provided food for the family. They were also trappers. There was not much a girl could do. She was of little value until she married and brought home a hunter and trapper. And while she was growing up, she had to be fed and taught how to sew and cook so that she could bring a good man into the family.
In my great-grandmother’s time, girls were sometimes left behind to die when they were born. This happened to my great-grandmother. Times were bad and her parents were travelling. They decided that they could not keep her so they put her down on the ground. As they turned to leave, she cried out “Mama,” so they picked her up and kept her.
After I was born one of the women went out to tell my father that he had a baby girl. Then he and the other men came in to eat. My mother was already up and working. The other women helped her to spread an oilcloth on the floor and set it with plates and knives and food. Then they all sat on the floor and helped themselves to food and talked about naming me.
At last my parents decided to call me Masak after my father’s mother. My Christian name was to be Alice after my mother’s mother. During the meal the virtues of both my namesakes were discussed. If I lived up to my namesakes I would make up for being a girl. One of the women took my hands and rubbed them to make sure that I would be a good seamstress. Another went over my eyes so that I would be observant. Still another chewed some food and put it into my mouth so that I would live a long life. The ritual was performed for all children.
For the boy babies there was a different ritual that the men performed. It was much more elaborate. The day after a boy baby was born there was a feast to celebrate his birth. If the father was a good hunter and his position in the social life of the camps was good, the feast would bring in visitors from all over the land. The menu for the feast would include caribou tongue, geese and ducks, and [Inuit] ice cream – a delicacy made from bone marrow. These things would be eaten besides the regular fare – rabbits, ptarmigan, caribou and whale. For the birth of a girl a meal was enough.