Friday, March 26, 2010

How to tame an Eskimo into an obedient Inuk

There are many ways to tame an Eskimo and these are just examples.

Historically Eskimos were tamed by beating them into submission before the advent of schools. Beating them into submissions was deemed appropriate until Edward VI, the child ruler of England, thought that it was brutal and all his servants protested but he wouldn't have it because the Eskimos to him were a great novelty, kind of like the Kinder Surprises that children have nowadays.

King Edward VI changed all that and said that Eskimos were to be coerced or given incentives to change their ways by way of giving them metal pots and pans. So the tamers started producing gifts of pots and pans, but also as well, beads and little trinkets and sometime later on through food such as biscuits and tea. The latter have become part of the Eskimo tradition that persist to today.

Not too long in the past - schools were brought to the land of the Eskimos. Schools were great at taming the Eskimos but there was a drawback to the idea as it would take years until the Eskimo actually started listening to the tamers. Now the tamers, to be more effective, disallowed Eskimos to speak their language in schools and told them their ways of life would soon die anyways. Some Eskimos believed them and now they are known as the first Inuit.

Schools were slowly accepted into the Eskimo lifestyle and Eskimo parents started sending their Eskimo children to schools without being coerced or being given incentives. By now, they had plenty of biscuits and tea, so they just sent their kids to the tamer's schools.

Now, we got to be clear on the idea of taming an Eskimo, because there has always been Eskimos that secretly rejected the tamers way of life and weren't so easily submissive. These Eskimo fought a hard fight and still do to today, by never voting, by eating all the food that their ancestors hunted and by making their own clothing. But as always, they have been told their days are numbered, but naively enough they persist. To tame an Eskimo is tedious and involves many learning subjects and so called teachers. They have been most successful as of yet - the teachers.

Nowadays, the tamers have to try really hard to tame Eskimos into being Inuit and have developed ingenious ways of taming the modern Eskimo. Mostly today it is advertisements and some Inuit have done the job of the tamers today and these Inuit tamers were the first Eskimos to be named Inuit. The tamed are the tamers now. They select certain TV, newspaper and media slots to encourage other Eskimos into being Inuit. There is even some laws that the Inuit have made, such as land claims and so on. In one land claim it even states that representative levels of Inuit have to be hired so they can stop being Eskimos and work in the tamers/Inuit world. This law is called article 23.

Most work is done through Inuit organizations. Once there was an Eskimo Brotherhood but was infiltrated by Inuit early on in the existence and changed it into ITC, now called ITK. They basically tamed the Eskimo out of themselves. These tamers have an office in Ottawa, where taming was invented.

Today, money has crept into Eskimos way of life. So the Inuit started using money as a way of taming Eskimos and now most Eskimos have jobs and some are half tamed and half Eskimo, which the tamers agreed is a very hard thing to define what they are. To tame them, most Inuit now give $60,000 up to $150,000 to an Eskimo and that is usually enough to make them into Inuit. In a place called Nunavut this is most successful.

If you are a tamer in your dreams - Nunavut is the place to go to and learn from if you plan on taming any other group than Eskimos. The Inuit are doing that themselves now, so all you can do is give advice and learn from their success and failures.

Hope you found this helpful. If you have any other suggestions as to taming Eskimos, feel free to give me ideas, because i have one in my basement.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Sensitivity of MY People

This morning, I was walking and there was a dead bird on the side of the road. I thought, what a dumb bird, it could've flown away but it was dumb enough to get hit by a vehicle. There were crows flying up high, but there was this big raven right by the dead bird, eating the flesh and removing the feathers off of it. I watched it carefully and a white lady pass me by and she said "eww Gross!" I didn't know what to do but smile because i've seen too many ravens eating who knows what in my lifetime.

In a way, the lady was offended by the raven and thought it gross to do what is normal for the bird, eat flesh.

I'm not comparing people to ravens but that would be appropriate sometime as we eat who knows what from all sorts and as i write this, you are eating my words and you are eating who knows what, even i am not sure. I am trying to take this somewhere but I am having a hard time, because i might just offend you.

There has and always will be offensive remarks made by people about certain people, especially minority groups, its inevitable. It has happened, as aboriginals like to say, since time immemorial. All you have to be is different and a a little far from their reality and they have all the comments they can regurgitate and feed to the masses.

Inuit internet world has been hit by another derogatory article made by some girl named Kristina who wrote for Vice magazine, which is a satirical magazine that people should never take seriously, its like junk food for the brain. Anyways, she wrote, second hand experience, nonetheless, and made comments about suicide, drinking and taking drugs among other things in Iqaluit, Nunavut.

