An Expedition Cruise Through the Inuit Homeland in Labrador

Facing each other with arms clasped in a school gym in northern Labrador, two teenagers launched into improvisational duets about polar bears, wolves, mosquitos, and geese. The guttural sounds that came out of Josie Jararuse and Tyriekah Semigak’s mouths using their throats, bellies, and diaphragms were more animal than human.

Throat singing is an Inuit cultural practice and art form usually performed by women. The first person to laugh loses, but when one singer dissolves into a fit of giggles, the other merrily joins in before they compose themselves for the next mesmerizing song.

“How they do that, I have no idea,” Jens Haven Memorial School principal Julie Dicker said that day, capturing in words the awe that we all felt. “Who’s making what sound, I don’t know.”

We had come to Nain with Adventure Canada on an expedition cruise from Greenland to Newfoundland and Labrador. The family-owned, Ontario-based company only visits communities it’s in “clear partnership” with. Nain welcomed us for Inuit cultural performances by varsity athletes and members of the choir and drumming group.

Being a remote region where people have long survived off seal, whale, caribou, and fish, pinnipeds were a natural performance theme. One boy acted out a hunt on the spring sea ice while another posed as the unlucky seal. In a race, students lurched and scooted on their stomachs mimicking not just seals but clever hunters.

The seal high kick went on the longest, as lanky students jumped from a running start and tried with one foot to kick a tiny stuffed seal dangling from a string. Higher and higher they went, some hitting the sealskin mark and others graciously conceding defeat. You need a keen eye and good depth perception to excel at this iconic Labrador Winter Games event and, in real life, to live off the land.

Nain, population 1,260, is one of the oldest permanent Inuit communities in Canada and it’s in Nunatsiavut (meaning “our beautiful land” in Inuktitut). An Inuit regional government represents more than 7,000 beneficiaries of the “Labrador Inuit Land Claims Agreement“.

The words of Aleqa Hammond stuck with me throughout our two-week expedition cruise across the Inuit homeland that started in Greenland, where 88% of the population is Inuit, before crossing the Davis Strait to Labrador and finishing in Newfoundland.

“Inuit have a lot to share and Inuit have a lot to give that the rest of the world knows nothing about,” lamented the former prime minister of Greenland, one of eight Inuit cultural educators aboard the Ocean Endeavour.

To kick off the powerful journey for 176 passengers, Maria Merkuratsuk from Nain lit a qulliq. The soapstone lamp, once fuelled by seal oil, burned a cottongrass wick using vegetable oil. The same welcome ceremony was repeated when we reached Labrador, that time led by Happy Valley-Goose Bay artist Heather Angnatok.

The big draw of our expedition, called “Greenland & Wild Labrador: A Torngat Mountains Adventure,” was time in Torngat Mountains National Park. Migrating whales, polar bears, and caribou have drawn Inuit here for centuries. So have the towering mountains, deep fjords and wide valleys.

Established in 2008 and known in Inuktitut as Tongait KakKasuangita SilakKijapvinga, the park was a gift from the Labrador Inuit to the people of Canada as part of the land claims agreement. It’s co-managed by Parks Canada, the Nunatsiavut Inuit of Labrador, and the Nunavik Inuit of Quebec.

Of the 655 people who had visited the park by mid-October, 518 came on two Adventure Canada and two Students on Ice expedition trips while another 67 stayed at the Torngat Mountains Base Camp and Research Station just outside the park’s southern boundary on Labrador Inuit land. Only a handful of intrepid souls visited on their own, hiking, snowmobiling, chartering aircraft, and arriving on private vessels.

Not only is this region challenging and expensive to reach, it’s polar bear country and only the Inuit can carry firearms in the national park.

Adventure Canada’s Inuit cultural educators doubled as bear guards, protecting us from polar bears and tundra-dwelling black bears, and protecting the apex predators from us. They went to land first and created safe perimeters. We followed in Zodiacs to kayak, hike, or roam between informal shore stations overseen by historians, archaeologists, geologists, ornithologists, artists, and musicians from the expedition team.

When we weren’t walking on the land in places like Ekortiarsuk Fjord, Eclipse Sound, Nachvak, and Ramah, we were taking Zodiacs to see waterfalls and marvel at billion-year-old rocks. Just outside the park, we explored Hebron Mission National Historic Site, which tells the sombre story of a community created by Moravian missionaries from Europe and then abruptly abandoned by the church and Canadian government, displacing Inuit families and triggering generations of trauma.

