Kuniks and Kakivaks

Being happy to be cold

2011-12-13T10:41:00.000-05:00

I'm glad its cold out there
I haven't felt the cold air sting
this year
but it did this morning

I'm not the only one to be happy
about this cold

there seems to be ice in the fiord
that makes many people happy
not only hunters
but the christmas games on the ice
will be possible this year

and there are people who hope
hope that the winds will not pick up
that a warm spell does not strike
that the ice stays

its good to be cold
its good to have ice

lets hope it gets even colder
that the whole of cumberland sound
freezes solidly

I'm happy that its cold

The Polar Bear Story

2011-12-10T19:55:00.000-05:00

In case you haven't heard, its been about a month since i caught my first polar bear.

Take that greenpeace! hahaha.

For many years i have been wanting to catch my first polar bear, been wanting to hunt them all my life. and that opportunity finally came on November 18, 2011, around 10 in the morning. When we first saw the bear, it was in the water and we had to herd it to land. if that makes sense? in inuktitut, i would say "unguujujavut nunamut."

let me tell you, or try to tell you how proud i was. after reading this post, you can call me Mr. Upiqqak

In my family, i am known to be proud after the first catch of an animal, not matter what it is. my father likes to tell the story of when i caught my first caribou and how i was already laughing even before i shot the caribou. so when we were bringing it to land, he told the story quickly.

people say that they start shaking before their first polar bear but i was way too excited that all i could think of was, ok, this is my day, thank god for this.

when i shot it, i just yelled woohoo. actually i yelled woohoo a bunch of time. i hugged my father a biggest hug i could think of and he was the first person i thanked. then my brother. i thanked him too. when we were skinning it, i promise you, i have never seen a more fatter polar bear than that. it was so fat. during the cut up, i was thinking of all the people i will pajuk, which in english, their is no equivalent word to, which broadly means people i will bring meat to.

i smiled that day so much, my cheeks were sore. i felt good that day. my father would say aakkuluk once in a while. he would say that he knows i am happy.

the strange thing is, the night before when my father called me, i told Annie, "I'm going to catch a polar bear tomorrow." and just 12 hours after that, my words became true. i tell you, it was a gift from God. i had been wanting to catch one for so long, that it really did feel like a gift. it was a gift, i know it. i believe it.

half hour after shooting it, i prayed standing up in the boat. even if it was to myself, i prayed and thanked everything that needed to be thanked, especially God for the opportunity.

for the next two weeks, i reminded everyone that i caught a polar bear. i reminded my family everyday. i reminded my girlfriend everyday. i joked about it everyday. the scar i have on my thumb, i would say that the polar bear swiped at me and nicked my thumb and thats how i got my scar. i joked that the hamlet of Pang has discontinued the polar bear season because my polar bear was just too awesome.

and to polar bear conservationist, i say, you don't know the first thing to what you have stopped. i was even thinking that all young people should be allowed at the age of 18, to kill their first catch because their self esteem will sky rocket. i am a new man and its all due to my first catch. i am a new man because its something i have wanted for so long and i have it now.

it feels great.

What's your Inuktitut name?

2011-12-09T22:55:00.000-05:00

Its not everyday you have to search for your Inuktitut name. Its not everyday you call your mother to ask her what your Inuktitut name is.

Many years ago now, when i first went to Nunavut Sivuniksavut, i got asked the question what my Inuktitut name was and i didn't have an answer. Maybe it's a Pang thing, but I've never had to deal with the question what my Inuktitut name was, and i suspect no one in Pang really cares what their Inuktitut name is either. My suspicion is that we already consider ourselves Inuk too much to think of our Inuktitut name, if that makes sense.

the story starts from 2002 when i was confronted with the question. I tried my best to say that it's Tommy, but that wasn't Inuk enough, and then it was Jimmy, but that wasn't Inuktitut enough either. I was completely stumped. it was the first time i have ever been asked what my inuktitut name was and i didn't have an answer. my classmates thought that i must've been embarrassed about my name to not say it, that i was ashamed of it. This was our inuktitut class, and everyone had an inuktitut name except me, and after awhile, i really did feel bad that i didn't have one.

That same afternoon, after we had our class, i called up my mother and asked her what my inuktitut name was. She was surprised, to tell you the least. she laughed for a bit and i had to explain why i needed an inuktitut name. so i told her the story and she laughed a little bit again. and she had to think and finally said, say Tommy is your name, its Inuktitut enough. i told her that they thought that wasn't inuktitut enough and she laughed again and said, try Jimmy, and i told her again that that is still not Inuktitut enough. she laughed again. and asked what kind of classmates i have. she was as perplexed as i was about the questions, because everyone in Pang is an Inuk, no matter what their names are.

she said something along the lines of: how much more inuk do they want you to be? and i did agree with her. in Pang, an inuktitut name is whatever name you have because you are an inuk to begin with, born with it. So she said, just call yourself Nuvaqqi, which was the last name of my namesake Tommy. So in 2002, after twenty two year of being inuktitut nameless, i became nuvaqqi, as my inuk name. in a way, it felt childish.

Its not that people from Pang are ashamed to be inuk, actually, i think we are just too inuk to have an inuktitut name. We've never felt we needed them to have one ourselves and we were inuit to begin with and didn't need strengthening with a name. and its not that we are not proud of our namesakes, we just know them by heart and never feel the need to flaunt or be more inuk about it. it just never crosses our minds. if you've met people from Pang. you'll probably notice that we are loud and sometimes obnoxious and probably more proud than anyone.

next time you see me, call me Tommy or Jimmy or i could create my new hillbilly name: Tom Jim or Jim Tom.

October 21 - 26, 2011

2011-10-29T23:31:00.002-04:00

There were the three of us,
my cousin my father and myself.
well, we left on a friday morning
it wasn't all that cold.
the anchor was stuck in the mud
and we couldn't take it out for a long while
when we finally got going
we realized about twenty kilometers out
that we forgot our ammunition box
had to go back to pang
and used up an extra hour doing so
and we finally left again.
it was a clam day when we left.
the next day was windy, pretty windy,
too much to hunt in
so we used out time to fix up the
cabin that my father has,
put in walls painted them,
tiled some of the floor
and went and fetched some water
sunday is sunday,
we rested and
ate some seal that we had caught
on friday afternoon.
now monday: it was windy as hell
around 3 AM my father woke us up,
told us the boat
might be in trouble
and we better check it out
and we did
it was taking in water
my cousin and i rushed to bale the water out
and were lucky to do so in time
and we moved the boat
to a different location
we went back and slept a little
and we fixed up the cabin again
on tuesday,
the world was different
we hunted,
the weather kept getting better and better
and our luck was getting better and better,
and seals were getting mor plentiful by the hour
and we many of them
we entered fiords
and had one person on land
by the mouth of the fiord
waiting for seals
that flee from the boat
and bang, the seal is shot
at this time of the year,
they're fat enough to float
the next day we hunted again
and went back
to pang on a wednesday

i tell this long story for one reason
i spent a lot of time with my father
we had fun together and
worked hard together we laughed together
and ate really good food together
we joked about shooting and
told funny stories
we woke up early each morning
and listened to the radio
we were silent for long times too
and that was as much conversation
as any
we made plans together
about the next day
we speculated on serious issues
we talked about family
most mornings we got up before the sun
wanted to get up

in many ways it was very special
to watch the sun arrive from the east
on an october morning
while there is snow and
the sea is slowly freezing
tea taste extra better
the air is crispier
at the end of each day,
you appreciate that you have a father
On October 26, 2011,
i sat on a toilet
i read a magazine
i was very comfortable
and in middle of the night,
while sleeping i had a cramp
on my left thigh, it hurt as hell

The Cemetery.

2011-09-09T12:04:00.000-04:00

It's right in the middle of townwith white crossessome fadedsome brightright around each graveare rocks, some painted whitesome just the colour of rockssome fadedsome brightwhen i see cemeteries and gravesin moviesthey walk right through the gravewhich we don't do up herei don't know if it's out of respectbut we don't step on gravesthis small towndeals with a lot of paindeath is alwaysjust around the cornerthe sun and clouds aboveairplanes fly right above huge fuel tanks are below the ocean belowthere's always an audience during funeral processionsthe mountains all around uswatch as we bury another bodyIn these past two monthsthe cemeteryhas been busyhas added a good number ofbright new white crosses

The.

2011-08-30T20:05:00.000-04:00

Maybe?
Maybe there is no reason to suggest ideas from my mind,
Maybe there is a time when writing is not very useful,
Maybe writing is just not that worth it when you have something going good,
Maybe when you feel contented?

If i could write songs like Neil Young,
I would do so right now,
Explaining why...
Why writing is as they say,
Best when is comes in bursts,
In whatever ways it comes through,
Negative or positive, it is a way of coping,
Also it can be immensely boring!

This right now, whatever i have is, pretty good.
Living in Ottawa i would think,
"There is so much to write about up there"
Not true.

Actually, I've seen way more noteworthy events and stories
Experiences that i thought i'd really like to write about
But nah! Not true.
I think it has to do with your perceptions and observations
and what your mind is "clouded" with.

What i thought was writing about entrails of animals were
Culturally encouraging and promotions of inuit values
Eating seal livers was too great to not be written about
Hunting with your brothers as blogworthy isn't much true.

What happens is, i think, you actually start realizing
Some stuff are best not being written at all
Just because people say our literacy rate is too low
Does not mean we have to always write about those subjects
Those are best done only through experience
Only by hunting will you actually know what hunting is.

I'm taking the advice of Bukowski on this
And i try to take it seriously
When he says to write only when you feel confident about it
Not that i'm un-confident about my writing
I just want it to be perfect as much as i possibly
Can make it perfect and understandable.

This is it.
this is the
The

One handles truths like dynamite. Literature is one vast hypocrisy, a giant deception, treachery. All writers have concealed more than they revealed.
-Anais Nin

Gangstas of Pang!

2011-07-18T22:36:00.000-04:00

Intro:

just to complete this mission
gots to do a redefinition
along with that
create a whole new nation
full of recognition
along with that
you wanna be part of the creations
designed by a bunch of post-asians?

Left Eye:

Fucking nerds, mothafuckas
making thousands, mothafuckas
driving around in snowmobiles
on a bunch of mothafucking snow piles
going hundreds of miles per hour
using whole lot of power

working for the government, mothafuckas
being great bureaucrats, with no gats,
we ain't no mothafucking rats,
our shirts don't even match
mismatching words, doing hip-hop chords
pretty soon we'll be winning all the awards
we are the town nerds,
making thousands - working our way up to millions
pretty soon eradicating the stupids

Gangstas of Pang mothafuckas
playing with words mothafuckas
not only is it the name of our community
it also has a definition in the fucken dictionary
actually we're nice, not even scary
we're not nervous to do community service
and understand if we're being cursive
we're not trying to be abusive
didn't you know,
there are so many ways of being creative

so here we go

Tommy Tsunami:

redesigning, without compromising
a whole new community
with nerdy brutality
taking in the statistics of mortality
applying them into reality
we'll fucken make you aware
of all this totality
we'll take you on a learning spree
while drinking Tetly tea
our mothafuckin' role model is Mr. T

this town of mountains
has a total of 12 water fountains
located around town
divided into three: kuu akia, up and down
ooohhh, we can be so fucken proud
but that doesn't mean life gets easy
we love our food being greasy
our goal is to be cheesy

a sharp sudden spasm of pain, emotional distress
a sudden brief sharp feeling, as loneliness,
physical pain or hunger, loud as thunder
you see that table? you better get under!
you recognize? imagine the prize and the size
but you won't realize its veil of disguise
you hear the cries? all of 'em out of happiness
not craziness.

Gum baLL MaSheen:

from end to end, we are going to tend the land
raise our hand and let us stand in support of this
whatever it is. I think it would be the easiest

if i were to create gangstas, we'd be the nice gangstas
carrying groceries, being nice to old men and ladies
not doing any damages, picking up the garbages
giving out oranges, trying to learn different languages

Good thing i'm not a rapper huh. Look out Tupac, oh shit, he's dead already. Um, look out Jay Z. I just might take the industry by storm, Pang storm to be more specific.

the end.

Home to Somewhere

2011-07-14T21:58:00.000-04:00

A while back, i wrote about being home and not feeling like it was home.

Sometimes everyone has to correct their words
and i am doing so right now

I have found home.
i don't know which emotion to express
i'm not just happy
or contented
i am pretty excited.

home is the freedom that you find
not just freedom to do anything
but freedom to live.

by living is to be part of something

as much as i tried to be part of something
i never went as far as to be part of a community
and just as everything else, it takes work to live
and as well being part of the community.

what i've realized
is community doesn't come to you
you come to the community.
(i know, it sounds cheesy)

and to have neighbours, even if its just one family
but to visit and live in the same community as your neighbour
is important

i have a neighbour who visits me and i visit him
almost everyday

And its true: visit your parents
go eat with them, everyday if possible
if you can't visit, call them.

and eat with people
go to gatherings if you can

I like it here
not all the time
but an appreciation
that i've never had for it,
something new
has grown inside
wherever that is.

maybe its just a sign of maturity
if it is
its about time it showed up
if its different, or not,
i still appreciate it.

i went home to somewhere

Smokes of Pang.

2011-06-22T00:09:00.000-04:00

i wouldn't call them majestic
but for the sake of it

imagine the mountains of pangnirtung fiord
climbing into the sky
jagged steep
dark nothing but rock

inviting god himself
for a weekend holiday to pang
just to enjoy the view
lets call them majestic
for the sake of it

carved by ice
say the scientist
some by god
say others

whoever made it
was a pure genius
to carve such beauty
very impressive

and if you weren't impressed enough
you have never felt pang winds
until you experience it
and its unique
a one of kind weather
for the sake of it
they're majestic

lately its been
ugly
deadly
this fiord
killing slowly
blackening
a small child's lungs
to the elder
losing her breath

thank you very much hamlet of
pangnirtung
for contributing to the
continuing early causes of
lung related diseases

and for destroying the natural beautiful view we once used to see

Smokes of Pang keep hovering over us
and FUCK i can smell it inside my house

You, Eskimo. You, Qalunaaq.

2011-06-14T16:25:00.000-04:00

You, Eskimo, once mighty hunter
wearing your denim jeans
and Oakley sunglasses
shooting that .223 rifle
with your black rubber boots
and that cigarette hanging
from your mouth

You, Qallunaaq, once mighty farmer
wearing your seal skin pants
and snow goggles
tending your 12X15 acres of farmland
with your Guatemalan sandals
and that straw hanging
from your mouth

oh, the both of you - the two of you
Major differences and Small similarities
both a product of this world
indebted to Earth
Children of tomorrow
both so morally corrupt
just as everyone else

You, Eskimo, reading is not a sin
will not erode your sweet culture
will only help you in the long run
and what is wrong with acquiring
so much knowledge in other languages?

You, Qallunaaq, are not the master
of education and literacy
you should not force your supposed
superiority on us, we are more than
capable of fucking up our own lives!

You, Eskimo and Qallunaaq,
I thank you very much
for this opportunity I have
to work both worlds.

Elvis has yet to leave the building
the fat lady has not written lyrics yet to her song

Pangnirtung Youth Council Book Club

2011-06-09T22:51:00.000-04:00

Or whatever it has to be called.

Hmmm... I'm not really sure where to start.

Should I rejoice? I think I have to. Woohoo. Books. That's where I'll start, from books. I used to have many books. Not anymore. At best I have at least twenty books.

Since I've been living in Pang, I keep wanting books. Shit, I sound like I'm on a high horse, or a born-again Eskimo. I'm not saying books make you smart or make you understand right away, but to have the comfort of books and to be literate increases the joy of self-education. To learn and be amused at what you've learn is awesome. Anyways, I'm sad to say books are not "everywhere" around here.

So, to change that situation, or to try and change that situation, the Pangnirtung Youth Council will provide space to have a book club in Pang. And as part of the goal, a bookshelf has to be filled from top to bottom, to start off the project.

As the collection progresses, it is hoped that there will be reading nights for people of all ages, from the youngest to the oldest, in any language possible.

I'll provide more details as I know more about the club. What time and location and so on.

Any help from anyone will be greatly appreciated and we will try to assist you in every possible way. If you want to help, email me at pangniqtucker@gmail.com.