I am writing this because i take no offense at all about it because i know it's just literature. From what i have read, government and Inuit organization reports can be even more offensive and sometimes outright oppressive with all there statistics of a grim life for everyone in the north. To me that is more damaging than the ignorant author of the Vice magazine article. The Inuit orgs. and governments have been telling us and recreating us the picture of poor Inuit, amongst dilapidated housing, rampant drug and alcohol abuse, angry wives and husbands and uncared for Inuit children. That to me is what we should get riled about because they are the ones that supposedly make decisions regarding the people that live in their jurisdiction and the author of the Vice article is just commenting - with binocular and sitting in an arm chair. While the people that give us information about the prospects of life in the Arctic, the Inuit orgs. and governments, are actually dissecting and doing lobotomy on the people of the north and we don't give them crap for writing all the crap they regurgitate.

What are magical words that Inuit just love to use?
- sustainable
- resilience
- traditional
- survival
- environment
- pride
- colonialism
- and so on....

Maybe that lady Kristina has just hit the angry bone in inuit because someone has even started a facebook page demanding that they remove the story, but they don't realize that the website has never received so much comments and these people are pissed off, just makes Vice even happier.

c'mon Inuit, I know we had a weak immune system to the viruses and bacteria that people brought to our parts of the world, but do we have to have a weak immunity to simple words? Are you not stronger than she is and take the words she wrote and forget them? Can't you "forgive and forget" about all the things that have happened to Inuit, historically or modern?

The time words are suppose to hurt is when they come from someone you respect and admire so much that you cry and get angry about, but this is a stranger and we'll probably never step in Nunavut again, because that is what these people do, make money and then leave. Have a little backbone and try not to get offended by every little remark regarding Inuit, whether it be suicide or tuberculosis. When we all come together and rant about the misrepresentation of our lives, we are only encouraging people to poke fun at us, because the easiest people to offend are the people that get offended all the time.

Maybe it's time we stop demanding apologies and re-compensation all the time for the bad shit that happens to everyone. We are on this blue and green ball just as everyone and everyone makes remarks and make fun of someone, it's bound to happen and next time just take it.

Here, let me try to offend the girl named Kristine about her world.

Ottawa is a government town, where people have no sense of humour and wear ties and suits everyday to work. They are so boring that it's like learning about Scientology. They all have drinking and drug abuse problems but never admit to it and live life as if they are the masters of the universe. They are so dumb that they forgot the most important thing about the three R's: Reduce, Recycle and Reuse. They forgot the Reduce part and follow the other two which don't have much affect when you don't redce your intake. They are so dumb. The city is filled with crackheads and they gladly smoke out on the streets. People like Kristina have no sense of direction in their lives that as soon as they are done school, they go just go another environment and is a lot like school and "work". They all have bad breaths. They are all tall. They are very good at pretending to care.

There, I hope to get many comments from non-Inuit who are genuinely offended by this.

Monday, March 22, 2010

The new conservatory/territory of Ushualuit

The conservatory/territory Ushualuit has been announced to protect the dying numbers of Inuit by the Afghan-dominated Nunavut government.

The Afghans have announced that they are willing to partition a piece of land that was once a small outpost camp to the Inuit to be called Ushualuit.

Ushualuit means "big scary penises" in the Inuktitut language and was chosen by the Inuit governing body, nominated by the grandson of Harmid Karzai, Aliqsis Nalgenie Karzai. The Inuit governing the conservatory/territory was chosen as a place to revive the Inuit population, language, and most "importantly" culture.

Aliqsis Nalgenie Karzai had this to say: "The Inuit, since we have occupied and bought the territory of Nunavut from the Government of Canada, has been declining in people, because we keep sending them to the floe-edge when the ice is not thick enough, because we have been intending to bring back the whaling industry due to the shortage of crude oil in our original country. So to increase the population of Inuit, we have created a glorious conservatory/territory which the Inuit call Ushualuit, and the laws concerning procreation are so lax that we are encouraging Inuit to have sex like rabbits, so that we can begin our whale hunting as soon as possible. We are also giving each Inuk, a compensation for wrong-doing and failed negotiations that happened when Canada withdrew from Afghanistan, in the amount of 5.00 Canadian Tire money, which they can use when they go to their mother country - Afghanistan."

