“We Eskimos Can Help You”

The low and vibrant beat of the qilaut, the Eskimo drum, resounds in a small square in Barcelona’s Ensanche to the amazement of those who interrupt their conversations and turn their heads: a man in a gray suit with a whale bone hanging from his neck has begun to sing a song deep and modulated in our honor.

Angaangaq, whose name means “the one who looks like his uncle”, comes from a small village in northern Greenland. That is why he is Eskimo and not Inuit. He is over sixty years old and it has been almost twenty years since he was named “Elder” and five that he became a shaman.

He travels all the continents explaining what the ancestral wisdom of his people can contribute to a world lacking in spirituality. His task, he says, is to help us celebrate the beauty of everything that happens and to recover and rekindle our relationship with the living world around us.

It is the first time he has visited Spain and he does so because of the appearance in Spanish of his book Listen to the voice of ice (Ed. Urano).

Body, mind and spirit: flexibly open to life

Knowing the name of this magazine, Angaangaq shows us a thick and firm braid of reeds that he carries with him.

-What is it?
–The only plant that speaks the language of the Creator. When body, mind and spirit intertwine, the mind becomes flexible, able to accept anything with the flexibility with which I can bend this braid. And the spirit opens. And when the mind and spirit are balanced, the body becomes agile like this braid that I can also roll up on itself. But the most important thing is that, even if I pull it with all my might, I will never be able to break it. This is the meaning of your magazine headline: if you unite your body, your mind and your spirit, no one will be able to break you. And, look, it’s just grass.

–What do we need to learn?
–Here you no longer recognize your beauty, your strength, you no longer respect each other. When someone goes out into the street they become one of them, nobody sees them. You have lost the sense of celebration of life. My grandmother Aanakasaa used to say that life is a ceremony in itself, that it is worth celebrating as such. We have rituals, which we do by routine, but we have lost the force of the ceremonies.

– How did you become a shaman?
– My grandmother used to say: “Angaangaq has it.” Nobody knew what she was referring to and I didn’t want to be different, but she insisted: “Angaangaq has it.” It was my responsibility to find out what it was. He said to me: “Listen. Listen. Listen. Until the story lives in you. Only then can you tell the story. A living story.”

“And you know what it is?”
“I have learned to know.” To complete my training as a shaman, I was entrusted to climb a sacred mountain where there was no one and darkness reigned (it was autumn), make a circle of stones and tell the Man Who Made Us about myself. I thought that would be very easy, because I was 57 years old, but in less than two hours I had nothing more to say. Then I realized that I had lived very narrowly, that there was no depth within me. And I realized that I had many secrets and that the time had come to reveal them. I cried for hours, it was very painful. And the more he remembered and confessed out loud, the more things he had to tell. I spoke non-stop 24 or 25 hours, without eating or drinking, walking in a circle in the rain. Only once did I fall from the wind.

“What happened next?”
– When I got home one of my brothers gave me the “medicine”, this pendant that I wear, and said: “Angaangaq, you are as strong as a whale’s tail.” What I am wearing is the tail bone of a blue whale, which can destroy a ship. So my family thinks I’m very strong.

Access the interior through nature

-And you? Do you feel identified with it?
-Yes. I can travel within myself and within others and go as deep as a whale. I know how to reach the energy of others. I smell them.

-What smells?
How are they emotionally. When I greet people I smell and touch them. All animals smell each other, but men no longer. You have strayed too far from the animal world.

“Is the Eskimo salute with the nose?”
“Only in Hollywood.” I am from Greenland. There we smell each other. Because smells change according to emotion.

–How did you learn to distinguish each scent? Is it a skill that develops?
– I learned it when I was little. We all have this ability but very few use it.

– How is a shaman related to nature? How do you access its secrets?
– Nature is my home. I have the largest church in the world. In Barcelona the church is a small box in which people sit. My church, my synagogue, my spiritual center is Mother Nature.

– How do you manage to stay balanced in a city?
–I close my eyes and transport myself home. Physically now it would take seven hours of flight but with my mind it takes less than an inspiration. You have to learn to close your eyes to enter your own world.

“Would it be a kind of meditation?”
–Meditation can be limited: you have to sit in a certain way, sing the “om” … but rarely do you get “there”. Remember that the greatest distance in men is the one that goes from their mind to their heart. It is much greater than that between our planet and the stars. You believe that the greatest things are outside of you, but when you close your eyes, you discover how immeasurable you are inside, so much so that you can never get to know yourself completely. You are much greater than the sky. We are very complex but that is also our beauty.

– What differentiates you from a psychologist or a therapist?
–Psychologists learn from books and their job is to study emotional distress. Shamans touch the spirit.

“When you close your eyes you discover how immeasurable you are inside. You will never get to know yourself completely.”