The benefits are invaluable. A reading society is a responsive society towards itself.

You know, I bet we will start a local newspaper one of these days. reported and read by the people of Pang.

Let's help each other through small acts. Donate a book.

The Harsh Environment?

2011-06-05T16:15:00.001-04:00

This morning, I was watching TV, and while drinking coffee, I watched the channel that Isuma has in the community. It is a very good channel with mostly Inuktitut as the language and made mostly by Inuit. And I am not sure what the show was about, but there was a statement made by some Inuk, stating that the Arctic is a "harsh environment."

It is accurate to say that most people consider the Arctic to be a harsh environment, but i have to doubt that the original people first said the words "harsh" and "extreme" and "hard." I want to point out, how we take advantage of and how it deteriorates our sense of home and how words can affect how we view who we are and where we come from.

In a introduction by Soffia Gudmundsdottir, Executive Secretary, Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment, Environmental Programme, she states: "Historically, the harsh environment, difficulty of access to resources, and scattered nature of the population patterns has restricted rapid development and communication in the circumpolar Arctic region."

Even Arctic College, on a publication aptly titled, which made me smile, "Guidelines for Working with Inuit Elders", it states: "How to survive in a harsh environment, the study of the land and sea as well as the movements of animals, effects of the environment and the whole system of seasonal activities have to be taught. It should be a high priority now since very few of our knowledgeable elders remain."

And last but not least, from www.taloyoaknunavut.ca, it states this: "The arctic is one of the harshest environments you can find on the earth. Still, the Inuit and their ancestors have lived here for thousands of years. They built homes and developed perfectly adapted technologies from the limited resources available to feed and clothe themselves."

What these statements reflect is the fact that most people consider the Arctic to be harsh, or is an often used word describing the region.

And while I was watching TV this morning, I was reminded of Malcolm X and what he thought and said, why African Americans have a low self-esteem and what brought that.

He says: "Having complete control over Africa, the colonial powers of Europe had projected the image of Africa negatively... Jungle savages, cannibals, nothing civilized... We didn't want anybody telling us anything about Africa, much less calling us Africans. In hating Africa and in hating the Africans, we ended up hating ourselves...

"We hated our heads, we hated the shape of our nose... we hated the colour of our skin, hated the blood of Africa that was on our veins.

"We didn't have confidence in another black man... We didn't think a black man could do anything except play some horns, but in serious things, where our food, clothing, shelter, and education were concerned, we turned to the man. We never thought in terms of bringing these things into existence for ourselves, because we felt helpless. What made us feel helpless was our hatred for ourselves...

"It made us feel inferior; it made us feel inadequate; made us feel helpless. And when we fell victims to this feeling of inadequacy or inferiority or helplessness, we turned to somebody else to show us the way."

I'm not saying Inuit have a low-self-esteem, but if we do, can it be attributed to how we view not only ourselves but also our homes and our land? Is it due to people and ourselves telling us that we live a harsh life, which in turn, further harshens our lives?

If Malcolm X is true, then what Inuit are going through and been saying has to change our image and attitudes towards out land and lives.

The reason this is so strong of a concern for me is that i get uneasy when we label our environment as harsh. Yes, its colder than most parts, and yes we have a hard time travelling on it, but i would have to contest that it is hard, harsh, and extreme. It is the most beautiful piece of land on Earth, weather we have -50 weather, or that we don't see the sun, in some cases, for three months.

What Malcolm X has to say might be true in out case for our land and how we label ourselves as inhabitants of this land. Do you really want to be housed in a harsh living room? Do you want the people you love to label their land as extreme?

I cannot say if this is true, but in my experience, i have never heard of an older Inuk say that their environment is harsh. they might say it is tough, but harsh in itself, i suspect not. If you listen to an elder pray before a meal, listen to them, and if you understand Inuktitut, listen to the way they frame gratitude, theirs is always a context of animals and land and how they provide.

If we want, as people, to rise up from feeling that we are not doing our own thing in the land we live in, we have to change the way we treat words. Words, as they say, should not be taken lightly. If we are going to have to choose between governments and land claims, i think choosing and saying the right words about ourselves and how we label the land has to change not with the "outside" world, but with Inuit ourselves as well.

I want to know what you think?

On days like these

2011-06-04T17:01:00.002-04:00

Its ten degrees celsius.
we now have a ride,
a green neon chrysler
and its the coolest of cars
in this town.

I got a package
a blue package from iqaluit,
full of books and
plates and there were even
cotton swabs

it is a very good weekend so
far.

these are the kinds of days that
i remember most from
my childhood.

the snow is melting
streams are running
the roads are full of
pot-holes

but its the books that delight
the curiosity
the creativity
and just the smell of books
is great.

The Revolution Will... You Know... Not Have... Legs On Dinner Tables

2011-05-30T22:00:00.000-04:00

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag
and Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.
- Gil Scott-Heron - first line of the poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."

- the last line of the poem:

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

I'll give you a scary thought, well, it is scary to me:

Imagine people actually follow this blog and actually look forward to a new post. A person, maybe from Russia, Korea, Iraq, France, Germany or even from Nunavut it self, which this blog have received views from, actually read and save a copy of what I've written.

I know.. I know... its ridiculous to think such a thing.... but if you are that such person, i have news for you. I have a place to call my own. A place i pay money for, which houses my body and soul and consumes all my excretions and supplies H20 for myself. And Heat. Electricity. And End tables.

Since Thursday May 26, 2011, my favourite number has been changed to: Eight Hundred and Thirty Two. Also my new favourite letter is: B. Which combined to mathematical precision create my house number. 832B. There has to be a biblical, or Egyptian or maybe even philosophical importance to the number. I have absolutely nothing to complain about the place. Nothing. Even if it were not furnished and bare. I'd still be thankful. And never in the history of my 29 years on this planet, I have never been this thankful to a government... until now. Thank You. Umm, Nu...Naa...Vut... (sighs) got that over with, now back to the good news.

Because I am not very good at picking out curtains, I have unmatched coloured curtains, which i decided upon after 20 minutes of consideration, which was mostly to being traumatized by the prices of simple and flimsy curtains. I bet its not very hard to use the sewing machine and make curtains, but these were probably made by an honest Ontarian, who works at a friendly factory that pays just above minimum wage instead of a Filipino child in a sweatshop, which i think explains, the cost of the curtains. And that Nutrition North, unfortunately, doesn't cover black and brown curtains.

(I hope you have a great sense of humour)

The cable was installed in record time. If there is a super cable man, this guy was it. almost the very same hour. As if a silhouette of a TV was projected above 832B and the cable man sprang to his uniform and tadaa... I came home to cable TV.

If you are from the south and are reading this from the south, your jaw is going to drop in 1 second, soon after you read this: I pay over a hundred dollars for a 5Gb bandwidth limit per month. But also, I am very thankful for this, and so should you, that I get to write and post on this blog.

I also have a great view. If this community were greatly developed and we had millionnaires and had luxurious hotels, the view I have would be a million dollar view. But currently, it is a thousand dollar view because that is what I pay for this privilege.

Which brings me to the end. The place that I rent has furniture part of the package. I had to assemble a few things and one of them was a dining table, complete with chairs. You can also adjust the size of the table to a round one, which would be great for a poker night, I thought. I opened it and lo and behold, no legs. It is one big leg, right in the middle. It looks beautiful in the picture and I was looking forward to eating on it. But I am not even upset. I'll gladly wait for it.

If Mr Scott-Heron's first line of his poem is true, I hope they hold it off for at least six months, the revolution that is. I want to settle a little bit, get my couch groove on and maybe pay and help reduce the 200 million dollars housing corporations deficit. I'll gladly pay for that right now, in exchange for this place.

I'll be part of the revolution but let me revolutionize this house to my comfort first. And before television goes, let's think of the efficient super hero cable man, who will televise anything except the revolution. He has a job to do.

Let this be written in the annals of history.

NS Alumni Association of Pangnirtung

2011-05-18T00:37:00.000-04:00

I've been having this idea since June of last year, during or right after the Nunavut Sivuniksavut's 25th anniversary, held in Iqaluit. There were many messages talked about and ideas passed around. From the start, i never thought of this on my own, i talked to friends who went to NS.

I don't really want to talk about NS too much, the programs speaks for itself but of the students, i want to bring up. Not to glorify the alumni of the program, i would like to point out that, you as a graduate, has resources that not many people have in Nunavut: each other, with the same understanding and knowledge and also passion to learn and teach many aspects of Nunavut's history and future possibilities, however wild and glamorous they might be. It is this kind of passion and enjoyment that will, in the long run, assist Inuit and others, in hopefully creating peaceful lives.

With that stated, lets try to look at the number of alumni in our community. I know that Pang has many alumni, from the first ever class to new graduates, that fit the paragraph above. I think many of us even have great jobs and pretty good careers coming up in the future.

What can we as alumni do to help our communities and NS, the program itself? How much benefit can we bring to each other and others around the community, especially younger children who will need a future to look forward to. How can we maximize our understanding of community building and implement such knowledge?

Well, maybe we can meet sometime? Maybe one day, we can sit down and talk about possibilities and realities? Maybe we can come up with any kind of idea that will make our communities more peaceful and attractive to live and learn from? What can we do, as individuals and as a group, to mobilize ourselves to help our communities? these possibilities can be countless if we think of them up.

Let me know what you think.

you can email me at pangniqtucker@gmail.com to express ideas and possibilities.

i think it is due time we do something, anything.
*radio adresses regarding community issues in conjunction with community organizations or governments
*Hold trade fairs, career fairs, cultural fairs and so on
*Help people with any administrative work that will help them create jobs or gain knowledge

these are small points that i have made up. imagine all of us pooled together. imagine what we can come up with.

The Culture of Illiteracy and Fear of Reading

2011-05-17T16:40:00.000-04:00

well, i actually hope people of all kinds read this post, especially if you are Inuk and/or a northerner of some many years.

here it goes.

I have been in Pang for the past four months now and i would like to offer an explanation as to why i hardly write on my blog anymore. It is pure and simple. There just isn't a culture for reading in this town and i imagine other Inuit communities as well, where you develop a love for books or magazines that broaden your view on anything.

And then there is the other side of the story. Not all people are like this but one of the comments i have received, when he saw me reading a book was, "do you really think books really make you learn? Don't you think you would rather do something than sitting around and reading? Is it not such a qallunaaq thing to do, to read." There is fear that you, as a reader, are losing your culture if you keep on reading english books and that you are more interested in the qalunaaq world than i am at my own culture. Which is far from the truth.

This fear, that many Inuit have about losing culture and language, is and has paralyzed my zeal and passion for books and writing. You just don't see people here reading and if they are, they are reading Jim Bell's opinionated editorial pieces or the bible. You never see books on bookshelves, except they're filled with porcelain polar bears and angels, or knick knacks.

I'm no longer going to say what is good and acceptable anymore. This is not acceptable is it? Should we be afraid of books and if we are afraid of them, under what grounds? Is it because they're in english and have western ideas? Is the snowmobile not a western idea? are we afraid of it and how practical is it? Don't you think books are like snowmobiles for your mind, useful for something, like hunting for that definition or that idea?

I mean, people here are willing to pay 120.00 for a 26 ounces of alcohol, but not willing to spend 5.00 on "Bambi" or "Cinderella" or "where the wild things are". People here are willing to spend there child tax benefits on a gram of weed for 50.00 but cannot fathom to spend 20.00 on Bill Bryson, Faulkner, National Geographic magazine, or even any sort of novel or non fiction.

And what of the library? I have been there a couple times and in one instance where i opened a book, the last take out of the said book was in 1997. I'm not criticizing the library, i love those places, but if not utilized, what is the use?

I am not trying to lecture anyone about this, i am just merely writing down my observations.

And i think i have to admit this fault: that many of us do not try to get kids to read. we fail at this from the onset of children's love for new knowledge. Also, we have to admit the relatively new notion of knowledge coming from books, rather than our elders or parents. Our history tells us that Inuit never had a writing system and that knowledge has been passed down through oral teachings and lessons. There is also the fear of losing out language to english and most of the books are in english, so i can see the apprehension people have and i don't blame them.

But, honestly, we cannot stop that from making us read and becoming an avid literary culture. We can definitely produce books and that can be easy enough. What we have to overcome is the fear that we are losing our culture. you cannot lose culture, it merely changes, unless we all die, thats is when our culture dies. As of right now, we are in the midst of some changes, they may seem enormous right now, but in the long run, i think, we will realize that we never did lose anything, we merely changed our opinions on various matters and how we react to them.

Just so that you understand why i am hardly writing now, this is a big reason. The other reason is that, I have been going out hunting whenever possible, when the weather allows and if nothing happens. Seals, fish, ptarmigans and geese are available right now. Its spring and the weather is mild enough to be outside for hours on end, where computers don't necessarily work in. We also get a free tan, courtesy of mother nature and mr. sun.

All i am really hoping for is that I'll get over the issues as to why i am not writing as much as i used to. I hope to get over this cultural mishap that we think anything new coming to our part of the world is all bad influence and is breaking down our culture to smithereens. We have to stop fearing literacy and become literacy ourselves.

Soon, in five years I hope, to say that we are the story and the story was made by us. One day we will embrace books on our shelves. One day, i hope that we are the Hemingway of literacy. That we produce not just opinions, but scientific history, not only relating to our world, but to the whole earth and beyond.

there is an article in Nunatsiaq News about Greenlandic scientist, who happen to be Inuit, where they urge inuit to become scientist and that knowledge is knowledge, regardless of who holds it. I think this is very apt to what i was talking about except he is talking about science and not books. But he says:

"Last July, Rosing told delegates at the ICC general assembly in Nuuk that Inuit should change their attitude about there being “two kinds of knowledge” in the world, traditional environmental knowledge and western scientific knowledge — because there is only one kind of knowledge.

“Knowledge is knowledge — whoever has it,” Rosing said.

Rejecting what science has to say can be “an impediment for the Arctic to be heard in the world,” he said.

Inuit should play by “the same rules” as everyone else when it comes to understanding the world, Rosing said.

“it’s putting you in a corner if you go on and say you’re really, really special,” Rosing told Nunatsiaq News during the recent Arctic climate change and pollution conference in Copenhagen."

by rejecting the world, we are rejecting our possibilities.

i hope you understand.

sorry, this is an apology

2011-05-04T13:01:00.000-04:00

As in almost every apology, you have to think it through correctly to make sure you don't have to apologize again for the same thing the next time. So i have tried to think this through and how am i going to apologize appropriately for the lack of written subject in the last two months.

I am sorry for not informing you that i am an employee of the government of nunavut now. i have been under their payroll for a month now. I go to a pretty big blue office, where the majority of the employees are Inuit women with big trucks.

i am sorry for not informing you that i have tried to go out hunting as much as possible for a man that has to ask to borrow a snowmobile. I have borrowed my brothers snowmachine a couple times. so i have caught a seal pup, a fish with a kakivak and a few ptarmigans.

on another note, that does not require an apology, i have not read a new book in over two months. you should really pity for that. books are really not part of the culture up here, which is a shame really. Books are new friends that you can share and keep for a long time. actually, they never talk back and never insult you.

this is tommy, hopefully next time i will not wait for a long time until i write again.

how one person can

2011-03-13T20:33:00.000-04:00

have you heard?
the MLA representing pang?
i mean its pretty embarrassing
going all over the news and whatnot

sure i get it, people get into trouble all the time
but a person who is supposed to be more responsible
than anyone else from pang is not doing his job at all

we should step up and demand of his removal
any elected person should not be doing such shit as he did
it's embarrassing as having all of the people
of pang having their pants pulled down

don cherry

2011-03-13T20:26:00.000-04:00

i hope don cherry will read this one day
because i think he would find it funny
and suiting as well.

i was watching hockey last night
started seeing don cherry and his usual rants
and it reminded me of inuit political organizations

you see, mr. cherry likes to talk and talk
opinions are his trademarks and he has a lot of them
and he is always mostly negative
accusing people and thinks he is always right

and that is how inuit org and the government are a lot like
they love to talk and accuse and saying shit that doesn't
always make sense

we have to stop and realize what is going on
look at ron maclean
he is usually calm and usually brings things back to
normal and tries to calm things down
he is levelled and listens

maybe we as inuit should stop and think before
we go on making accusations and mouth off

Useful Information

2011-03-01T22:18:00.000-05:00

Since i have been in Pang for the last month
i have a been reading and watching movies
and playing video games.

i have no such thing as a hurrying
or being rushed to do anything
just cruising by and eating and doing
other bodily functions.

yes, its true, i do get bored and i look
for something to do and sometimes i find it.