The Inuit are said to be excited and have been laughing uncontrollably since the announcement. People are not sure if it is hysterical for them or if they have gone psychotic. One Inuk, who took the names of famous Inuit politicians - Paul Tagak Eva Peter Aglukkaq Mihira - has said that he is looking forward to the new government and how they'll be recruiting competent Afghans to run the government, although he says that there will be token Inuit to sit in the legislature just as they had done in the past when they were under Canadian control.

The spokesman for Inuit said that they will cooperate in any way with the formidable Karzai as he establishes a piece of land that plans to double the population of Inuit in five years from 5000 to a total of 10,000. To encourage reproduction in such a quick time, the spokesman said that since polygamy worked so well in Afghanistan and the historical Inuit, that the women are required by law to marry five fertile husbands every two years and the men are encourage to drink and be promiscuous when drunk, but both sexes are not required to have sexual intercourse with any other race, other than Afghans, of course.

It is rumoured that Karzai already has two hundred Inuit wives holed up in caves and fortified Igloos that he himself commissioned to be built out of chocolate, because they won't melt in the cold. And chocolate is said to be an aphrodisiac, so Inuit are rationed five chocolate bars every single day, starting from the age of 14.

Ushualuit is a rock half the size of Resolution Island at the southern tip of Baffin Island. Nothing grows on the Island, even the tough lichen that abound in the Arctic don't grow there. Nonetheless Inuit are excited and are willing to live there, under a puppet government that the mighty Afghans will run in the background.

The new leader of Ushualuit is to be chosen in a mock election in the next coming weeks. Each candidate has to be five feet tall, no less and no more, be able to light a qulliq, be able to whistle the song "we shall overcome", possess a pair of woolen socks and most importantly be able to dismantle a AK47 Kalashnikov. No women allowed.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Left Eye moves to a new neighbourhood

A new neighbourhood means a new community. And a community means a lot to an Inuk. After living all his life in quiet solitude in his community, he had moved to Ottawa, where a sense of community is hard to come by, because the people are disconnected from the people around them.

When he moved to his new apartment, when he had first moved to Ottawa, Left Eye promised he'd do what everyone does on TV when they live in the south. He drank beer from the tap, he ate food that he saw on TV, such as Subway and Mcdonald's and he jogged in the mornings. He even joined a gym a couple months later, which he came to regret later on because he just ended getting all these emails from the fitness establishment.

When Left eye started jogging, he got many stares from all the people he was supposed to be jogging with and he never knew why until two weeks later when a new qallunaaq friend told him why people stare at him. Apparently, there are protocols as to what to wear when running. His new friend asked him to visualize something: imagine a brown boy, running six in the morning with a windbreaker and hiking shoes and a pair of jeans, what does he look like he is doing? Left Eye had no idea, so he asked what does it mean? His Friend said that people in the south are paranoid of being robbed or being hurt by strangers and a brown boy wearing hiking shoes and jeans to go out jogging looks more like a criminal running away from something. His friend suggested that he stop wearing jeans and wear shorts instead or wear one of them tights that even men wear in Ottawa when they are exercising. So he wore shorts the next time.

The new neighbours where cautious when he would enter and once another tenant even asked him if he was lost. He said he wasn't and lives in the apartment and she gave him a look of surprise and seemed to ask the question: how can our landlord do this to us? He felt apprehensive when he walked to hallways and felt like people were looking through the peepholes on their doors just to make sure he wasn't loitering. He had eyes looking at him through out the hallways.

The neighbourhood had this store that sold Lebanese food. He wasn't even sure what a Lebanese was, he thought it was a dog at first until he started seeing people buying sandwiches and he knew then that they were people as he was and they had brown skin as he did but they all had beards, well, not the women. He went in and tried one of them sandwiches and he loved it instantly and he became a regular at the store. He became friends with the proprietor and they would talk about where they had come from. He told the store owner that he got his name from the war that was in Lebanon at the time and that got them even closer. He started getting free sandwiches every week. He loved his new neighbourhood.

He even bought a bike from a second hand store that he found in a city. He started biking but he didn't know where to bike or if he should go on the roads or sidewalks. Once a police officer scolded him for riding his bike on the sidewalks and asked him if he can't read. "what do you mean?" ask Left Eye.
Well, did you not see the sign that say, NO BIKE ON SIDEWALK?" asked the cop.
"Well, I'm sorry, I didn't know, I am new to the city."
"that is no excuse, make sure you know all the laws and regulations in this city." said the cop.
"okay, sorry, sir" said Left Eye

there was a park close by to his apartment and he went there frequently because it was the closest thing to nature that this city had to offer. He fed the geese but not the gulls or the squirrels, which he thought were gross. The gulls up in the Arctic eat a lot of garbage so he avoided them and the squirrels just looked like little weasels and was scared of them. His southern friends told him: here is this guy that can hunt and kill animals for a living and he can't take a little squirrel by his side. And they all laughed.