“Are we too cerebral?”
-Definitely! The distance between the mind and the heart is too great. We think a lot but we have not learned to say everything we think; we feel a lot but we have not learned to verbalize everything we feel. Unless you and I learn to conquer that distance, we will never learn to fly like an eagle. And therefore we will always think a lot but we will not know how to say it. And we will feel a lot but we will not have the language to tell it. Psychology, therefore, is in its infancy. Shamanic understanding is very, very old. That is the difference.

A different language for another way of seeing the world

–What does the heartbeat tell us according to the shamanic tradition?
– It shows us where we are, how far we have gotten away from ourselves. Each emotion modifies your heartbeat: it can raise or lower your blood pressure. In the shamanic tradition the heartbeat serves the body but it is also for Him. We call Him Him in our language because we do not have a word for God, which is something new for us. We know God through the Holy Scriptures, which are about 3,000 years old. But my family has lived in the same place for over 4,000 years and has been doing their ceremonies all that time.

–They don’t have the word God but they have another similar one…
–We call him The Man Who Made Us, the Creator. It is a very different language.

– What other different words do they have?
–We have one for “a woman’s knife” or for “a woman’s boat.” We are led by women. Grandmothers are bosses, mayors, prime ministers, shamans … They are stronger than men, because they can give life, they shine.

– Is it true that there are more than 20 words to describe the white of the snow?
-Many more! As many as types of snow. But Greenland is thawing. The more trees that are cut down on the planet, the less Eskimos will be able to build their igloos. We don’t realize how closely linked we all are on Earth.

“The melting of the polar ice caps fulfills an ancient Eskimo prophecy.” How do they interpret it?
–When I was born, the Great Ice was on average more than 5 km thick. It was pure, harder than a rock, you could see through it, it had no bubbles. They said that one day it would melt. They made you put your hand on the Great Ice so that you could see the imprint you left on it, even if it was at -40º C. The ice in your heart is the most difficult to melt. And only if the ice in your heart melts, can you change and start using your knowledge wisely.

“How can you tell if a heart is frozen?”
“Have I told you that I am a hunter?” It is my only way to survive. When I hunt an animal, I take its heart in my hand and feel the essence of life. When that heart is frozen, it slips. I know that someone has a frozen heart because it is difficult for them to change. In the last two months the Arabs have risen up. Isn’t it amazing how long we need to change?

“But the thaw is going very fast, so we have to change fast.”
–The thaw can no longer be stopped. It’s too late. No one is going to be able to stop it. The only thing you and I can do is melt the ice in our hearts and change and use our knowledge wisely.

Smiling to change: physical and spiritual thaw

– What resistance do you encounter when you expose your teachings in the West?
– Many flee. But not from me but from themselves.

– What can we do to begin to change?
–Melt the ice in our hearts. Smiling, from the heart. The people around him notice it.

–Sometimes you can’t smile, you feel pain or helplessness.
–You have to open up from the central nucleus, where the energy resides, which is the lower abdomen. If you can get the energy to flow from there, your wings will spread, your arms will literally spread out, and you’re ready to hug. And the first person you will hug will be yourself. When you hug yourself you start to get to know yourself better. And the more you know yourself, the closer you get to the Creator. Opening yourself makes you have your own voice, that you become someone more beautiful, stronger, who lives in your own reality.

“Only if the ice in your heart melts can you change and begin to use your knowledge wisely.”

“What ceremonies do you conduct in the sweat lodge?”
-Many. For example, I prepare a ceremony for pregnant women. I go for a walk, pick up a stone that catches my attention, and carry it to the fire. I warm her up, enter her into the sweat lodge, and pour water over her to give me her latent energy, which has been inside her for millennia.

– How does it feel to see the Northern Lights?
“Oh, it’s wonderful.” For us it represents the soul of loved ones who have gone to the other world. When you remember someone you have loved, that soul becomes so happy that it calls all its family, friends and acquaintances and they dance just for you there in heaven. When you are lying on the ground and you see the beauty show that is gifted only to you in the great sky, simply for having remembered someone, it is wonderful. You can even hear them, because polar lights make sounds.

“The long arctic winters must be very harsh.” What do you do to feel comfortable in the dark?
“Our night is not as dark as it is here.” There are stars, northern lights and the moon, which are reflected in the snow. But due to climate change this year there was no snow all winter so it was very dark. On the other hand, the sun has arrived four days earlier because the Earth’s axis is changing.

– Do you really believe that these changes are happening?
–It’s strange, nobody has lived them before. But we know scientifically that the axis had already changed before. The Earth has always changed but we have never gone as far as now: we are 7,000 million people and we have not changed. We just use, use and use everything we take.

– What will happen?
-Nobody knows. It is too late to stop the thaw. We are concerned that the polar bear will not be able to survive with the thaw but he will be fine, we are the ones who will have to change because the sea level will rise.

-What can we do about it?
My responsibility, as a shaman, is to recover the ceremonies, so that everyone can celebrate their life. And your responsibility is to tell your readers to understand their heart, so that they change. Tell them that all of us, without exception, have a responsibility, even the homeless and the King. Everybody.