The last time i stayed at this house
for so long was when i housesat at the age of 16
and i barely leave sometimes

i sometimes congratulate myself and pat myself in the back
because i used to hate this place, dreaded it
and look at me now, i even go to the co-op and northern
and once i've been to the post office

for the sake of doing something,
i ask my father if there is something to do
and yes, of course, he has something to do
like make a qamutik, from scratch and i help in anyway
and after the last nail i picked out all the wood scraps and wood shavings

or this other time, i made an ulu, or
finished it part ways and gave up on it.

or the times i played video games with my qangia
and killed russians and zombies

or the time i go sliding with my little niece
and she says wee

but most times i just read a book or wikipedia
and today i learned something about the
roman catholic church's bureaucracy

or about this plane that flew right around the earth
in ninety something hours

or how gaddafi is trying ever so hard to cling to power
and how mubarak fell from his power hold

or about nardwuar the human serviette who asks questions to
celebrities and how some don't like him

and i even make lunch sometimes

but what is useful about this you ask?

its useful because i have a dried apple core on my
dresser, its been there since yesterday
or my dirty laundry on the floor collecting dust
or that my father told me to wipe the grime off my kamiks

this is more useful than anything else in the world
it matters more than people fighting for democracy
it matters more because it doesn't do anything
and things that don't do anything don't get enough credit

sometimes in life, no matter what people tell you
you just have to do nothing for a while
and i can give you that advice because i am really good at it
doing nothing and been doing for a while

from pang,
yours sincerely
a guy doing nothing

there was once

2011-02-13T21:19:00.000-05:00

there was once a little girl
who loved to twirl
twirl and swirl she did in snow
she made sure she never froze a toe

there was once a little boy
who loved wooden toys
played with them all day long
he made sure they were never gone

there was once a big man
who always had a great tan
he was outside most of the time
he never tasted a lime

there was once a big woman
who had never heard of the romans
she was always busy
but always took it easy

there was once a medium sized dog
about the size of a medium sized hog
this dog had that shape of a log
and rolled around on a wet bog

there was once a bird
who was always careful not to step on a turd
this bird always played with a broom
sweeping and cleaning the room

there was once a girl who loved to twirl
there was once a boy who loved wooden toys
there was once a big man who always had a great tan
there was once a big woman who never heard of the romans
there was once a medium sized dog about the size of a medium sized hog
there was once a bird who was always careful not to step on a turd

these creatures never had much in common
but i made them and they come from the same place
now they all live under the same roof
and once in awhile they acted like goofs

just to pass the time, they acted in a play
and played with the DVD player so they can replay
their favourite movie
maybe?

the niceness of inuit

2011-02-11T21:24:00.001-05:00

i was listening to the radio, or rather my parents were listening to the radio, which is on every single day, when an announcement went on about food. if you are from pang, you'll understand this, but one of the hunters announced that anyone can pick up seal meat from their place, as long as they bring a bag.

this is not amazing to Inuit. i lived in ottawa for a number of years and i lived in iqaluit for the summer and no one ever put out a notice that anyone can pick up any food for free. actually in iqaluit, they sold food, country food. in ottawa they have shelters that offer food but they consider it for poor people. but in pang, and maybe smaller communities as well, they give out food all the time.

this got me thinking. i have heard on the news that inuit have the lowest number of volunteers in canada, or i should say nunavut, which is mostly made up of inuit anyways. and people probably thought nunavummiut were such bad people or were lazy. but what these statisticians forgot that inuit will not, let me point that out, will never brag about volunteering or giving out food. it is degrading to do so. and these information collectors forgot a lot of essential details about the lives of people up here, which is niceness is a given.

people will not point out the number of hours they did, visiting elders, which usually means helping one of them one way or another, will never point out that they gave caribou, seal, fish or any country food to anyone. they will never point out that after someone, anyone in the community has passed away, people visit the grieving family for a number of days afterwards, will never point out that they fund raise for family members to go to the funeral which can go up to thousands of dollars.

volunteering is for people, i think, and especially in the south, that are to me, trying to win compassion points, if you will. and i might be making a generalization, but i'll take the risk, they are usually rich people that feel they need to "help" the community. i am not saying they should stop, but i think they help for the wrong reasons.

as for living up here, they just do it. it amazes me to hear it on the radio for people to say "pick up food from my place" and the do it for anyone because they have been told by their parents or grandparents to do so. people don't consider this volunteering but it is. it is helping people and people don't need organizations to be nice up here.

each family is its own salvation army. each family is a sally annes. each family is a humane society, giving out pets and so on. each family is a philanthropic family. each family is christianity, buddhism or islam, they all want to help in one way or another.

i have wrote in the past that maybe inuit are too nice for their own good, but i am glad we are. in this world where there is greed everywhere and there is war and famine everywhere, inuit are nice to other people, in general. don't let me paint a utopia here, because there is a lot of shit that goes on around here, but inuit don't just let go of these people that do these shit, they try to help them. and that is a whole lot of volunteerism there. in many ways are just so helpful.

next time before the north is put into a light of non-helpful society, they should hear and learn from the generosity of people here, it makes you proud. they should go to a house and ask for food, they'll get it, i guarantee it.

Bring a White Guy to Work Day

2011-02-08T21:32:00.000-05:00

Inuit organizations in nunavut
have decided on a new policy
and will have to be obeyed as of this year
the employees of the organizations
such as NTI, QIA, KIA, KIA,
and some government departments
will have to live through starting
next week on monday

in their infinite wisdom as
representatives of the original people
of this land, the presidents of said organizations
and ministers of the departments,
along with the premier of the territory
have decided that white people are
excluded in too many policies
and that their rights are not
considered enough in decisions

so to appease their displeasure
and to make cross-roads in
race relations in nunavut
"bring a white guy to work"
has been initiated

on this day, you are encouraged to
wear a tie and a suit and kakis
or kamiks and a parka and if possible
black rubber boots and only on this day
will you be able to carry a rifle
to work and each office is required that they
serve many country foods and that all
have to be both raw and cooked
there will be free tea and crackers and some
palaugaaq and jam and peanut butter

on this day, inuit, especially
have to be extra courteous, more than usual,
and will have to teach any white guy
how to kunik,
the proper way of jigging
how to stir sugar into your mug properly
proper inuktitut words
how to count with your hands starting from the pinky
proper ways of shaking one's hand
how to remove snot without the use of tissue
proper ways of shopping at wal-mart
how to browse the internet at work without getting caught
and so on
and as an employee of these places
you have free will to do any other inuit things

on this day, these offices will have to
play inuktitut music
hang encouraging posters depicting
inuit successes, such as
jordin tootoo without an alcoholic beverage in his hands
zacharias kunuk with his camera d'or
leona agluukkaq with stephen harper
if they can find one: an inuk millionaire
any inuk artist with a white collector will also do

each white person will have to
refrain from expressing his or her views the whole day
also refrain from using inuktitut words unless told
will refrain from taking notes
actually all notebooks and pens will be confiscated
also you are only to speak when spoken to

the federal government will provide all the
necessary funds for this event

for nunavut government employees
this will constitute as your IQ day

for inuit organization employees
this will constitute a way to reflect on your views

and if you are not white or an inuk
it will be your day off

Tommy of the Baby Seal Clan

2011-02-07T19:44:00.000-05:00

Being an Inuk is strange.
i think its stranger than fiction
you can't make up the stuff that happens
past or present and the future

either as a group or as individuals
we have been made fun of
we have been desecrated
been portrayed as savage or noble
been given names and given ourselves names

but we should not take this so seriously
and we should not always trust
the governments and organizations
and especially people who say
they have good intentions

i don't come with good intentions
i come as i am and i try to be as i am
but its always hard, especially
being an inuk and being lumped
into other aboriginal groups
and as another minority group

here is a case and has happened
more than once to me and probably
to other inuit as well

i was at a bar in ottawa with friends of mine
and these african sounding people
(i don't know which country they came from,
as inuit we are not as nosey as others)
came up to us and asked us if
we were indians and if we have chiefs

and just to play with them
we said we were and they asked us which
clan we were from
and i had the great vocabulary
of saying we are from the
baby seal clan

and one of my friends pointed to me
and said i am the chief and i inhaled my smoke deeply
to give myself a sense of importance
and they shook my hand
and i told them the two guys with me
are my bodyguards
and we don't get to have fun so much
because we represent our nation

and they bought all of it and they shook
our hands again and and look genuinely impressed
that we were real indians and we looked it too

another case is even by an indian
whom i met when i was at a conference of some sort
where she asked
how we get our sweet grass to burn
and how we get out traditional tobacco
and she was really confused when i said
we don't associate with first nations
and consider ourselves different from them

and she looked offended by this
that i had the guts to say
we are different from her
even as much i tried to explain
that our languages are incomprehensible
to each other and that we call ourselves
inuit and not first nations

this written piece does not have a point or a purpose
i just felt like writing
it is just my rambling

although my only purpose was to make you smile
and if i did not succeed
i am sorry

Growing up Pang

2011-02-04T17:49:00.000-05:00

I don't like this community a lot sometimes but it's my hometown and it always brings me back here. the reasons are different each time, either death or to celebrate something or to go out hunting. and even though i don't like it a lot sometimes, it always brings me to my bare bones and usually gets me to think about my childhood and how lucky we are to have grown up here.

now when i was kid, i spent a huge time of it being out on the land with my family. and not just my family but it was my cousins and my parents cousins or just a whole lot of people. we usually were in one camp, maybe up to ten tents and even sometimes more. and we all hunted and helped hunt in one way or another. it used to be a big part of the community when i was growing up to see your peers not show up to school because they were out hunting. and to prepare ourselves to be hunters, which including myself didn't turn out to be, we usually had either slingshots or BB guns to use to hunt small birds.

but before i go there, let me point out that Pang has grown quite a bit since i was kid. new houses are springing up and new jobs have been produced through the years. the fishing industry has grown and and the weather has even changed.

i remember that we used to bring slingshots to schools and even without going home, we used to look for small birds everywhere and usually trekking up to an hour or two to go to the dump where it was flushed with qupanuaqs and lemmings. man were they fun to hunt. usually each day one or two of us would bring home a wounded bird to take care of as a pet. but they always died a couple days later, prompting us to go out again, day after day and practicing our shots.

and we went both in bad or good weather. we played outside so much that our parents would even send us outside during a blizzard. maybe they got so tired of us or they just saw the value of being and experiencing weather of all sorts. there is one memory i have that jumps out very sharply. we were burying ourselves in blizzard conditions in snow and we'd try and find the other people that were buried. we were never careful and we could have been buried so quickly and never been found, but there was never any casualties.

i don't know if kids still do this but we all used to have small skidoos and small boats with strings attached to them, so we'd go out into the pressure ice or tide and also kill anything that moved. the krill were the fish that we caught and the kanajuq's were our seal or whales depending on their size. and of course our parents let us do just that, nine, ten and eleven year olds out there alone. and we were good kids, not this not-listen-to-your parents kids. we did stuff for them and sometimes they even sent us to do dangerous chores. it was such an innocent world.

such as these activities. parents sent us with ice pick as little kids and we had to go pick up ice from the river just because they craved ice water. they all had running water by this time but they craved the old days where they had ice water. so they sent us.

or sent us fishing during the summer because the sun was out all hours. and of course some of us got caught when the tide was coming up and were stranded in a rock until you got brave enough to either swim or go up top your chest in freezing water. and some of us were lucky to catch fish and come home three or four in the morning all smiles. some got snatched in their fishing hooks too and got some pretty good cuts. we also went looking for fishing hooks into popular fishing places and even to raging river waters just so that we can get new hooks. i don't know if any of us got swept away but i know that some of us got really good fishing hooks, just to lose again the next day.

snowmobiles were good back then. and they didn't seem all that heavy. although they weren't as efficient as they are now on gas. and the leather seat was different, not even sure if it was real leather, but it used to get sticky during hot spring days. i remember having black streaks on my butt on spring days because the seat were all black and sticky, unless your father put some sort of protection as a canvas on to it. and i think the qamutiit used to be longer back then because i come from big family and we'd fit six children into them and be gone for a month or even longer.

and when it was school time. we used to visit all the new teachers. and there would be many kids visiting the new teachers. so for at least a month or two, the teachers would get little inuit children visiting them every single day and asking for candy or cookies. we had no sense of shame back then and we all enjoyed it. if they were not necessarily nice teachers, come winter, when they were holed up, we throw rocks at the house and run like hell. it was our version of leaving dog shit in a paper bag and ringing the door bell, except we didn't ring the door bell and just tried to annoy the hell out of the teacher. and teachers back then stayed for more than a year in spite all of that.

and we didn't shower or take a bath for at least a good week. i remember that a few of us didn't want to take our socks off when it was time to do some foot paint on a big piece of paper, because we all had dirty feet. and our heads would be nice and shiny from grease because we hadn't bothered to wash them. and we didn't even have lice outbreaks or anything like that. we moved around too much to have lice.

street hockey was played every hundred feet on the roads. and we didn't have teams, so there'd be kids of up to thirty all chasing one puck. but we all knew who was our teammates and who they pretended to be. mario lemieux, gretzky, jarri kurri, mark messier and so on. and we had real wooden sticks. it got so cold sometimes, that the soft pucks would turn out to be real hard pucks and more than a few of us got lucky enough to get hit in the face and get shiners.

and we played with fire too. so during the summer many of us would collect wood from all over town and used them for firewood. it was as if we were garbage men for the town because i remember having a hard time finding some good wood to burn. and get this, some of us were lucky enough to get some gasoline or naphtha from our fathers and we'd have real shows of fire. and some of us even used to steal bullets from our fathers and also used them to make our own fireworks. sometimes it sure got scary and dangerous. despite all of that, we survived up to this day.

come to think of it, it is kinda scary that we are the ones to run our communities and schools and are teachers now. we own boats and skidoos and rifles and some of us have kids.

i hope kids today are going to think their childhood was as awesome as ours.

the way i see nunavut sometimes

2011-02-01T21:51:00.000-05:00

if you get offended by this, you either have no sense of humour or you are way too overly patriotic to have some sense in you.

nunavut is a very sensitive subject for some people and for those people, you have to look at the big picture and see nunavut as a very new idea, a new entity and a new bureaucratic mess. or you can look at it my way and have a laugh with me.

nunavut is going to be 12 this year.

i was talking to a group of students in ottawa and i was telling them not to take everything too seriously, especially the idea of identity and the idea of nunavut. i call nunavut an idea because the current condition it is in, it is just forming into something. it is not even a thing yet, just a something. so i told the students that there are always going to be people that are going to tell them to work for or on behalf of nunavut and to think twice before they do.

i used a metaphor that is kind of rude. i told them the way i see nunavut right now is: it is a twelve year old girl who thinks she is grown up. at this moment, think of those white girls who show up on jerry springer. she is like a prostitute that uses anything and everything to get money or to get her needs met. she will cry, she will trick you, she will undoubtably make you uncomfortable.

nunavut is a twelve year old prostitute that thinks she is all grown up when after all she is just a little girl that need taking care of, that needs to be scolded and she needs to be taught some respect. she needs to be taught basic manners.

and the current news about devolution. she is an twelve year old girl that is asking for an engagement ring from a white man twice her age but the white man does not want to marry her and uses her, nunavut, for her apartment (land) because the apartment (nunavut) is very nice in a prime real estate. she won't get married and because its illegal but the white man will keep her for exploitation.

so, nunavut is a twelve year old prostitute, very a troubled little girl.

we have to take out time with inuit and nunavut. any form of government needs time to form and mature. i don't think we have to hurry and keep out expectations low. if we keep them high we are just going to keep getting disappointed.

i hope you have a sense of humour and smiled and laughed as i did tonight.

what is cold?