Even ugly girls are pretty in Montreal

There is something about montreal that always livens my spirits. If i have a soul - a christian soul - that's where i would want it to reside. The soul of Montreal is alive.

I just came back from Montreal and i didn't get offered any weed this time, but i did smoke some though outside a bar. I went to Montreal to go see a ban play. Lake of Stew was awesome. The band reminds me of many things, but mostly a combination of Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Pete Seeger with the message of Woody Guthrie.

I really enjoyed the show.

What amazed me even more, which i never tire of in Montreal, is the atmosphere of the city, the architecture and the girls of Montreal. The people are so stylish even without trying to be stylish and if there are people that deserve to be called cool, they are it. The coolness of Montreal is very evident and i kept wondering why Ottawa is nothing like that and it dawns upon me that Ottawa is a government town.

The buildings in Montreal are older and have some character in them, like elders that have a really good sense of humour. They made me smile and look up into the sky. The sky is even cool in Montreal.

The girls of Montreal are just plain pretty. there is really nothing to it, just plain pretty. The high heels and the tight pants say a lot and the french that they speak is like butter going through a hot toast. they are so beautiful that the ugliest one can be the most beautiful human being on earth.

Forget Paris, go to Montreal and just walk around and see all the people that are ugly but beautiful.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

The adventures of Left Eye

He sat at a coffee shop, quietly reading Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle", while people were either looking at their laptop screens or reading a newspaper. The day before was momentous for Canadians as they saw a change of government from a Liberal government to a Conservative government, headed by Stephen Harper. Left Eye didn't know much about politics at the time but he was intent on learning because the cowboy hat wearing leader of the Tories had fascinated him, not because of his policies but because he seemed so sure of himself and because he acted like a robot on T.V.

As he read the Cat's Cradle, he began to think of the substance "ice-nine" that the character's father Felix Hoenikker invented along with the atomic bomb. He thought about the people who he was living amongst at the time, the people of Ottawa and how he wouldn't trust them with anything that might damage the world. The people to the south had all the weapons and Vonnegut was from that nation, where the politics were at times volatile and very apprehensive towards people that were different from themselves. He was afraid to meet Americans after reading Cat's Cradle a week later. The book had seemed to change his life and made him aware of people's need to control their environment.

Left Eye was from a small Arctic community on the coast of Baffin Bay, where he grew up with his fifteen siblings - 8 boys and 7 girls - and he was the youngest of them all. He was born when Ariel Sharon had just invaded Lebanon on the 6th of June, 1982 and his parents named him after they saw a Lebanese boy bandaged on the left eye.
I know what you are thinking, that is a strange name, for a little Inuk boy.
Well, he wasn't so small now as he had grown to be 6 feet and five inches, the tallest in the community of 500. They called him "Left Eye-kutaaq" which translates into english as "Tall Left Eye" and he was ashamed of that nickname for a long time but he learned to accept it. He grew up with all of his siblings in a three bedroom house, where his parents had their own room and his seven sisters stayed in one room, all sharing the same make-ups and hair products, while the boys had to stay at both the living room and in the other room - 4 in the living room and the other 4 in the room. They all played hockey and all shared the 3 full hockey equipments that his parents managed to buy, through the Sears catalogue.

The coffee shop cashier went up to him and asked him if he is just going to sit and not buy coffee and without saying a word, Left Eye left the coffee shop and walked around the Rideau street, where it was bustling with people of all kinds, some wearing scarves and covered from head to toe in a black dress while some white girls were flaunting their cleavages. He liked the cleavages, as he had only seen them through T.V. and now they were three feet away from him. He tried to hide his erection through his jeans. He cursed his ignorance and his hormones for not being able to keep it under control.

He walked and remembered that he has frozen caribou in his freezer and how he had been saving the little piece for two months now. It was hard to receive his native food, as they didn't sell them in Ottawa and most people were ashamed of people who ate frozen raw meat. Left Eye ate alone most times because he hadn't made friends yet. Little did he know that their were a few hundred in the city but he didn't know any of them but he was to find them when he got evicted for being late on his rent payments and had to stay at the Salvation Army for two weeks. And he met the Inuit that lived in the city and how different they were from the Inuit of his community. Most Inuit in the city were either alcoholics or drug addicts and he didn't like seeing other Inuit suffer. They didn't like him either because he hardly drank and only smoked weed and they all asked for money from him but he gave them food instead.