Then there was a sleepy polar bear that lounged on a rocky slope waiting for the Labrador Sea to freeze so it could stalk seals. We would have left immediately if he was bothered by our presence, but he only rolled from his stomach to his side to check us out before closing his eyes again. Another day, we respectfully watched a mother polar bear hightail it away from us with two rambunctious cubs.

Sometimes wildlife spotters saw bears and caribou from the ship, and announcements came over the PA system telling us to race to the decks. Twice those messages were about the Northern Lights, which blazed green in the October sky, miraculously just after dinner instead of in the wee hours.

“Nature is going to be the boss through the whole program,” Jason Edmunds had warned when we met for a briefing at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel at Toronto Pearson International Airport before a charter flight to Greenland.

He’s an Inuk expedition leader originally from Nunatsiavut, an Adventure Canada director, and husband of company CEO Cedar Swan. His point was that expedition travel rarely goes as planned and itineraries are never guaranteed. Polar bears change everything. So does the weather, with conditions like wind, storms, and ice known to cause schedule disruptions.

I’ve travelled with Adventure Canada before and know the drill. But many were shocked when expedition leader MJ Swan broke the news that ferocious winds would scuttle stops at places like L’Anse Aux Meadows National Historic Site (the archaeological remains of a Viking encampment) and send us straight from Labrador to the protected harbour of St. John’s.

“I believe that transparency brings you along for the journey as well,” Swan said. “It’s our journey together. This is how our storyline is unfolding and I want you to be along with that decision-making process and understand why it is our journey went the way that it did.”

Speaking of transparency, the Ocean Endeavour’s Mumbai-born captain, Dominic Harrison, had an open-bridge policy. He loves the responsibility of keeping everyone safe, which on our trip meant 327 guests, expedition team members, and crew. “It keeps me going,” he told me. “And it keeps me fighting when I have to fight with other people when they say ‘Okay, captain, maybe we do this,’ and I say no this is what has to be done and it has to be done the right way.”

Everything really was done the right way on the sailing.

We marked the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation/Orange Shirt Day on September 30, honouring all those who never returned from residential schools in Canada and all those who survived as well as their families and communities. But the tragic and ongoing impacts of residential schools, and the struggles of Inuit who were forcibly relocated from their homes, was something we learned about each day.

There were tears and hugs as Merkuratsuk bravely shared her harrowing journey through dislocation, abuse, alcoholism, and mental health challenges. “I’m happy when I’m out on the land. I’m happy when I’m on the ship. I’m happy when people are good to me,” she said, acknowledging that we all struggle in our own way.

As Inuit cultural educator Wayne Broomfield later said about the cruise: “We’re doing it the right way, which is important. The right story, the right way.” He managed the Torngats base camp for years and has felt like the token Inuit on trips with other expedition companies.

Our immersion in Inuit culture was deep. We learned an Inuktitut word of the day when we gathered each night before supper. We made sealskin crafts and Labrador tea bags when we were at sea.

At a country food tasting, we sampled frozen minke whale, raw narwhal skin and blubber, raw caribou, dried muskox, and frozen Arctic char. At dinner one night there was a “Canadian crowberry cake” topped by freshly picked berries.

In Nain, after that cultural performance at the school, we walked around town, inspecting steep grocery store prices and meeting artists selling carvings, jewelry, silkscreened T-shirts, and sealskin Christmas ornaments. In the former settlement of Indian Harbour, we learned about the medical missionaries who once ran a cottage hospital for fishermen and local Inuit.

In between those final two Labrador stops, the captain manoeuvred the Ocean Endeavour so we could gape at an iceberg.

By the time the winds picked up and the rolling and pitching of the ship flattened me until we made it to St. John’s, I had said qujanamik (thank you) too many times to count.

MORE ABOUT ADVENTURE CANADA EXPEDITION CRUISES

Take This Cruise: Adventure Canada specializes in small-ship expedition cruises. Greenland & Wild Labrador: A Torngat Mountains Adventure next runs September 17 to October 1, 2025. It starts with a charter flight from Toronto to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland and ends in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Rates currently start at $9,495 USD (approximately $13,300) per person based on double occupancy and include meals, guided activities, and sightseeing/community visits. Commercial and charter flights are extra. A select number of cabins are available that don’t have single supplements.

Tourism Information: Visit the Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism website for more trip-planning ideas.

Disclaimer: Jennifer Bain was hosted by Adventure Canada. The company did not review or approve this story before publication.