2011-01-30T19:48:00.000-05:00

ok, i have never wanted to really write anything about weather
but this weather has prompted me to
because its damned cold

now, i have been in the south where weather is despised
all through the newspapers and television
they treat it as if they can change it

the forecast are very disappointing
always talking its cold and or freezing
and when it is warm, they love it.

i have been up in iqaluit and pang for the past year
and people don't or rarely complain about it
and actually they rarely look forward to the warmness

and its cold up here now and its expected
actually they are appreciative of it
because they know that the cold is good for them

good for the community and good for the land
it will allow the hunters to travel wide and far
and they actually want it to last long because
the ice will thicken up and means the hunting
season is going to be longer

and the cold has made me think
about the past and imagine how it would have felt
in caribou skins and would be complain?

what is cold to you?

Hey Yu And Du Marier Regular please

2011-01-29T20:37:00.001-05:00

i haven't made fun of myself in a while or laugh at myself. so here it goes:

Hey Yu.

i arrived to Ottawa the month before and started working a project with Nunavut Sivuniksavut and helped out in anyways I can. the students at NS have an annual performance at the Winterlude Festivities and this was that time. Ottawa had a huge amount of snow and it kept snowing that month. Like said, i came from the north just a month before, so I had a nice yarn hat that i still wear and nice leather mitts that i also still wear. i had just gotten my eyeglasses.

the student were performing and i went to the back of the audience because i had seen the shows over and over again by that time, so i didn't need to watch them drumming and throat singing. I went to the back and stood. People walked by me and gave me that interesting look every-time they passed. I tried to stay away from people and smoke my cigarette.

this white man, came up to me and looked at me like he knew me. He smiled and he said, "hey you!"
i said, "hey, not a bad performance huh?!?!" thinking that he is just being nice and thinking he just wants to talk. He smiled at me and said, "yes, very nice performance, i've seen them throat sing twice now, did you hear them?"
i said, "Yes, all day too." He looked kinda surprised when i said that.

a lady went up to him and she was obviously enjoying the cultural show the students were putting on. the white man said to the lady as soon as she walked up to us, "Look its Yu, he's out here too."
The lady looked embarrassed and said, "that is not Yu. He looks like one of the student."

that is when i realized that the man had been calling me Yu, like some Chinese name and I thought he said "Hey you", not "hey Yu" as he had said it. He thought i was some Chinese dude named Yu and he said he was sorry. i said it was alright. And he had the guts to say, "you guys all look the same anyways." I almost got offended but i figured i got a good story out of and smiled them goodbye.

DuMarier Regular please?

It was 5:00PM, i was anxious to get home and eat my shawarma. First, i had a long day and it was wet outside as it had been snowing all day and i had to take the bus. i searched through my pockets for a cigarette, to get my nicotine fix. Nothing!

there is a corner store just a few feet from the bus stop, so i went in. but just before i went in, i saw the bus i was to take, the #95. so i hurried in and i was the only customer and in a hurried voice i said "duMarier Regular please?"

The cashier was an asian man and he looked at me with a confused, small eyes look and said right away, "Sorry I'm not chinese!"
i had to think quick, why did he just say that? then i realized that in my hurried voice and my good looking chinese looks, i had fooled the man to thinking that i was chinese when i asked for "dumarierregularplease?" He thought i was speaking chinese.

i got embarrassed and said in a slow monotone voice: DU MARIER REGULAR PLEASE?
and he gave me the pack and i left the door and stepped on to my bus, the #95.

The Happy Beggar

2011-01-29T20:34:00.002-05:00

The story is from 2009

this is just a story, not true, some are from my experience and some are made up:

Have you realized the people who have the greatest sense of humour are usually people whose had it the toughest in life?

I have an easy life. I grew up in a nourishing and supportive family. I was never hungry, i always had something to eat. I never got abused. never seen my parents drinking. they bought me the greatest gifts, year after year. every single day, i was told that i am loved! i finished high school and went on school trips to places like Scotland. I had a snowmobile most of the time. Heck, I've had rifles since i was five years old. I have a life that is devoid of struggles, i have the most loving family this world had to offer. I can talk to my father like he is my best friend. simply put, I am loved and i've never really had it hard.

Remember my story and how easy i've had it! Remember?

I am living in an environment that produces immense amount of prosperity and possess-able materials. I live in an environment that produces building materials and they keep on building. Since i have moved to the city, new buildings have been going up every year. I pass by people who wear expensive clothes and can afford Mercedes' and Land rovers and even Hummers. I walk and talk to people who own million dollar buildings. i know people in the city that will die a nice death on a bed beside their families and loved ones. They will afford a $3000 tombstone with a very self-supporting epitaph:
Here lies John Doe
He never heard of Death Row
He never lifted a hoe
He always wanted more
and he'll keep getting more
even if god never kept a score!

remember the environment? You can throw money in this town and it can support thousands of people. the money can buy thousand of cup-o-noodle soups, thousands of slices of bread, thousands of mmm, mmm, mm, so good Campbell's soups, thousands of shoes and boots, thousands of mitts and canada goose down jackets for all the needy this city has made suffer.

I am not very rich right now, actually, it is hard right now but I have it much better than most people in the city.

Yesterday, i received a cheque for $9.75. I cashed it and it turned out to be cash. i stepped out of the bank and there he was. Sitting and leaning on to a newspaper stand, with a black blanket around his shoulders, he smiled and laughed. He laughed and said, "I've actually taught you when you were in grade three, i have made you lunch when you were hanging out with my son, i have given you pepsi and now look at you, wearing a "Pang hat" with Sony headphones, mitts that your mother made and that jacket probably cost you $200, you even have a MEC backpack."

He laughed some more. I didn't get what was funny.

He proceeded, "I am asking for a cigarette from qallunaat and they give me looks like i soiled myself. some don't even look at me. I ask for pennies and nickels. I take anything, even food that they didn't finish. But its funny because I never thought, 15 years ago when i taught you in grade three, that i would be asking for money from you!"

He gave a small chuckle and coughed out phlegm like a 40 year smoker of Players Light. The wrinkles in his face had gotten more defined since the summer. Begging for pennies and nickels is more stressful than fighting in a war, aging day by day like its been month and months.

i laughed with him, not because i thought it was funny, but because i could tell he needed someone to laugh with him. An Eskimo laugh is worth nothing when it is done alone, so i had to glorify his laugh and laugh with him.

My father told me: "give what you can. You make all that money down south and you see people who ask for money all the time, give some whenever you can, okay?!?!?!"

The $9.75 cheque. I could have bought two lunches, maybe three from Giant Tiger. I could have spent it on my skinny little ass and have a nice shawarma.

i gave him my $9.75 and i told him, "get whatever you want with this money, go get some beer, heck, if you get a quarter, you can buy a gram of weed. go buy yourself some coffee. go buy yourself some candy. go buy what you can with this."

He laughed and i laughed with him and he said: I'll buy coffee for other Inuit that are a block away. I'm not going to spend your money on booze or drugs, i'll do that with qalunaat money, but I am going buy coffee. Thank you. Aakkuluk."

He shook my hand and got up and fixed the black blanket around his shoulders. I could hear him walking down with a smile on his face and he laughed again and said, "I'm poor Inuk"

Taxi Drivers and Cultures

2011-01-29T20:26:00.000-05:00

I wrote this back in January 2009.

My father is at
the Larga Baffin
for a check up
for his fucked up
frozen foot.
My mother: The worrier
But she's one hell of a Warrior

"Go see us!" she demanded
"don't make it like the
last time, didn't show up!"
I took
a cab
just before, i had
stubbed my toe on a stone slab

First Driver
as i am really nervous
because it might cost
me more than 20 bucks
first driver
"Hi sir, Where to?"
"1863 Russell Road please,
my parents are there."
I want to
say: Lucky bastard,
too bad the buses are on strike.

I ask
"busy night, you know,
without the buses and all the
snow?"
He says
"pretty busy, good for business."
He lectures me
on the union's demand
and the city's stand!
He is from Ethiopia
in his
40's
Came to canada in the
60's.

My father says
he loves me
tells me
"take care of yourself
and others."
My mother
kuniks me
like a mother should
the sound of,
of her sucking-air-nostrils
are amazingly
soothing and loving

My Second Driver
"Hey buddy, where you goin'?"
take me
home where things
are like the
back of my hands.
44 St. Helene
where i know
the comfortable and the stable
where no sick people are.
He drives and asks
"What's in the box?"
I have food of
seal, char and caribou.

He In An Instant
becomes interested
and he tells me:
"You In-You-It,
so peaceful
never
kills each other.

But I remembered
the first murder in
the city of Politicians
in a place Inuit
Eskimos call: Little Nunavut
on January 1, 2009
4 AM, a roommate
kills his
Other Inuit roommate
and i don't
have the gut to say:

The first in the city
to die a viloent
death: In-You-It

My Second Driver
tells me that
Me with my culture
of my own have been
so peaceful and don't kill

But i know,
In-You-It:
Not so peaceful
violent deaths are
deathly common.

My Second Driver
Ethiopian of 36 years
Came to canada
nation of leaves
for school

He likes our talk
gives me $5.00 discount
but i feel bad
because i didn't
tell him
the truth
Of My Not So
Peaceful and Loving
Culture!

A brown man's burden

2011-01-27T21:39:00.000-05:00

take heed if you are brown
or if your ancestors were brown
if you know the word imperialism
colonialism, disenfranchisement
for you have been the marvel of
the white man, especially if
you are a woman, take heed

you have a huge burden for the world
teach thee about global warming
climate change is your weapon
demand devolution because
its easier and less blood than
a revolution and the theory of
evolution is useable in this case

take heed if you are brown
you have a huge burden to teach thee world
of poor housing, of social welfare
of your land claim, your "precious" culture
you are the hunter and gatherer
you know first hand of sustainability
which the rest of the world knows
very little about, it is your burden to
teach the rest, the civilized world

take heed if you are brown
you have a huge burden to teach thee world
of your sewing skills, of your hunting skills
for you are the last of the last
to make your own clothing and please
be aware of globalization, you might be
able to use it to your advantage

you have a burden to teach
that war is not the answer
the democracy might not work all the time
that you are frugal with everything
you sure know how to spend money
you can shop at wal-mart for 6 hours straight
you have mastered the capitalist system

if you are brown, you have burden
to light a qulliq on a opening ceremony
to a cut a ribbon with an ulu
to tell stories of your wretched childhood
to eat country foods raw and cooked

oh well, you might as well go on living your life
it will make a bigger difference to the world
a proper person and a careful person
never makes history
only people that have been desperate
and willing to be different,
will change the world.

go on, i have absolve you of your burden

the staple diets

2011-01-27T19:49:00.001-05:00

despite all that news about
the food prices and the freight
costs and all that talk by the government
about nutrition north and
all that news anyways

from what i see and from the people that
need it the most, it hasn't made a dent
the most cheapest food still available
is not really nutritious and you can't really
expect elders and unilingual residents
to order and what are the chances of getting a
VISA or Mastercard and who do they call?

i mean, the more i think about it
when the people that we claim to respect the most
are elders and the most we want to help are
inuit and the majority of this territory are
these people, this program is designed for
rich or richer folks to have an easier life
not for those not so well off, like a lot of inuit

and didn't they say it was to save some money?
for who? harper? leona? eva? me, tommy?
the post office? northern?

these things never work for the people that need
it the most, which are people that live in this community
and the other 25 or so that are scattered up here
and those people are not the teachers, bureaucrats
nurses or administrators or the people that can order and
have Mastercards or VISA's

you know, people still go shopping at northern
or the co-op or whatever grocery store and they still
sell expensive shit and the cheapest are the not so
healthy foods.

for food to be healthy, i think it has to be fresh
unless they are willing to send food from california
the next day or costa rican banana's the day next
but that would be too healthy for inuit, right?
canned food this and canned food that is the cheapest form of
veggies around here, so our meaning for healthy food
has to be redefined and refined

if i were the all powerful leader like leona and eva and harper is,
i would:
lower the gas prices for hunters only with snowmobiles and boats
not to your car or your truck
i would lower the prices of ammunition and not require a license
if you show me a frost bitten cheek or a weather beaten face
i would subsidize hunting implements such as ropes
wood for your qamutik, sleeping bags, and of course tea
would be free it you show me a map of your hunting grounds
i would lower the prices of naphtha only if you can prove you are
going hunting and you got the trust of your community
i would fund community freezers and pay hunters to
bring in their catch to the freezer
i would pay a hunter to be a mentor to a 14 year old boy
i would lower the prices of threads and needles
and fur and provide caribou and seal skins at cheap prices
for seamstresses and i would take 14 year old girls
put them in a room with their female elders and take their make-ups away
and put patterns and ulu's in their hands and they would get paid for it
and don't you think snowmobiles and boats and outboards are
way too expensive? who can afford them?

if i were that all powerful leader, educated people would have
maximum wages because uneducated people already have maximum wages by default
its just equality right?
as an all powerful leader who has all that money to play around with
i would increase the power of HTO's and those women's auxiliary groups
because they are the ones that actually really care for inuit and
the culture that we are so desperate to save, they are living it
when was the last time a government saved a language?
when was the last time a government cared for people?
when was the last time a government hunted for my parents or yours?
when was the last time a government paid for your food with good intentions?
when was the last time a government actually helped people for the better?

now

when was the last time a hunter provided for you? today and even yesterday
when was the last time a seamstress sewed you an amauti? today and even yesterday
when was the last time a hunter died trying to provide food? pretty recent, i bet
when was the last time a mother kept a culture going by drying skins? today and even yesterday
when was the last time a mother saved you money by cooking seal? today and even yesterday
when was the last time a father showed you animal tracks? today and even yesterday

which bring staple diets?
government or a hunter or a seamstress?

hannah montana called

2011-01-24T22:29:00.000-05:00

i just can't get enough of her witty remarks
she acts three sometimes but her mouth is old
and the way she uses inuktitut is amazing
uses her qii quu qaa's very well
and can sing and remember songs she heard on the radio

my father is the maker of all this
has instilled in her the love of books and reading
and in the mornings she'll go up to me with
a book in hand and ask:
angakutaa uqalimaarluu?
"uncle-who-is-tall do you want to read with me?"

its hard to say no to her. and when i am reading
she goes up to me and asks me what i am reading
with a genuine interest. and the time i came in
i told her i got books and she literally tried opening my
bags to see what books i brought with excitement

when she is alone, she'll break out into a song
old songs from the past that my father sang to her
songs that my generation hardly knows
and she'll sing songs that she's heard from the radio

sometimes she spontaneously break out dancing
and then she'll be the clown on the floor
making funny body movements and funny faces
entertaining herself and the whole family

when me and father were teaching her a new song
she smiled at us and said:
inngikaqpaaluuvisi ataata angakutaalu
"you really now how to sing, father and uncle"
she even got up on stage during christmas concerts
and sang and read to the whole community

just the other day, she had taken my cell phone
from the room and was pretending to call and be on the phone
and she went up to her aunt, my sister and said
"ilinnu hannah montana uqaalaaju"
its for you, it's hannah montana
and we all laughed and giggled and she appreciated it

she is so generous and willing to share all the time
and just now when i am writing this, she had two
pieces of snack and she asked me if i want some from her
and she does this every single day to all sorts of people
and she says thanks you to every visiter
and she usually starts a statement by saying
"oh" as if she just remembered something

she brings all the unhappiness to its knees
she takes sadness out of people as if by magic
she brings laughter to strangers and family
she takes despair and breaks it to smithereens

i think children have the touch of god
and i am thankful that she is here for all of us

and i don't mind if hannah montana calls once in a while

the black dot in front of me

2011-01-21T21:59:00.000-05:00

hahahaha
it starts with a laughter
because i don't know how else
to start this poem

i was walking from my grandfather's
place
11:30 in the evening
after a whole day
of visiting

and as i walked to my parent's
place
on the road, right below the runway
where the road starts climbing
and the light dims

i saw a black dot in front
of me
moving.