As he walked the street of Rideau, trying to hide his erection, he noticed a young white girl sleeping on a street bench. He was tired and she was asleep anyways, so he decided that he was going to sit at the opposite end of her, by her feet. He sat and opened his book again and started reading when the white girl awoke to a startle, with him at the other end and she screamed when she awoke and the police officers noticed what was going on and mistaken him for trying to steal her belongings. She was having a nightmare and was the reason she screamed and didn't have enough time to gain her composure when Left eye was already arrested by the officers and took him to the police station, where they held him for the night. He tried explaining, but they wouldn't accept his story as they are seldom to do with aboriginal people.

The next day, the white girl from the bench was at the police station and explained to the officers that she just had a nightmare and said that Left Eye did nothing. when he went outside, he noticed that the white girl was there waiting for him. She said her name was Harmony and that her parents were from a hippie commune in British Columbia and had named her Harmony because too many people were not harmonized enough with the world and each other. And he agreed.

They walked down Elgin street, where the police station was and chatted about what happened the day before.
"I am terribly sorry for yesterday, i've been having nightmares for the past three weeks", she said.
"that's okay, at least you explained to them today and got them the story straight. How long did it take you to find me?" asked Left Eye
"Oh, i went to couple station before i found you and have been staying up all night trying to find you." said Harmony
"thanks again" said Left eye.
She stared at him and finally asked, "what are you? Chinese, Vietnamese or what?"
He cowered a little and said" i am an Inuk from the Arctic"
And then she jumped up and started screaming and he had to stop her before he got arrested again and asked her "what are you doing?"
And she said" Oh My God, I have never met an Inuk"

Tabbaaca

I have been smoking since i was 18. My brands have changed three times so far. I have quit a few times and always went back to smoking. The longest i have done without smoking is two to three months. I still smoke up to this day. A pack will last anywhere between two to four days.

It is purely my choice to smoke and always have been.

Non-smokers...die every day. Sleep tight! - Bill Hicks

The reason i am writing about smoking is because i have been reading a book on the history of tobacco and how it has been consumed and how much it has affected the world. It's a very interesting book called: "Tobacco, a cultural history of how an exotic plant seduced civilization." One of those books that just surprise you into how much its has had an effect on people and societies.

I'm not trying to encourage smoking at all. It is totally up to you with what you do to your lungs as i have decided what it might do to me. Smoking has been attached to very bad things and been attached to health care cost rising because of treating people who are suffering from respiratory problem or even cancer.

I am writing this because it has brought to me my own history of the weed. Apparently, the plant is a very nice plant before it is harvested. The plant is very versatile in terms of where you can plant it and how you consume it. People in the past have snuffed it - snorting it like cocaine, smoked it, chewed it, drank the tea, and even took it as a suppository. It is grown almost on every inch of proper soil. It was one of the first products that the world didn't need for human survival but have persisted in consuming it.

I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business. It cost a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's a fantastic brand loyalty. - Warren Buffet.

I'm not a historian and definitely not an expert on Inuit history and just from my thoughts i will try to understand more of tobacco and it's effect on Inuit in the past and now.

Tobacco probably came through the explorers that came to the Arctic but i don't think it made such an effect on Inuit at that time yet. The time tobacco really started to be involved with Inuit is probably the whalers and traders when it became more prevalent and was started to be traded with Inuit for furs and labour the Inuit did for both industries. Historically, not just to Inuit, smoking and tobacco affects every race on earth. There is no group of people on earth that have not been affected by smoking and it was one of the first products to be attached to a brand - the Orinoco brand that originally was bred in Virginia and made popular around the world.

I imagine the Inuit smoking tobacco much like all the people's of the world and much like the rest of the world, they attributed health benefits to the weed. The British smoked so much in the 1600's that in school - both the student (who were between the ages of 7 and 13) and the teachers used to take a break from class and everyone would light up a pipe. Both kings and slaves smoked the weed and crossed all races and classes. The french early on took the habit of snuffing and created elaborate social functions around the french nobility court, where one was assessed as to how they took their snuff and what package they used to store their tobacco in.

And as well, tobacco has medicinal value to it. It was thought to cure all sorts of disease and was recommended in many European countries when a plague was decimating their country (which was quite often) and people were told to smoke, which is why kids in Britain were smoking in school, to protect them from sickness.

Smoking was one of the first to be prohibited and in some places a death penalty was carried for smoking in public, like in Prussia where smoking was illegal and the Prussian population took up to snuffing, much like snorting cocaine. As well, early on, the Spanish saw smoking as part of devil worship because the Indians in America looked like they were devil worshippers and was deemed sinful to smoke.

