Hello, thank you for listening to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Maria Margarones, taking you back to September 1964, when a 12-year-old Inuit boy was taken

from his home and his family in Nunavik, Northern Quebec, to go to school in Canada's capital, Ottawa.

Adami Iernikayak Khalingo went by sea plane, his first flight to the big village of Kuchyak,

where he saw trees for the first time, and then to Montreal, and then by car to Ottawa.

It was very hot for me, September 11, 1964. I was sweating because I was wearing my clothing that

I usually wear back in Subluit. Everyone else around me were wearing shorts and short sleeve

shirts, which I never got quite used to, seeing hairy legs of man, and everybody seemed to be half naked,

which was not my culture.

Adami was born in the little village of Iwiwik, on Canada's northern shore, in a world that had

hardly changed for hundreds of years, shaped by the Arctic landscape, ice and snow in winter,

tundra and open sea in summer. When I was six years old, we moved to Subluit

by community boat, because there was no economy here, and there was no housing for Inuit as such.

Mostly, I remember living in igloos and canvas tent into summer, and it was like that also in

Subluit. When you were taken to Subluit, what was that experience like for you? I remember vividly

passing through the cliffs, where there are hundreds of thousands of birds, which we call

Apak. In your language, you would refer to them as thick-billed meoeir.

And I also remember seeing a blue glow whale, and I remember arriving there with the next day,

and my mother put on me a brand new pair of silo skin boots. It seemed to me that I had

relatives there who were calling me uncle, and these were elders. My grandfather on my father's

side had been a great hunter whom I never saw, but everybody treated me as if I was him.

I am named after my grandfather. I am him, reincarnate, that this is our culture.

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