at first i thought i was
hallucinating,
or just seeing things
but i had to look harder
and there really was a black dot
moving in front of me

i don't believe in a lot of things
but this thing kind of
freaked,
creeped and
startled me

and then the black dot
moving in front of me
turned sideways:

it was a mutt
the classic inuit community
black dog,
descendant from some
husky and some short legged dog

from a distance,
because it was so short,
it didn't seem to have legs
just a black dog
that seemed to move
without legs

and i felt silly
as i walked to my parent's place
and smiled to myself

Introducing the new Inuk

2011-01-13T11:47:00.002-05:00

you know, you are not very special?
you have no special genes that
make you survive the cold!

your history like anywhere
in the world is connected to
some form of colonialism.

nothing very special about us
just because the ladies can make
an unusual sound with their damn throats
does not make us any different.

because some of us can eat and make
fermented walrus meat or any meat
is not a hallmark of civilization

i think we over romanticize
ourselves: the heroic hunter
the hard working sewing mother

as if we are the lost true people
the pure and noble eskimo
saving the world from
environmental destruction

i read once in a book
by a respectable anthropologist
friends with inuit who are not
going to agree with this poem

where he said, inuit had lot's of free time
out of the hours in a week about 1 day was
spent hunting and the rest was leisure

so much for the hard working eskimo of the past?
but what they meant by being busy
when elders say so, is they occupied their
minds with anything and everything not just hard work

and they probably fucked a lot too
practising infanticide, preferring
boys over girls. it was not always
this picture we learn from school

and we should accept these realities about our past
and not be ashamed of them just because
the white world think its barbaric and crude

sure we have a lot of human incapabilities
i don't even want to call them issues
but we should accept these too and stop trying
to fix everything about our world

i like the little inadequacies such as drunks
on a saturday afternoon and the person
not afraid to smoke that weed on the streets
or the the old man that shoots snot out of his nostrils

or the old woman rudely yelling
at his grandchild and ridiculing the young
saying "when i was young...."

and shit... we survived but we also starved
even though there is a lot of animals up there
we have not always been so successful

even to this day we are shamed
when people asks us if we have a religion
and we say, no we are christians

i am glad we are christians but our beliefs
are different from all the rest, our own views
in a myriad other views of christ

we hunt with high powered rifles
some of us go willy-nilly with our bullets
and get offended because national geographic
wrote a piece about narwhal hunting in a negative light

oh and our language, it doesn't even have swear words
but you have never been scolded so hard
by your mother that it still hurts to this day

and look at us showcasing all that culture
being so serious about on stage,
acting like erika badhu the world performer

but how come i never see a person eccentric enough
to say i am going to write that novel
going to be that crazy person
living in a shack with his type writer

and its always the opposites of the two,
either rich or poor and right and wrong
and religious or non-religious
inuk or non-inuk. we never leave room for the middle

and whats this modernization talk?
what the fuck is modern anyways?
our fathers grew up before people went to the damn moon,
no tv, no internet and look at him now:
living in the modern world and we respect him because
he is an elder, a relic of the past?
would he like that?

and the land claims we all signed huh?
so proud huh? nunavut huh? 1.14 billion?
article 23? NWMB? NIRB? all so good right?

did you know that we sold our rights for $500 million?
not 1.14 billion, the rest was just interests.
does that not shame you, over a 5000 year culture sold for
a price of some ship. the USA has nuclear ships worth more than that
and still we are so proud.

oh i know what you are going to say
"at least we have something, better than nothing"

whatever! we really sold our souls to INAC, NTI, QIA
the two KIA's, corporations are fighting over a mountain
in north baffin and all in the name of owning our 19%
ownership of land in nunavut?

china is probably saying, we can sell better
than the canadians and we'd say no to them
because we are so proud to live in a free country

i am not sure if our view of ourselves
is based on reality anymore
and we've become so accommodating
and accepting that we forget our dignity
in the name of catching up to the rest of the world

so here is the new inuk:
living in a dog house with three other inuit
carving and drawing to make a living
the house beside our dog house is occupied by
a man wearing a tie and suit with a seal skin vest
with carvings and drawings by us on his walls
you can hear music of ayaya's and throat singing
as he writes our history, the noble eskimo
long forgotten and adored by the rest

let's just stop kidding ourselves please!!!

the ᕆ in montreal

2011-01-13T00:01:00.002-05:00

walking on saint laurent
a few blocks long
pavement everywhere
quiet and long
one two or three people
passed by

carrying a poster
of a half naked lady

feeling pretty damn good
and have been all day
the beatles, the clash, ratatat,
bob dylan, charles bukowski,
me first and the gimme gimmes,
and mos def
have been my
companions all day

wearing leather mitts
given to me by my mother

all the buildings are more
interesting, older and
hold more tradition
and the churches are everywhere
and a few dog shits
along some of the the
some-dark-streets

with my freshly laundered
jeans and shirt and my
boxing day sale jacket

alone and a guy asks for a light
as if he knew i smoke
"merci monsieur"
"your welcome buddy"
maybe i should have learned french?
and i light one with him and walk again
one block after a line up
for a club

most people don't know i have
nail clippers in my left pocket

as the clash comes on
i can hear people laughing
having fun and enjoying the time
and i think this city is
one of the best
makes me want to write
even play the guitar

is it the fur on the coats
or the high heels of the girls?

whatever it is seems artistic
and the people just know
and the best part is:
it rubs off of them
even if you are not artistic
makes you want to be

and

after all

leaonard cohen, mordechai richler,
arcade fire, the best hockey team,
romeo dallaire, lousie dudek, naomi klein,
ryan larkin, irving layton,
yann martel, sam roberts,

and other

writers and poets and artists and athletes
were born in this city

philosophical work through the hands

2011-01-05T14:03:00.002-05:00

i have met beautiful and experienced people from all sort of humanity. I think instead of saying we are part of this race and that race too much, we should say i am part of humanity. Because in the end, you are just a human who does human bodily functions: eat, cry, fart, puke, breathe and shit. We are just so simple.

anyways, one of the bodily functioning humans that i met was an elder from rankin inlet. this was a time when i went to a meeting in arviat. the meetings were a week long and i was one of those young people they invited. the whole meetings were all day long, trying to think of ways where we can incorporate inuit values and beliefs into the modern educational system in nunavut. they tried with good intentions. and these meetings were all theory or thought processed meetings and it got to be tiring.

on our last day, i talked to the wise elder from rankin and he invited me to his house when i pass through rankin on my way back to ottawa. so on my way back, i went and visited the elder and i invited a colleague to go along with me so we can talk to the elder. we arrived and went to the place of the elder.

when we entered his place, it wasn't very inuk of him. what i mean by that is that when you visit an elder they offer you tea and introduce you to their household. but the elder didn't do any of that and he very flatly told us to sit and led us to his dining table. we sat down and i could tell my colleague got nervous and it felt like he was going to lecture us and tell us what and what not to do. but that was not the case.

when we sat down, he said he is going to go get something and we waited and he came back. he had this traditional pouch made out of arctic char skin. it was ingenious, just the head cut off and the whole pouch was dried and inside this pouch were all traditional hand tools. hand drills, little saws, and so on, all used by inuit in the past before electric tools.

he started talking that he had made those tools for him and to tell people what their purposes were. and he talked about our meetings in arviat and how we wanted students to learn what it is to have values and beliefs and to use those values in our lives. the arviat meetings, like i said, were all theoretical and this elder realized something was missing and he wanted a message to bring to us.

he said: people think working with hands is a lower form of job and we try to teach students all about thinking and how to process thoughts and how to write about those thoughts. there is something missing in all of them. he pointed to his tools again and said: these, when you are working with them, your brain starts working in a different way. people think to work with tools is a menial job, but i am telling you, these are more theory than work. when you work with these, you think about your family, your reactions to people, your relationships with people, your relationship with the world. you think and think and in the end, without ever thinking you were thinking, you have thought about the world, your place in the world. in arviat we were trying to think of ways to teach students how to do these things, but we missed crucial point, we are thinking beings and it doesn't stop.

i was astounded. here this elder is, never read socrates, plato, rousseau, jung, engels, or that other german philosopher and he was beating them in their own game. and he achieved this by explaining that to work with hands is just as philosophical as thinking and we had missed this point in arviat. he suggested that we work with our hands a little more. as if trying not to think is more creative than trying to be a thinker. he wanted something real and he wanted to apply the real world to a superficial world.

after that, he became more "elderish" and offered us tea and introduced his household. he smiled and became very cordial.

that was more than five years ago and i remember the visit like it happened yesterday.

Books and Me

2011-01-03T12:11:00.002-05:00

Me, i am, therefore they say i am

Books, they are, and what beauty they can be

my whole goal when i first entered the plane
was to visit bookstores - used and new
and of course which i did
on the same hour that i came in, chapters was there for me
consoling me and telling me
"how much i missed your money, Tommy"

I walked through those doors
like in was a bat out of hell
like i was the angel with news to god
and i went straight into those
sections of poetry and talked and flattered
Bukowski because i told him
"i have been wanting to see you so badly, listen to your bullshit"

the next day, another bookstore
and whatever they say about used bookstores
i believe in people who sell books
they are the people that keep this knowledge
world keep going round and round
and i went dizzy
and the bookstore keep woke me up and took my hand and said
"my child, take it easy, there are many of us, keep grounded my child"

and now on a monday noon, i write
because i am fairly happy
more than happy i think, whatever that is
don't feel like going home and i am still happy
homesickness is a word i hardly use
and i don't remember when i used it in a sentence
but there is no word for missing books
other than missing books
maybe
"booksickness"

i am glad that books are there and certain friends are there
nothing better than a good friend is someone
who openly can talk about books, not just praising authors either
who detest writers who can say
"the ideas there are so boring, so modern"

have you been nostalgic for something
you have never been through
for a thing you have never seen
experienced, for something you are not likely to be?

New Years Resolutions

2010-12-31T18:37:00.003-05:00

I, Tommy Akulukjuk, of Nunavut, Canada

I, Tommy, have made the following resolutions, but not promises:

to support the Liberal Party
the conservative party
the New Democratic Party,
the green party
the Marijuana Party
the parti bloc quebecois
the Rhinoceros Party

because i expect they'll have free drinks
maybe even marijuana
be democratic about partying
be "bloc"king roads
wear the colour green
conserve energy
liberally pass out free drinks again
and i expect animals from all of them, especially
african born - horned animals

i, tommy, have renounced
identity
territory
country
county
community
neighbourhood
society
civilizations

and vow to be extra
barbaric
rude
rage more wars
gain more profits
combine socialism
with capitalism
murder innocent little cute animals

such as baby seals
kill my first polar bear
contribute to global warming
by burning more fossil
bathe in tar
have gasoline as my cologne

i will be the poster child for
climate change
i will be in an advertisement for
nunavut Tunngavik
where they promise to take care
of poor Inuit

i will appear on TV in the new year
as a newscaster
will make fun of politicians
make fake advertisements that advocate country food
will pretend to be peter mansbridge

will try to drink more beer
and disappoint even more so
my sister
my parents
and all those righteous
religious inuit
who try to create a perfect
docile inuit society

i will burn my poems
a whole notebook
a whole book that i really like
and use it to warm myself

i will vote and then tear my vote away
i will cry when an inuit politician
accomplishes something for once
i will carve a statue of
brian mulroney for signing the land claim
i will tear a picture of paul quassa for signing the land claim

i will sabotage
inuit employment levels
inuit employment targets
i will
become the qallnaat development coordinator

i will become the wage reduction coordinator for GN

i will kill baby seals and not eat them

i will
i will
i will
i will

The Bum On The Bus

2010-12-30T10:46:00.002-05:00

on my way
to nowhere
travelling
by bus
on the greyhound
with 40 others
sane and insane
poor and more poor
five hours to nowhere
sitting beside
an asian girl and

behind me and her
is a guy, a young guy
beard, army style
jacket
baggy pants
a paper-back book
in his hands

i had seen him
earlier at the
station
talking to a lady

when i passed him
by at the station
i smelled a stench
of an old wet dog
moulded socks
and i almost gagged

and on the bus
he sat behind me
and the asian girl
and when he passed us by, she looks at me

i smile at her and
she does too
and we have the same though:
you did smell that too?!?

we try to ignore the stench but its hard

to take our minds off of him
we read
she in korean or japanese
i
in english and
through out the 5 hours

the smell reaches, swoops by
us
and
we smile at each other again

after an hour
we forget the smell
becomes
part of the bus ride
part of the experience

me and the asian
don't smile at each other
anymore, not even a glance at
each other

one time
we were connected
by both out disgust but as soon as
we get used to the bum on the bus
we become strangers
and our smiles don't connect
anymore

we were no longer in unison
our nose were no longer friends
we turned into
another people who can ignore
the bum on the bus

Suburban Shopping

2010-12-29T19:56:00.002-05:00

Markham is Canada's
fastest growing community
has grown by 70% since 1990

i went to a mall there
and thousands upon
thousands
of squawking people
much like seagulls
fighting for a piece of meat

except they did not
fight for food but for
prices and
merchandise they do
not need

so many people
so much ignorance
so much pain
so much hunger
so little time

i got what i needed
i got my jacket
and i got my shoes
and for my entertainment
i sat and watched
people acting like seagulls

all clamouring for a piece
of this superficial
economy of imaginary
value
and they probably
went back home
happy and
thought:
well, i
helped
the country's
economy
today

the woman crying in the streets

2010-12-26T09:34:00.001-05:00

as i walk to the place
where i sleep, walking,
to sarah's
minding my own
business
i see this girl
crying, maybe she is a woman
and she is on the phone
crying
and when she sees me
she looks away
and i look at her
instead
we don't know each other
no need
to say anything
but i have a
gut
feeling
that she needs
someone
to talk
to
but still i walk
away,
pass her by
and when i have
passed her
she starts sobbing
i can't understand
what she is saying
but she sobs
and i just pass her by
when i look back, she is still looking my way
and i still don't
do anything
and i have a thought:
my father would feel sympathy.
but me,
does not,
i feel pity
not love
not hate
not compassion
no sympathy
and that is because
i am different,
grew up in front of the
television
where i saw the
people in the movies and TV shows
ignore the same women
who cry in the
streets
but later on
when i sit to write
i feel guilt
i feel remorse
i feel ugly and think
i never wanted to be
like those people
that just pass women
who are crying
i don't want to be like those
people on TV
i want to be one of those people
that say:
"are you okay?"
to a woman who cries in the streets.

# 4 Bus

2010-12-24T14:41:00.002-05:00

i like the streets of Ottawa
i get to see so many characters
i get to talk to strangers
and the anonymity is euphoric

but there was i
waiting for the number 4
to get downtown
where i can have some spicy asian food

and this guys says to me:
how long have you been waiting
and i say:
not very long, two minutes maybe

he asks me where i am from
(i always get asked)
and i tell him and that
there is still no ice up there, colder here than there

we talk and talk
small pointless chatter
he is a cook at the Briggs
and i am on holidays

and i light a cigarette
and this lady goes up to me
asks for one stick
i gladly oblige and pass her one

she says to her friend
this is tommy, he is my cousin (i am not totally sure, but anyone from Pang in Ottawa might be one)
and ben says, nice to meet you tommy
and she says her mother has cancer

i say the usual, so sorry
hope she feels better
hope she has good holidays
and she thanks me for it, says i am nice and i smile

we get on the number 4
and proceed to our seats
and she sits right by me, next to me
and says that she needs a break

been at the hospital for 4 weeks
a horrible alcoholic, she says, but you do
what you have to do
for family and she did what she had to do

i guess saying goodbyes
to a mother who is dying can
be tiring and depressing
because she says, she told her mother that

the dying mother said
she understand why her daughter,
my cousin, drinks a lot
and apparently she gave her permission

to continue her alcoholism
and tonight was her night
is her night and she is excited
says, been at it since three this afternoon, can you smell?

and i ask, is it vodka?
as she smiles satisfaction
and she starts talking to me
about crack-cocaine

see my teeth? i nod
(what a strange questions to ask)
and says, from smoking that crap, loosing teeth
still going to tonight
got some for free from a good friend

i think how good can he be
if he gives out free drugs
and i think again, not a lot of people
give away anything for free, especially crack

he must really be a good friend
and we are on the bus
in front of twenty white people
many of them with grey hair

and they all look our way and i know what they are
thinking and i start having thoughts
maybe i should pretend not to know people
next time, especially
people who are crack addicts and alcoholics

but as they get off, ben and her, she says aakkuluk
and gives me an eskimo kiss
and i have a feeling that even
alcoholics and crack addicts need and have to give love

i forget absolutely everything
and tell her the same, except i don't eskimo kiss her
and when they got off, an older lady says to me
its good to see love around the holidays

i smile at her
and outside, my cousin the alcoholic
waves goodbye to me
and i imagine smelling vodka
on her, and she smiles
and all i see are her ugly crooked and broken teeth
teeth that are rotting as we read.