I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs. - Albert Einstein.

As to what Einstein said about smoking, it was regarded as a gift for many people and the American George Washington said this: If you can't send money, send tobacco. It is even estimated that Napoleon Bonaparte used so much snuff that it is estimated he would be smoking hundred sticks of cigarette a day today. That is a lot, which is like five packs a day and he had a collection of many elaborate snuff boxes that he collected.

When I started smoking, my parents bought me cigarettes. I became a smoker as my brothers are and we smoked together. It was one thing that i had in common with the older citizens of Pang. People told us it was bad and we shouldn't smoke it, so it was also the first defiance of society that i did. I have been told that it cures ear aches by smoking into the infected ear and will make it feel better. I don't know if that is true but sounds a lot like the British in the 1600's.

Smoking is a major health issue nowadays as "Seventy percent of Inuit in the north between the ages of 18 and 45 currently smoke" which is cited in the Health Canada website and "Almost half of Inuit (46%) who smoke started smoking at age 14 or younger."

I am just a smoker as many people have been smokers and i am in no way trying to encourage smoking at all.

I drink a great deal. I sleep a little, and I smoke cigar after cigar. That is why I am in two-hundred-percent form. - Winston Churchill.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

What was the Nunavut dream?

Nunavut...

It's hards to start with Nunavut as a sentence unless you want to explain the basic and general information.

This post is geared towards the 50% of the population that are in or getting out of high school and to those who are thinking of further education. This is for you.

I am not going to try to even answer a question for you. All i want is free thoughts going around, even just amongst your head.

Nunavut means "Our Land" obviously, and it connotes a commune in some ways, to me anyways, as it sounds like we own everything as a people. our land.

What do you want to see in Nunavut?

What kind of society do you envision when you want to live up there?

Do you even want to be part of Nunavut or do you feel it's a obligation to be from Nunavut?

What legislations are appropriate for all residences of Nunavut?

How do you see justice being served in Nunavut?

Do you think adopting the twelve Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit principles as policies of the government are good ideas?

Do you feel the need to elect your own premier rather than the MLA's electing it for you?

Are the current politicians and law enforcers the people that should make decisions for you?

Monday, March 15, 2010

Can I touch your little mustache?

I was told by one of my readers that he doesn't really care if i went commando to meet some ministers. He said he likes the serious part of my blog. But he knows well enough that I am never serious about almost anything, right? i like the unserious part of life - the laugh i receive from my mustache is one of them.

Last summer, while going through a break-up, i didn't really care for myself for a long time and was pretty destructive at it too. I drank like an alcoholic, smoked weed like Afroman, and i didn't shave for more than a month and i had a thirteen year old Inuk's mustache.

While at that time, i was picked up by a friend and his son. I was sitting at the back of the car with the boy and he is funny and really smart for a five year old. While we were just crossing the bridge from Quebec to Ontario - the boy just stared at me. I smiled at him and he says slowly enough, "Can I touch your little mustache?" And i said yes, while I laughed and let him touch my little mustache and he said again, "it's so small!" and I laughed more and so did my roommate at the time.

I always remember that time and how funny it was.

It has been almost a year since then and guess what? I have a growing mustache again that i haven't shaved for almost three whole months now! And it still looks like a thirteen year old Inuk's mustache. I am afraid that I'll have a prepubescent mustache at the age of thirty in two short years. hahahah.

So in my unserious manner, i went to Second Cup and ordered my usual cup. They know me well enough that all I do is say hi and they give me my coffee. But since about two months ago, we talk about my mustache in front of strangers and laugh about it. Both are females and they laugh at me. Which I don't really care about because last summer when i was shaved, i entered and the girl there thought i was bringing her flowers so i know the reason why she laughs. But this morning she asked me: are you really going to keep it? And i said of course.

I wear it as a kind of badge for me. Not really for my Inuit ancestry (because i know they grew mustaches and beards) but kind of for my family in a way. I'm not saying they can't grow one but it connects me to them. Especially to my father. There was a time in Iqaluit last month when i went to my sister's place and i hadn't showered that day and my hair was especially greasy and my sister said that i look like my father. I was so proud that i didn't care if i never showered and never shaved. Just to feel like i look like my father is the best compliment i can get.

Today I am not in a destructive mood and i'm no longer brooding over relationships but i am wearing my silly little mustache with great pride. Actually i am more proud to have a mustache than to be proud of my identity because it doesn't need to be worried about who or where it is.