The Seventh of December

2010-12-08T09:25:00.005-05:00

Today is someone's birthday
born on the seventh she is
whomever it is
happy birthday to her
maybe i love her and
adore her
i talk of she because
one day she'll talk of me
because uncles are
sometimes remembered as people
who used to talk to her
and who still baby talks to her
Oh, even at a young age
did she have a mouth and
talk did she
Today is her birthday
today she is three and
already i am writing about
how much she talks
she is my niece and it's her
third birthday
happy birthday little girl
happy birthday Taivitie

are these the times?

2010-11-30T15:06:00.003-05:00

The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
-Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)

I have a question for you, the reader.

When the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement or any other Inuit Land Claims in Canada, was created, is it done by radicals? Are these claims radical ideas and were they once?

And if these were radical views or if they still are, are they or about to wore out now?

and If they are worn out, have Inuit become conservatives and accepted the provisions and articles as dogma or as unquestionable rights and stagnant human right?

Have we put ourselves in our own cells and have given the key away to institutions?

Can you still get out?

Are these the times?

How to become a caribou

2010-11-26T16:38:00.005-05:00

my father says to become a caribou a person has to pray every day for twenty years. he says praying is the answer to people's aspirations and that to attain some answers for your prayers, you have to kneel down and clasp your hands together.

my mother doesn't like to disagree with my father because they have been in love for the past four years. when they met, my father was praying to become a seal and my mother was praying to be an arctic tern because she knew that they fly from one end of the earth to the other end. My father never became a seal and my mother was so close to becoming a tern that she whistles beautifully. My father says he never really clasped his hands hard enough that his prayers weren't answered.

so, whenever i think of becoming a caribou, i pray really hard and clasp my hands like i am losing my heart. i pray so hard that it hurts my head and my father is really proud of me when i tell him of the pain. He says that someone in my big family has to become a caribou one day and he has faith in my prayers. i want to make proud my father, and i try and try to become a caribou.

i envision myself running on the tundra and i imagine myself eating those luscious herbs and imagine myself making fat from the nutrients of the land. I pray so hard about eating that sometimes i get the taste of the shrub in my mouth. i sometimes feel hollow furs growing in place of my human hairs but i never tell my father because i only want to show in progress only when small antlers are protruding from my head.

my mother gives me advice on how i can handle being an animal because she has a little bit of experience. She says no one believes her but for one day she was a tern and went as far south as Michigan until she started missing her parents. her parents, my grandparents were both lemmings. my grandpa and grandma were a pair matched in the realm of the still born babies. they were paired by the great Decider of spirits. the Decider is basically a progress report on your being and is being written as we speak. your being is your making and how you want to progress in becoming an animal is your responsibility.

I am now fourteen and have been praying since i was ten years old. i still have another ten years until i grow antlers but i am growing hairs, hollow caribou hairs because a young caribou still needs to be warm.

i clasp my hands and kneel down again and pray to the Decider. My head hurts and my father is smiling like the day he first saw me. He never says he is proud, but i can tell by the small smile in him that he believes that I'll have great antlers that are six feet tall and that i'll have great fat in me.

Mr Speaker

2010-11-26T14:28:00.002-05:00

Mr Speaker,

i am standing up in the chambers of this illustrious and sad group of people who claim to represent people, and mr speaker, i am here to denounce the very actions that this chamber has worked on.

mr speaker, i am but one person and as but one person from one community, i have grave concerns regarding the rearing of our children and our elders in what you call a great land when in all honesty, it is just land.

first off, i want to talk about the children and the elders. the children do not give a crap about anything anymore and the respect they used to have is nothing but past memories now. the meaning of respect has been lost in the vocabulary of the children and this great idea of the past, the respect for people, is no longer practiced and all i see is laughter and ridicule towards the elders from this generation. You, this young generation of children's children, you are a child of a child, we don't blame you but blame ourselves.

Secondly, the elders are put into homes. Not just any homes but small and passionless houses where the next closest example is a prison to explain the living situations of our beloved elders. these, mr speaker, are the very people you claim to listen to and represent and everyone has, according to me, have become nothing but abusers of ancient knowledge by imprisoning our elders.

Mr. speaker, we have to create super heroes to replace these past elders. The heroes i am proposing are not children, are not people at all, but are ideas. Our heroes have to be ideas and ideas are more dangerous than you are mr speaker. you the speaker are six feet and five inches tall and have a huge beard, your cowboy boots are caked with mud, your hat is filled with information. Ideas are to replace you an me, we have to start producing ideas that are concrete and superfluous at the same time.

The land is just land, nothing more. sure there are thing in the ground that we want but we don't need those, other than what is on top which is food and animals. the land is attached to ideas and the ideas of this land are all gained towards profit and greed, to torture the very land that produced you.

Mr speaker, i abruptly end this great speech for i have to go to the bathroom and write on bathroom walls this:

Why i would taste like chicken:

i would taste like chicken if
you ate me right now
for i have been cooped up
been forced fed
bred for the sake of appearance
and for the consumption of others
tastes like chicken because
i've been eating generic food
just the same white chicken
in front of other thousand
white chickens white chicken meat
but still i make good broth
but still i make good broth

Cup O' Noodle Traditional Soup

2010-11-25T12:07:00.002-05:00

Shot and killed
skinned and prepared
dried and frozen
or raw
unpackaged and unlabeled

just add soup
turn on the stove
heat it up, boil
taste to desire

sit and enjoy
talk to father
laugh with mother
"its good right"
ask the sister

Congratulations
you have just
played a role
in a long
tradition of
consuming food

Quinn The Eskimo and Tommy The Inuk

2010-11-24T16:11:00.003-05:00

I was listening to Bob Dylan
about this Eskimo called Quinn
but i am pretty sure he was no
indigenous Eskimo
i have a feeling he might have
been an American-Mexicano
that Anthony Quinn
And He plays Inuk
The not-so-magnificent.

so i write this as an ode to him
for playing a character
that is close to kin
and i wonder if he was cold or if he was hot
in those costumes of sin
wife sharing in those clothes of skin

and how dare they chase that Eskimo
for killing that zealous missionary
just because the Eskimo wanted what was
normal to him, the kissing of another man's wife
and of course the Eskimo was offended
for not sharing what is rightly his,
that's right, another man's wife

and those Chinese are the closest
to becoming the real thing
of actually eating raw meat
and his name is Undik
What kind of an Eskimo name is that?
And do they know what Anarvik means?
do you know Andy Ho?
Don't worry, i am pretty hard to offend
even with names such as these:
Asiak
Powtee
Imina
Ittimargnek
Hiko
Lulik
Kiddok
and i find it funny, really funny!

And The Savage Innocents?
Is that not contradictory?
Because a savage cannot rightly be innocent

Life So Primitive It Will Make You Gasp!
- which is the tag line
and i actually gasped!

Oh Bob Dylan
And Anthony Quinn
We have made something of us
one a folksy singer nasally voiced
one a movie star, may you rest in peace and
one who is actually a surviving Eskimo
and i always wanted to write this poem

Stop Pretending

2010-11-23T15:39:00.003-05:00

I know it is a long hill to climb
slippery and wet, hail thrown down
wind sweeping the roads
snow clinging onto ice particles
the hill is full of obstacles
but still we have to try, i think, to conquer

i know, it is a lot of pessimism
that i write, i know first hand, right?
been labeled as a nihilist,
asked if i don't have an ounce of optimism in me

But i am challenging the world
to stop pretending that things will be okay
because admit it, they're not.

We have no utopia and no dystopia
it is rather a cornucopia of confusion
because we are trying too hard
to make something out of it
and putting too much labels on it's life

This place that we live in is a place
that is weird and frightful
but still we try to be grateful
because it is our bread and honey
or rather our meat and water
life-giving piece of land

Let's stop pretending it will be perfect
and treat it like a child rather than a
a great mother or father.
have you seen Nunavut lately, looks
like a 50 year old prostitute
when it is only a 10 year old boy.
Stop pretending and let's make a toy
for this 11 year old little boy.

After all, we are not in a Canadian beauty contest
we are in the Canadian Confederation to be honest
and let's be modest
about the what we have, even though it's not much
but i have a hunch
in many years from now
That it just might be okay.

Speak and You'll be Set for Life

2010-11-23T09:20:00.003-05:00

I was reminded of the time when i had to present at the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. No, they sit, they don't stand. And I think there was one half-aboriginal person in the committee.

But during that meeting, I had said this: "how can Inuit parents support us so much, trying to make us go through high school like that, and then when we go home they're saying, “You don't speak enough Inuktitut when you get home.” I always question my parents about why they support us so much in learning English and learning science, while at the very same time as we're learning that, I'm forgetting how to speak my language like my father does."

I was referring that my parents always told me to learn English so that jobs will be easier for me to obtain. I know, I believed them too. I am not saying that you shouldn't learn the language, I'm just saying maybe what we've been told is a lie or was a lie told to our parents.

Now I'll say this with all due sarcasm: In this great land and territory of ours. hahaha, did you laugh too? Anyways, in this part of the world, in this corner of the globe called Nunavut, language is an issue that is not taken lightly, which is a shame sometimes, because we take things seriously way too often. Anyways, two new language laws have been passed in the last year.

Official Language Act is this: The Official Languages Act (OLA) recognizes three official languages: Inuit language, English and French. Under this act the following rights are guaranteed:

Use of any official language in the Legislative Assembly debates or other proceedings;

Use of any official language in Nunavut Court of Justice and appeal court proceedings;

Anyone can communicate with or receive services in an official language from the head or central office of any territorial institution, and

If there is a significant demand, other territorial institutions that are not head or central offices also have a duty to provide a service in an official language.

Inuit Language Protection Act: "This is the only Act in Canada that aims to protect and revitalize a first peoples’ language. The aim is to increase the population of Inuit who can speak and read their language fluently. To help Nunavummiut achieve this goal, a new cabinet position of Minister of Languages was created under the act."

Remember that part about my parents and jobs? Well, I have been told and unfortunately many parents are still saying that. Even young parents are opting for Enlgish and is very evident in Kivalliq, Iqaluit and Kitikmeot. Yes there i said it. What is the shame of an Inuk to say that language in other regions is very weak? I know, I've met people from all three places and some don't even give a crap.

This will no longer be the case very soon, if the above laws are successfully and passionately carried out. Soon it will be the chic thing to be speaking and organizing in Inuktitut. Soon you will not be the favoured one if your only language is English. Soon government services shall be in Inuktitut, but don't trust the government on that because it is run by people who don't speak Inuktitut. Soon uni-lingual English speaking Inuit will be saying "son, i hope you learn Inuktitut because it will increase your pay-grade by 10 percent." or "daughter, Inuktitut is the language of the gods, it is so beautiful that poetry is the everyday language in Nunavut." or "there was a time when people in Nunavut only English now it is all Inuktitut and is so hard" I hope so.

You know its cool to speak Inuktitut. If you are young, listen to me please, at least this part:

it is you that is changing the face of Nunavut and it is your responsibility to speak your language. and believe me it needs changing. a little make-up can be good sometimes and have you seen Nunavut lately, looks like a 50 year old prostitute when it is only a 11 year old boy.

to speak Inuktitut is probably one of the most attractive traits that a person can have. I am utterly attracted to people that can speak Inuktitut. So you should be too. Forget that blue eyed qalunaaq and go for that Inuktitut speaking brown-eyed beauty.

we have the accents and dialects that are so pretty when spoken and should be practiced more readily and often, and that goes for proficient speakers as well.

If you cannot speak Inuktitut, you'll have a much harder time to get jobs (lets hope so)

Read and write in Inuktitut, because this culture really needs a revolution when it comes to literature. A culture that doesn't take advantage of its literature, orally or literally, has gone stagnant and should be resurrected.

I mean, when did it become cool to throat sing?

When will it become cool to speak Inuktitut? Pretty soon, if you don't - make sure you learn quickly because one day people like me (how scary is that) will eventually start making decisions. And when we make decisions, let's hope we are not angry and hope we don't have iron fists. With the amount of pride in some youth, I would not be surprised if they are ultra-nationalistic about being Inuk and speaking Inuktitut in 50 years. It is not going to happen, don't pee in your pants yet.

Speak Inuktitut and you'll be fucken cool.

Last Canadians-Canadians Last ?

2010-11-19T10:12:00.003-05:00

One Score and eight years ago, on a bright sunny June afternoon of the tenth, nineteen eighty two, a Eskimo mother was in great pain. People have been betting if she cried or not on that unfaithful day, but in all actuality, she did cry. The author is pretty sure of it.

On the tenth of that month, a Canadian was born without ever wanting to be any nationality, he just wanted to be a person and not be associated with any territory, culture, and country. He wanted to be part of family and he was, a fairly big one too, with 3 brothers and four sisters, two of whom are adopted and younger than the author.

He never dreamed of a land claim, because he thought that land was un-own-able, after all he was just a child, with no knowledge of racism, bigotry and government. He didn't even have an identity, he was part of a family. He liked that best!

In school, he was taught many things, but reading is one he is most appreciative of.

History is the product of the people and as part of the people, responsibility for history has fallen upon the above Canadian to state that nationality and association to any people and culture is a very dangerous thing.

When it comes to aboriginal people, were the Eskimos not part of the last wave of people to cross the land bridge? Last Eskimoids to cross the bridge. The Last "Canadians", we might as call ourselves the Last Nations and accept our fate in North America. Stop making ourselves special. After all, these Last Canadians, have, and is probably their best trait, a modesty matched by none. They are so humble that some people have even started saying that it is a fault of theirs.

Now imagine these Eskimos surprise when people of not so modest means, came to their part of the world and started imposing their own sense of modesty - which there is practically none, unless your a religious leaders and those are so few in numbers. So these newcomers were to be Canadians, and their founding father was going to be part of their people, and call him John A Macdonald and say, welcome to Canada only 100 years after Canada. Is there shame in that?

These new lawmakers started imposing hunting restrictions and boundaries and rules as to when you can kill animals, which the Last Nations depended upon, the animals to be clear. These new lawmakers also had a dubious notion of rights, because unlike the Last Nations, (who followed the golden rule without ever learning about it), their parents were so abused by authorities in the past, that they wanted to avoid those atrocities and in their naive view, rights were going to get rid of the abuses. But using those rights, they ended up abusing the very people that welcomed them into their world.

So, considering the the past, should Eskimos not be Canadians Last? should they be so supportive of Canada? The Last Nations didn't really have a concept of country and nation not until well into the twentieth century. And These Last Nations had to fight for the right just to be recognized and they had to fight for their own land. Does that not seem fair to you?

June ten nineteen eighty two, the Eskimo became Canadian by proxy. He never did want to be one. People who are nationalistic were thought to be dangerous by the greatest minds of the past, such as Einstein, Orwell, Bertrand Russell and many great thinkers.

People can be proud without espousing nation, territory, culture, language and heritage. Those are hard to be concretely proud of, but one thing people should be most proud of is family, no matter how dysfunctional it might be. Also, parents are to be revered and honoured, they are the ones that brought you to be Canadian.

Last Canadians Canadians Last

How to make your In-you-it Character

2010-11-15T11:34:00.003-05:00

when writing characters that have Inuit in 'em
always make sure you include the followin'
as they will make your writing richer
and will instill some realism into your story

A Typical Inuk character
don't need to be a victor
because he is always a quitter
make sure: his environment is winter

He is always drunk
of course mention the words:
hangover
Vodka
Partying
staggeringly walks

He fights anyone
especially other Inuit
he is a racist
he has been defeated
by another race
black eyes are his trademarks

of course
he had to sniff
gasoline and naphtha
and had a near-death
experience with
exploding propane tanks
when a cousin ignited a lighter
while he huffed

Your Inuit
has no job, lives on welfare
has never heard of Voltaire
but make sure you proclaim
that his language is rare
he doesn't look for a job
but he has done shit like rob

Make sure he has
a mental discrepancy
because the mother sure had
alcohol and drugs
when she was pregnant
she gambles
and always rambles
on about those Anglican bibles

He didn't do very well in school
he was never cool
people always called him a fool
he wore wool
because the weather is always cool
oh, make sure he is good with mechanical tools
compare his face and his family to
Mongols

Asia, make sure you mention because
the current educational institution teaches
that is where he came from
in schools that is the dogma
and he loves cola
everyday he has to experience trauma
he asks:
who the hell is the Dalai Lama?