It just is.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Inuit leaders to eat foie gras and wear alligator skin shoes and purses

Kuniks and Kakivaks - March 12, 2010

Inuit political leaders have announced that they will eat foie gras next week on Monday while wearing thousand dollar alligator shoes.

After the controversial (to qalunnaat) meal of seal meat (more like snack) by parliamentarians, the Inuit political leaders have decided that they'll prove to the world that food and animal clothing is normal by eating foie gras from France and wearing alligator shoes from Louisiana.

"It was hard to ship the alligator shoes and purses to the Arctic and expensive to order foie gras from France", says an anonymous Inuit leader "But we are committed to saving controversial industries of the world, and we stand hand in hand with the duck farmers of France and the Alligator farmers of Louisiana."

In a rare show of solidarity from consumers of animal meat and skins, the three parties have agreed to cooperate and advertise each industry through out the world. The Inuit leaders have decided that they'll wear alligator skin shoes and purses instead of seal skin kamiks and bags while in their offices and conducting media interviews, while the duck farmers of France have agreed to supplement their diet with fresh seal shipped to them every two weeks and the alligator farmers plan to wear the water proof seal skin kamiks while tending to their flock of alligators.

"We have a lot in common with the seal hunters of the far north," says Wayne Sagrera representative of the alligator farmers union in Louisiana, "Historically, our industries have been the target of animal right activities for a number of years now and have been the main culprits to the falling prices of the both alligator and seal skins." says Mr. Sagrera who is a tall man in his 60's with a full white hair on his head and is strangely bow-legged like the Inuit seal hunters of the Arctic.

And the duck farmers of France who have been producing foie gras for the past 2500 years believe that they have something inherently in common with the Inuit hunters as well saying: "food is food and we all got to eat. We cannot all survive on vegetables and tofu, their are too many processed food that end up in the stores, we are simply trying to provide an alternative."

That alternative has been the main preoccupation of PETA activist who oppose the hunts of both alligators and seals and have been opposed vehemently to the mistreatment of poor ducks of France. Ingrid Newkirk, the president of PETA has asked all parties to re-think their strategies and stop all production and mistreatment of animals, saying: "they are all cute, how can you just kill cute animals?"

Despite such questions, Inuit leaders are excited to be wearing the flashy shoes and bags. One female Inuk politician is excited to be wearing the purse that a poor Louisiana woman had to make, saying "we only see them in movies and now we are going to flaunt them in the Arctic. We are going to eat foie gras like we are eating the liver of a seal and saviour it as well."

"You know, we tried collaborating with the Newfies [sic] with the seal industry but they are pretty barbaric with their hakapiks, you know, and they have been naive enough to bring all those activist with them on their hunts which further deteriorated our image as responsible and sustainable Inuit seal hunters, so now we have decided to unite with other people who are as controversial as we are," says the Inuit leaders who contacted the duck and alligator farmers. She says that the strategy is to inform the world that eating and wearing animals is as natural as sleeping and should not be condoned outright without looking at human being's sustainable right to use the environment.

"if PETA really wants to protect the environment and animals of this world of ours, I believe, that they should look at the bigger picture and approach the livelihood of all living organisms in a holistic way, meaning that hunting and harvesting, if done sustainably, counter-balances the over-population of some animals that eat away more than they need to. I don't want people to listen to Perez Hilton or Kelly Osbourne or Pamela Anderson. What do they know about the necessities of food and clothing when they grew up in comfortable homes and heated housing, while Inuit are growing up in moulded and over-crowded houses?" says Mr. Sagrera, who says he cares so much for the Inuit that he sheds tears while sobbing uncontrollably in the end of the interview.

So the next time you see a Inuit politician, ask him or her "Can i try those shoes on" or "can i touch that purse" or "do you have an extra goose liver by any chance?"

Reporting done by Kuniks and Kakivaks main foreign correspondent Tommy Eh.

On another note, Inuit, Louisiana alligator farmers and France's duck farmers disagree on the severity of global warming and have agreed to disagree with each other on the subject.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

The single goalie dilemma

"He shoots, he scores" says Don Cherry after Stephen Harper scores on the net of the lone team leader of Nunavut Leona Aglukkaq.

Nunavut - one riding - one MP for a region that is the size of 2,093,190 km². That is roughly the size of Europe. It is the largest riding in all of Canada and second in the world, next to Kalgoorlie, which is in Australia.
That is a big piece of land!