If your Inuit is an adult
make sure that he loves having kids
because no kids would just be an insult
he is susceptible to cults

an Inuit has to be a smoker of cigarettes
and dope has to play a part in your story
and he has to be poor
and he has to pay exorbitant prices for pumpkins
he is the northern, arctic, hillbilly

If your Inuit has a house or rents a house
and is not homeless (though that would be perfect)
make sure that he pays 65 dollars a month
and the house walls all have holes from
the Inuit's teenage son's anger
the daughter is promiscuous

Of course he has to like drinking tea
and his pee is always yellow
when he is calm, he is mellow
and he has to think that all
qalunaat are all shallow
tea and bannock, tea and bannock
to be more precise

he lives with 12 other people
in a house of three bedrooms
and sleeps on the couch
with a eleven ear old pillow

Make sure your Inuk is a hopeless
romantic to have a "normal" family
he dreams of a father
a sober mother
a caring brother
and a much nicer sister
and he wants to fall in
love with a caring and compassionate
big-breasted-double-PhD-white woman
who will eventually
create a international best-seller
by recounting his
In-You-It husband's life trials
and tribulations
and she will make an artist
out of him
because
an Inuk who can't
do art is unknown

when he turns old
he has to be wise
and young Inuit have to go up to him
and ask him questions about his past
because he has turned out to be
a holder of knowledge
of the yesteryear's past
because he know words from the past
make sure he talks about
how the good ol' them days
used to be better.

to be a successful Inuit
he has to die of suicide
and people should be asking at the funeral
why why why why why

Loves His Mommy

2010-11-12T15:30:00.003-05:00

Tommy loves his mommy
because he came out of her -
cold - and if he could have spoke
he would have said "Burrrr."

Because in an instant he got the shivers
when he came out of hers.

Tommy's mommy:
And she loves him the same
even though the first words he spoke were
nothing but
CRIES.

Are we not lucky
to have such mommies?

Home to Nowhere

2010-11-09T11:25:00.002-05:00

Do you get homesick for a place that does not exist?
Can there be a home in your heart, your mind or your soul?
Do you imagine a place where things are ideal?

I have been looking for a place to call home
a place where someone loves me and expects me
a place where i can sit and relax and rewind from my day

home is a tough place to make?
home is something that is in our minds?
home is a fragment of our imaginations?

what makes a home?
is it the furniture?
when you plug in your TV?

Is home where you cook?
is home where you eat?
is home where you sleep?
is home where you wake up?

is home a community
a family
a friend
is home four walls and a bed?

I thought i went home
because that is what they called it
and it had four walls and a bed
family was there
friends were just phone calls away
community where i grew up
inside the four walls were
furniture
Television
where i used to sleep
and wake up
where i cooked and ate

Except:
it never felt like home anymore
although
there was love
and friendship
and family
but missing the main ingredients
to make whatever a home is

and i went home to nowhere
because they expect you to be home
even if you are homeless

Take Your Culture Calmly

2010-11-04T08:56:00.003-04:00

I am not much to be giving advice, but I'll try.

Do you ever get the feeling that what you do in life is a result of culture?

School is culture. Reading, writing, eating, speaking, dancing, singing, clothes and many more are all part of your culture. Prisons are part of culture. Shunning and ridicule are a big part of culture. Some cultures are pretty good at creating and adding new bits of life into their ways of life. Smoking weed is culture. Drinking alcohol is culture. Rubber boots are part of some cultures. Culture is everyone's. We fight on behalf of it, cry for it, and laugh at its expense.

My culture is proud, sometimes too much. My culture is of the colder temperatures and eater of raw meat foods. My culture is a hunter, a seamstress, an ingenious machine when it comes to fixing anything. My culture wears kamiks, mitts and homemade parkas.

I have talked to many of Inuit ancestry who are so proud they get offended when you say you are tired of "we are environmentally-friendly-sustainable people that burns garbage" or "throatsinging and ajajajaas are so outdated" or "Susan Aglukark is out-rated" or "English can be easier" or "thank god the English brought tea huh!" and so on...

culture is just an extension of life, and everyone of us, has life (or so we like to think). What i am trying to say is, culture is not stagnant, nor is it dead. Culture is like a little child at the age of two and four, acquiring every form of information at an increase rate. He learns so quickly its astonishing, speaks and imitates language and is always improving his physical ability. Culture is like that, cannot keep it in one place because its already off somewhere doing and re doing something to make it its own.

At the state that we are now, in Canada, as Inuit, we are forgetting the fact that culture is alive and we have control and no control over it. Just like a kid, we can control but we can't always stop them from putting something into their mouths. We cannot always stop a child from saying fuck you or shit or even "i'm from the government and i am here to help." Impossible.

We are trying to treat our lifestyles as if we are trying to resuscitate Sedna to help us out. Sedna has long been dead, and you wouldn't want to do a mouth to mouth procedure with her (imagine the stink of her breath after so many years.) Our lives are moving objects. All we can do is respect the past and hopefully learn from it. We don't have to do all the things they used to do, we can just respect it.

Which brings me to: We can practice culture, any culture, be it Inuit, Japanese, Greek or Italian and keep it alive by being let it be. There are people all over the world dying in the cause of culture. what a waste.

I suggest that Inuit take it easy on the cultural front. Let's not get militant and take it easy. If we are going to use culture as a political scapegoat, we might as well think about it as hard as we can. If any of the candidates for NTI presidency mentions culture, don't vote for them. They are using your lifestyle as a way to get people to like them. If a person says culture this and that, don't trust them because they are insecure about their own.

That was my advice, do with it what you will!

-Radio #5

From My Bowels To Yours

2010-11-01T11:29:00.001-04:00

They say, you are what you eat!

Therefore i am a seal, walrus, polar bear, caribou and add little bits of chicken, cows, grains and coffee. I guess i am of that.

I have been thinking about how people pass on knowledge and i was wondering if they pass on the taste or food. Can people actually keep talking about food you've never tasted and have a craving for it?

Have you smelled igunaq before? (igunaq is fermented anything, seal, walrus, etc...) cheese and yogurt are qalunaat igunaqs. Some taste pretty good. My parents love igunaq, they eat it like they're going to put a quota on it. As for me and some of my generation, we don't really like the smell of fermented meat. It's too strong for some of us.

I think my generation is too quick to complaining (and that goes with me). We have been spoiled by modern conveniences and smells and taste. We can press buttons and food will be ready in two minutes. We can pre-heat an oven and shove in a pizza and wait twenty minutes - tadaa - a whole meal. We can just add water to some flour paste and we have pancakes. No longer do we patiently wait for the seal to cook, no longer have the taste for that igunaq. No longer craving meat that has been traditionally prepared.

This morning, i had some uujuq. Uujuq is a word for cooked meat of any kind. The uujuq i had this morning was seal. I was reminded of the time when breakfast must have been what i ate, leftovers from the night before, made for anyone who was going to have a full day. I admit, when i burp all i taste is seal. This was the breakfast of champions.

Food is one part of culture that goes along with language and tradition. You cannot separate food from culture, it defines who and what we are. In this case, Inuit is who we are and human is what we are. I have to admit that i never eat everything that is offered to me. i am at fault too.

I am not saying that food will make you an Inuk. Food will not turn you into anything. But the way it is consumed will decide what preference you have and that preference can tell us how much you respect and how much you enjoy being who you are.

Seal this and seal that!

2010-10-29T09:25:00.002-04:00

Alright, for the people that are not of the Inuit race, listen carefully because i am about to bust a myth created by Inuit. And for other Inuit, listen as well because its not as serious as "leaders" make it out to be.

I have tried to mock the idea of seal skin markets and Inuit protesting a government that is thousands of kilometers away. I mean, don't you think its pointless, that we are trying to save an economy that loses more money each year than make money?

How many seal hunters do you know that make a full time living by just selling seal skins?

It was in the news again today, the news about seals and that damn group EU. We are trying to fight a government that doesn't know the value of culture and has been at constant war with either itself or with other governments for the possession of land.

here is the articles from both CBC and Nunatsiaq News:

I had said before too that we should be supporting the mothers and grandmothers that make seal skin clothing for their families. Inuit hunters will always hunt, with or without the ban. Mothers and Grandmothers sewing skills are not being passed down from generation to generation and that is a bigger deal than Inuit men making $60 per skin.

Hunting and killing seals will never be lost but what i am afraid of is that our culture is being used as a scapegoat to challenge people that don't give a crap about us.

And Ms. Simon had this to say: "We plan to appeal the ruling as we believe the original seal ban was based on colonial perceptions of our sealing practices, and this week’s ruling is a perfect illustration of this.” Boohoohoo - are you not tired of that word, colonial? It is so outdated and our "leaders" still keep on using it. She should realize right now, after reading this terrific writing, that she is colonizing Inuit into believing her, that the non-existent seal market is important.

Inuit have many more options as to how they can utilize their culture to make an economy. Tourism is one example, showing people the Inuit way of life on the land. There are people excited enough to see your cousin eat a seal rather than sell the seal. There are people willing to pay for an airline ticket just to watch whales, and some can be coming from Europe. People willing to walk hundreds of kilometers in Nunavut just to see the land. there are many more economies out there other than mining and seals!

I don't know, but maybe it feels good, for ITK, to finally be on the same side as the federal government. They've never really worked together before until now and it just must be euphoric for both parties.

There is no market. Inuit "leaders" just need something to fight on behalf of culture, while they make three figures sitting on a leather cushioned chairs and a desk made of hardwood while their "Inuit seal hunters" are freezing their butts off trying to kill that coveted seal to sell to that lovely Austrian lady who likes to wear little seal skin purses.

with or without the ban, seals are going to be hunted by Inuit, but i am not sure about the Labradorians, Newfies and those Qubecois, who kills seals for the market, they'll just lose all those seasonal jobs.

Anyways, "wear your seal skin day" is coming up soon and if you have no seal skin clothing, just wear cowboy boots, they look just as cool as seal skin.

Radio #5 on Inuit

2010-10-20T14:10:00.002-04:00

Radio #5 was born in 1975. His first name is Radio and his middle name is # and his surname is 5. His parents were of the traditional stock of the Eskimo race before they converted to Inuit in the 1980's. Before conversion, they hunted animals and used the skins for clothing. They spoke only Eskimo and later on Inuktitut. Radio grew up in this environment, hunting and foraging, until his father was told to get a life and demanded that he start paying for other Canadians well-being. So he got a life, started paying taxes and gave up his Eskimoness in favour for Inuit.

Inuit are a recent come-along to humanity. It is a new word that people started imposing on Eskimos, because they didn't know any better to be called something else. Inuit started introducing snowmobiles and outboard motors to Eskimos. Eskimos gave up their dog teams and also started wearing traditional Inuit clothing, such as bell-bottom pants and started having their hair glossed over with a cream.

Back in the 1970's when Eskimos started converting to Inuit - the Inuit also realized that they'll need some sort of government and self government was seen the way to go towards. So they proselytized about the evils of Trudeau-ism, because they said Inuit should be like Canadians as well, looks and all. Inuit didn't like this, so they said, we want in, but let us in - in our own kamiks and boots. They said the black shoes were too uncomfortable. And they demanded and shouted, sometimes even going on TV to say a few words to Trudeau and his little monkey Chretien.

So Radio grew up around where the world was changing all the time, not just his Inuit world, but everyone Else's. People often make this mistake, thinking that Inuit went through huge changes, but that is a conspiracy because in the 60's, 70's and not so much 80's, everyone's world was changing all the time. New channels on TV, new radio shows, Montreal Canadiens were changing the game of hockey, while Toronto Maple Leafs hardly made a dent. The fax machine was making things so fast. The telephone had buttons on it rather than a dial. And so much more. the world changed, not only Inuit.

When Radio was 5 years old, he was exposed to a radio at his community and vowed that he would be the one announcing everything to everyone. He became a radio DJ. He did good.

In 1980's, these things happened, that the world has regretted ever since:

* Brian Mulroney
* The Artist Formerly Known As Prince
* Ronald Reagan
* Union Carbide
* Margaret Thatcher didn't die (same for Reagan)
* Bob Marley and John Lennon were killed (so sad)
* Bon Jovi
* Molly Ringwald
* the TV show Dallas

and so many more that my hands are getting tired!

These events are true, if you don't believe me, you can ask Jean Chretien, or Duran Duran, who were very political. They are all true! I never lie, otherwise I'll never make it to heaven!

Smoking on a windy night

2010-10-19T13:03:00.002-04:00

do you ever get that feeling of euphoria?

maybe it's only me, knowing that i am unique, that is euphoric?!?!

I was standing outside, smoking my cigarette, in the dark and on a windy night. I had just been driven home and before i entered, needed to get my nicotine addiction in check first. so i lit one up and began to suck on the smoke.

as i was smoking, i remembered a story that one of my brothers had told me. He is six years older than i. he gave me advice on how to hide the smokes from my parents, how to get rid of tobacco smell before i went home and also how to spend your money wisely - so that your parents don't question where all that money you make goes to.

So he told me of a story when he was 16, with our cousin. he said my family was to be out hunting for three weeks. he was hiding the smoke from our parents. and he didn't have any money so he had to steal the pack from someone else. so a pack of cigarettes for two sixteen years old boys for three weeks. if you smoke, that is a tough stretch.

well, what he said was: there is a lot of risk when you are in a camp of about fifteen people in two tents, most of them are older than you and none of them want you to smoke. so we had to hide them and we needed a good hiding spot for the pack, where rain would not get to it.

so they hid the pack.

the next morning, my father decided to go somewhere where there might be some caribou and wanted to leave early. of course my brother is sixteen and stays up later than anyone in the camp. and being young that he is, he sleeps in all the time. unfortunately, him being a late sleeper, my father didn't give him enough time do what he has to do. He made him do chores and soon as they were done, they went on the boat and off they went hunting for caribou, never to come back to the camp they slept in.

along with the camp, went the cigarettes, never to be seen again as well.

that was my brothers story: story of great eskimo despair, of eskimo sadness, of an eskimo growing up in the eskimo world. how sad.

as sad as it is (hahaha) it reminded me of a time when my brother would give me advice on how to be sneaky. it brought back memories of growing up eskimo. and i remembered the time he told me the story when we were smoking, passing by the very island where he slept in and where he hid his smokes, passing it by from a boat.

unbeknown to us, my father was listening, and told my brother, "i knew you smoke all along... the only person that i didn't know who smoked was your younger brother."

and he looked at me smiling, as if a father and son relationship had just been realized.

NOT. He scolded both of us for being smokers.

Free the Polar Bears

2010-10-18T15:49:00.002-04:00

Do you have the time to listen to me whine
About nothing and everything all at once
I am one oh those
Melodramatic fools
Neurotic to the bone no doubt about it
- "Basket Case" By Green Day

There was a time i was innocent and a virgin. There was a time when I hated cheese and never cared for hummus. There was a time when i didn't want to wear kamiks. There was a time when I said "no" to my mother and felt powerful for a few seconds and then regretted for two days. There was a time when i didn't smoke anything. There was a time when i watched MuchMusic. There was a time when i was horny all the time. There was a time i did my multiplications and divisions. There was a time when i didn't know how to spell bureaucracy.

There was time in 1999 - when i crossed the Atlantic Ocean on to the Heathrow airport and then onto Glasgow and Edinburgh and Peterhead, Scotland. It was a high school trip. That is when i had my first taste of Budweiser (don't tell my mother yet), when i saw Scottish kids play football, when it didn't rain in Scotland or more than three days (and the people really thought we were good omen - those superstitious Scots - and demanded that we stay another three days so they can go to the beach, but it rained the next day and they threw us out like we were English royalty.)