That is 1/5th of Canada and only one person to represent, not only the people, but all of the animals, the air and the land, which i think, we can agree are more important than us human beings.

i always imagine the lone MP from Nunavut composing of his or her own team and i imagine the person always playing goalie. And you are facing another 200 something other players and many of them have a whole team, such as Ontario and Quebec and can spare some extra players to keep them going. Actually, Quebec has such a good team now that they are trying to create their own league and play in their own rules.

So, I hope you can see, my MP, even though she is a minister and has a high profile department - she can only play the goalie part for the Nunavut team. Maybe once in a while, she'll get a chance to shoot the puck down the ice, but that is more likely to be done out of pity for the lone player from teams like Quebec or Saskatchewan.

Nunavut has a perpetual chance of losing the game and the unintentional supporters always ended up cheering for the losing team, much like supporting the Toronto Maple Leafs.

And admit it: our MP is no Martin Brodeur or Patrick Roy.

Maybe it's time we asked for a team and give us a chance!

Monday, March 1, 2010

I want a SOCIETY not a GOVERNMENT

Marriam-Webster has this to say about society: a) an enduring and cooperating social group whose members have developed organized patterns of relationships through interaction with one another b) a community, nation, or broad grouping of people having common traditions, institutions, and collective activities and interests.

and government is defined as: a) the organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority and performs functions and which is usually classified according to the distribution of power within it b) the complex of political institutions, laws, and customs through which the function of governing is carried out.

I want the first, not the second.

We talk about Nunavut all the time and some of us have even talked about an Inuit government. I am from NWT, not Nunavut, so i have some animosity towards Nunavut and how it is addressing Inuit issues and concerns. I am not a culture of society, i am a society of culture. My society decides what is my culture is, not my culture deciding what my society should be.

So, i have been thinking about culture and society for a while and how we make them out to be the same when they are not even on the same coin. Society and culture work side by side, they don't work with each other and never will, so might as well separate the both of them from each other.

Let's talk about culture for a bit here. And of course, i will go personal into the issue. My history as an Inuk coming from Pang is a history of it's own, doesn't say that Inuit cultural history is homogenous. I grew up in a place where throat singing and drum dancing were nonexistent. I didn't hear any of those when i was growing up unless it was on TV. Actually i remember that we would change the channel whenever there was throat singing and drum dancing, so i grew up thinking that those were never really part of my culture and society. Only when i was 22 and moved to Ottawa did i actually hear those activities being done and i did partake in some drum dancing, but i never associated myself with those activities.

That does not diminish my cultural awareness one bit at all. Actually, i was stronger in many other cultural activities, than my peers that were living in Ottawa at the time. I knew how to speak inuktitut and knew about hunting much more than my peers too. But that does not mean i am more Inuk than my other peers or they were more Inuk than i am. Cultural identity is always changing because as i am 27 now, throat singing is much part of my community now as much other community but drum dancing is taking longer.

the reason i am bringing these up is because we as Nunavummiut are pushing this cultural card so strong to our own people. Culture doesn't need pushing, it's society that needs pushing. The thing i can't agree with about Nunavut is that we are trying to be so cultural. am i the only one that has such strong confidence in Inuit culture that i don't see it as threatened? Maybe it was once threatened but not so now when we have many Inuit performers.

We are even creating laws and regulations that will make other people speak inuktitut if they like it or not. We are so pushing the issue of cultural survival that we are instituting government policies and regulations that restrict people into using whatever language they prefer. I am trying to think of the whole world and not be so limited to Nunavut. I am just in favour of freedom to do whatever and that means deciding if i will speak inuktitut to whom and where.

I even think, sometimes, that we are propagandizing our people to care about Inuit culture. We are using such words that the Nazi government could have been using to spread their message. We have accepted that propaganda and accepted the issue that the government is here to fix our problems.

A society acts as a family and cares for the members of a society.

A government is a set of people pushing their agenda on the mass of people they claim to represent and make laws that might curtail the people from their societal base: such as the Arctic Exiles that were moved from Inukjuak to Resolute Bay.

I want a society that cares about being happy. I don't want a government that tells us how to be happy. I want an Inuit elder telling me the mistakes i did. I don't want a "report card" on the performance of the government. I want to be told to eat healthy and exercise regularly by a father and mother, not by some government poster. I want to hunt as much polar bear and doing it sustainably with my father and brothers, rather than each winter where the government says "okay, 4 bears for you this year".

I want people think of the people in their community, rather than going to the government and asks for money to do a program. I want people to train dog teams with other dog team owners, rathet than the government making a law about the purity of a dog's blood.

I just want to be people and not the Nunavut government.