At that momentous episode in 1999, where 18 high school Inuit found out that they can be anything they want, other than a teacher of course, it was 1999 - also the year Nunavut was created and they had stars in their eyes. Those stars in their eyes were to be removed as soon as they left Scotland, not by anyone but by themselves.

They thought Scotland was hot (probably the only people to ever think so) and strutted the streets of Edinburgh in their wife-beater shirts. This one day, they took a trip to their very first zoo. They had never been to one and were eager to see exotic animals from the south.

From the south my ass!

Well, they were, but not all!

There was this one animals you see, that the Inuit were totally familiar with, and some had even hunted it. To the outsider of Inuit life, this was the representative of toughness, an image of tranquility and independence. This was the "majestic" polar bear.

This particular majestic polar bear was from Churchill, that place that is associated with all sorts of evil, namely residential schools. Once those Inuit children left Churchill and became human beings, they started capturing polar bears to civilize and send them to far off places in the world - in a sense - to make them useful. This polar bear had a name but i can't remember it.

This polar bear wanted to help Inuit - I could just tell. Or maybe it was pity that the polar bear had in his eyes. Pity that these young Inuit were going to experience something that the polar bear knew all along - mainly that the Inuit were going to be seen as endangered.

OK. Polar bears are usually in a place where they have kilometers of room, nice cold weather and nice bloody - fat sustaining - foods to eat. They are revered for their cunning-ness by Inuit. They are free in the real sense of the word.

OK. But this particular Edinburgh polar bear was in a caged enclosure, less than a kilometer big, in a island the size of a living room, in a heat that was never reserved for the polar bears comfort. I don't know if polar bears like to play with beach balls but this one had a few of them in his brown murky water. Now get this, when we saw the polar bear, it was just going back and forth on its little island - looking depressed as ever and eating food that made it look like a clown bear, with it being so skinny and the colour of its skin was light brown. It looked like a crazy demented polar bear that didn't care. It WAS crazy!

This is from a country that actually civilized us!

I came home that spring and told my father about the polar bear and we agreed that that is not a way to live. We talked about how obnoxious and hypocrites people can be. They tell us to not to shoot too many polar bears, have quotas on whales, but when it comes to taking care of animals, such as the Edinburgh polar bear, they utterly failed to realize that animals suffer from depression and are not to be left in cages.

So, i say free the polar bears. Free all the animals! Free all the living things! FREE FREE FREE!

Anyways, they are pretty tasty!

And i haven't caught one yet, because apparently, the one i was supposed to caught through the quota system, has been living in Scotland all these years.

I blame Scotland for i am not a man yet. Oh wait... i blame... umm... i blame... i don't really know who to blame! I blame myself for not having the guts to talk to the zookeeper and try to explain that animal cruelty starts when you caged life!

Radio #5 plays Red Rover

2010-10-18T09:11:00.003-04:00

Welcome to today's show. This is Radio #5. Don't pronounce it five, but as fye. Like fye o clock. Or fye dollar-mit? Or fye-mi it closes. Well, you get the drift. So this is Radio #5. Today on our show we are playing Red Rover. The game that many of us have played when we were young. I am sure you know all the rules, so just listen in and we'll report the play of this game.

The teams are divided into two.

On the North side, the team is composed of the Nunavut government MLA's and Inuit organization's elected executives. Often enough, we never see them working as hard together as they are now. They are dressed in fine Italian suits with matching seal skin ties and for extra grip strength, they are wearing synthetic seal skin mitts.

On the south side, we have some of the federal MP's and people from the non-renewable industry who are executives in their own respects. Often enough, we see these two working together. They are dressed in traditional Inuit clothing, designed by Gucci and Tommy Hilfiger. Man, they look good. Look those kamiks Chuck Strahl is wearing and the tight seal skin pants Stephen "The Even" Harper is sporting make Freddy Mercury look queerer than he is. And Look at that, Stockwell Day is sweating his ass off with the parka he is wearing, it looks to be two sizes too big.

Okay, the captains of each team has just chosen which coin they are calling to decide who gets to call first for the Red Rover game. The North side chooses tail and the south chooses heads. The south wins the coin toss and will call out first. This is interesting, who will they call over first. Who do they trust more than others or who do they think is stronger.

Ok, here is Stephen Harper calling the first person. He clears his throat and calls over Paul K, the entertaining and stylish NTI President. He is wearing that expensive Armani and the tie is made by a modern Inuk, which is made of seal skin with a design of the Montreal Candiens logo on it. He runs and is intending to break through and he is choosing to cross Gail Shea and Bev Oda, who both seem to be the weakest link. They look rather like poor wet puppies with those ridiculously designed amautiks they are wearing. As of we speak, my mother is criticizing the seamstress that made the amautiks. She is saying that they'll never be warm in those. And Paul K. makes it through, breaking the hands of Bev Oda in the process. So, the north side chooses Gail Shea, who does not have a broken hand.

It is time for the north team to decide who to send over. They have a bit of an advantage here, with those synthetic seal skin mitts. And they are pretty strong looking with Lorne K. and Moses A. holding hands like they are long lost lovers. And the Premier of Nunavut, Eva A. calls over the big dog of the south Stephen "The Even" Harper, who is the head of the south team. He pulls up his seal skin pants (they look rather tight) and proceeds to run, full blast. Oh no, he trips and falls face first on the ground. Oh look he gets up still and runs to Daniel S. who holds his ground to stop Stephen Harper. He switches to the North team.

Well, this is Radio #5, who brought you the Red Rover game between the south and the north. We are not going to cover the whole game because that would be so boring. I mean, both teams look ridiculous in their uniforms and they're playing a children game that ceased to be popular in the 80's. Nowadays, we have kids that have iPod's and video games.

So to end the show, I will be throwing copper coins at both teams.

Here is my first throw... it hits Eva A. right on the head. She gives me a mean look.

Second throw: it lands on the federal minister of health and knocks her out. She starts sobbing and Harper has to console her - while the rest of her team - they all look dejected.

Third throw: oh look at this! Stockwell Day catches it and throws it back to me. He smiles and hits me on my forehead. Oh look at that, what a catch.

Well, i have just interrupted a historic game of Red Rover. This definitely will not go to the history books.

This is Radio #5.

Today on Radio #5

2010-10-15T15:52:00.000-04:00

This is Radio #5, the station where nothing matters, which is precisely why it matters.

"you know what really grinds my gears?" is what Peter Griffin said.

"you know what is so unimportant that it deserves some explanation?" is what Tommy Blue says now.

Well, today on Radio #5, we have a few educational materials to talk about, one being that Americans can admit that global warming is happening but many of them don't understand the reason. Here is what CBC has to say:

According to a study by Yale University researchers, 63 per cent of U.S. citizens believe that global warming exists. However, only 57 per cent know what the greenhouse effect is and only 45 per cent recognize the impact of carbon dioxide in trapping the earth's heat.

Can you actually believe that? Well, I can. Americans are so smart they have dumb themselves down pretty good. I once had a conversation with an American about Inuit. He was from Florida, i think, walking around downtown Ottawa and he was standing by the NS building, looking at he poster that Murray had designed and wondering if the person is an Eskimo. I said sure. He asked if we go to school in Ottawa and i said yes. Then he asked me if we were still communist and he started asking questions about our livelihoods, so i answered each time and said, nope communism isn't our belief. So Americans can be ignorant but they are no less smarter than we are.

and get this again, they believed this:

The poll reveals that almost half of Americans — 49 per cent — incorrectly believe that the space program contributes to global warming, and that the hole in the ozone layer, toxic wastes, aerosol spray cans, volcanic eruptions, the sun and acid rain also play a role.

And another topic for Radio #5 is a question posed by an Inuk from Pang.: "Who is the Prime Minister of the United States of America?"

Well, all i can say is: many people in this world are ignorant, just as this Inuk is about USA. Buddy, they don't have Prime Ministers, they have a Presidents. And the President of US of A is Arnold Schwarzenegger, from Utah!

There you have it folks, this was Radio #5, giving you all the news and information you might need for the world.

I was found delirious and in need of immediate assistance

2010-10-07T11:22:00.003-04:00

School started at the age of five. His sister held his hand on the first day and said to him, "See, your friend Jeremiah, he can go to school on his own, when are you going to go on your own?" Mind you, this is my first day of school. The world can be so full of questions that can never be sufficiently answered.

School went on for 12 more years, from the age of five until the age of seventeen, where hormones always had a party but never invited the host. School to him had always been kind of easy until he was in grade eleven and the hormones played a big part in his life and he started doing things that his parents warned him against. He stayed up late and started sleeping in. He failed a class but graduated from high school in time.

Well, school has some good parts to it but mostly bad parts. The good parts were that he learned to read and write in two languages and learned the old age tradition of dealing with numbers. those were good.

The bad were that he had to stay away from his family for half the day during the weekdays. To him, family was important than institutional learning. Of course he didn't know when he was going to school, he just thought school was school. he felt like he was in prison a lot. Except he didn't get fed like prisoners. They even taught him in his second language.

He went on to college and spent some time in the south. He lived amongst the people who prized education like it was an initiation to the world. in the south, education was prized as being civilized. He learned more about perception and how people construct and deconstruct the world they inhabit. He learned he had to gain most of his information by himself, and he started reading history and linguistics and political oriented books. He really like history because it made him feel part of the bigger world than what he left.

That is the thing about living in a different environment - the amount of information that floated in the world sometimes overwhelmed - there are so many things to think about. He thought that it was part of growing up, the amount of things he acquired felt like silk and thorns at the same time. It hurts and soothing at the same time.

One day they found him delirious and confused at a bookstore - unable to comprehend the spirituality and ecstasy of learning.

He stumbled and fell down right in front of the autobiography section of the bookshelves. And before he lost all consciousness, he reached for the book: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

When he fell down and the book flopped beside him, it opened to the page with the lines:

"All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber."

to be an Inuk in a modern world

2010-10-06T11:18:00.002-04:00

I don't believe there is such thing as modern. tomorrow this life that i had lived will be outdated and gone, only relived through memories. and my memories are completely biased towards myself, favouring my experience over other people.

the past that i reminiscence about so often is a favour that my mind is playing on my sense of time. This sense of ownership of one person's past is just an imaginary possession that i can get angry about, gain happiness from or get utterly confused about. The reason, why i think it is, is because we are so attached to our memories that they will make us re-think about our present and future, even though they are a construct of our imaginations.

I am pretty sure i am not making sense at all here. that is the thing about being an Inuk in the modern world. It is hard to make sense of what is and what was and what will be. We have been bombarded with all sort of information - from schools, from our parents and from society. The information is contradictory too, and as if knowledge is competing with other forms of knowledge. Who do i trust when it comes to believing what is true - the western knowledge or my ancestors knowledge?

If you are an Inuk, this would seem simple. you'd choose the ancestors belief! But for me, all i have are stories, nothing to experience my ancestors beliefs, unless i get it through bits and pieces that have been passed on to me, such as knowing very little about hunting, i try to me nice most times and respect for other living things is paramount. That is all i have that is tangible about my past. most of what i know about the past is gained through schools and western teaching curriculum - such as the history of Inuit - which i learned from white teachers from Ottawa, written by white people from Ottawa, examined and categorized as something important for Inuit to know.

So, i think i am safe to say that i am just a person who happens to live in the north, who happens to have Inuit ancestors, who inadvertently believes he has history that is tangible when all along, his world is categorized and inventoried. might as well put a bar code tattooed on my arm.

and don't you get tired of hearing throat singing sometimes?

Oh how tough it is to be so modern!

I'm one of those regular weird people.

2010-10-05T15:28:00.002-04:00

the title is attributed to Janis Joplin.

as i was walking down the street and the snow is blowing low to the ground. the sun is shining and it is windy, gusting up to 5o Km an hour. As i listened to Nirvana, remembering that Cobain committed suicide or overdosed on drugs, which ever you prefer.

i don't believe in ghost of any kind. as one of the songs played, a gust of wind blew and the blowing snow on the ground looked like a streak of white linen and the thought of ghost leaped into my mind. I was mesmerized by the fluidity of snow and how it is affected by wind, but has this instinct to trail each other little flake of snow.

then the thought of how glorious of a day it is dawned upon me. Sure it is windy and snow blowing but somehow the sun intermingling with the clouds brought a sense of peace to the world. As if the world was only going so far, as if it was reluctant to leave something like good weed smoldering on the ashtray, also it felt like it was reluctant to say goodbye to a loved one, delaying anyhow as possible.

Do you think the world is in love with something? Anything?

to bring me back to the world, a taxi honked it's horn. I was back to the monotony and duplication of stop signs and buildings made of wood and metal.

My imaginary meeting with George Orwell

2010-09-29T15:27:00.002-04:00

Am i too old to have imaginary conversations with dead authors?

No matter what you think, I want to have a conversation with George Orwell and ask him all sorts of questions about the world I inhabit right now and his thoughts on Inuit in general. I would tell him, as little I know of the history of Inuit and the political meanderings we have been treading. From the philosophy of the western world to the philosophies of my Inuit ancestors, because philosophy is just a fancy word for worldly thoughts of people.

So, I imagine, I am smoking a cigarette with a pint of beer out on a patio with nineteen eighty four and animal farm by my side and I am listening to Neil Young on the stereo, because for some reason, I suspect that Orwell would like Neil Young. Anyways, it's my imagination. Imagine I am a chain smoking Inuk, with a du Marier always dangling from my lips and always talking through the corners of my mouth. As more beers I drink, the more I loose my inhibition to be polite, so I become much easier and not so awestruck to talk to Orwell.

"So, why did you have a pen name? Isn't your real name Eric Arthur Blair? And what are the benefits of having a pen name?"

He just shrugs and asks me why I am interested in him.

I tell him, and point to the books on the table, "I never had the chance to read your books until I was in my twenties, which is probably a good thing, because I approached them in a cautious way, because people kept telling me they're classics. To me classics are way over rated, each generation should choose there own classics. The books you wrote did have an effect on me though, I thought animal farm is very relevant to my current Inuit society, because we have been lead to believe certain things are acceptable, like extinguishing aboriginal rights, that one form of government is better, albeit if it is democratic or not."

"those are some great insights" he would tell me.

"thanks" i say, "that means a lot coming from you, Mr. Orwell."

"No problem, Tommy."

I'd say "can you call me Eskimo dude from now on, please, Mr. Orwell?"

"ok Eskimo dude."

"i have also been thinking", i blurt out, "that literature of any language is very important to the well being of a society because it asserts a sort of an intellectual property on a human experience that is unique. You see, Inuit have been left very little room to leave their thoughts. I have also been wondering how you approach literature?"

Orwell goes: "Literature is a way of expressing human emotions using different ideas to convey the immensity of human differences but to connect those differences and make them similarities. As i have wrote in one of my essays 'When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face of the writer.' i think that is how people should approach literature."

"thank you very much Mr. Orwell, i'll challenge you to a beer chugging contest."

Orwell happily accepts the challenge but learns very quickly that he cannot beat the Inuk who prefers to be called Eskimo dude in such a challenge!

this headache of mine

2010-09-29T11:30:00.003-04:00

it throbs and i can feel it at my temples.
this headache of mine
it makes life not so simple
feels like i am just wasting time

o, this headache of mine
is it because i have long hair?
o, this headache of mine
am i dehydrated?
am i not emancipated?
am i just constipated?
o, this headache of mine
i ask you, do i need to eat more bread?

i have been sitting and have been laying down
but my mind keeps wandering through town
and now here i am looking for the perfect noun
but i love how my skin is brown
and that keeps me from getting a frown!

o this headache of mine
i wish there was a hot line
to inquire about this head pain
but i search in vain
can someone just please say "Ain!"

Making use of libraries

2010-09-10T15:46:00.002-04:00

i have told people before that i don't like borrowing books, especially from a public library because i have an obsession of holding on to books. i love books and i love the smell of books and the creativity if provides to the mind. i can spend huge amounts of money on books and sometimes it feels like i have withdrawal from not having bought books in a while.

well, here i am at the iqaluit public library, after having chosen two books and now proceeding to write. while i was looking at the shelves and running my fingers through the Dewey decimal system and marveling who ever this Dewey was, i was struck with a thought that maybe to use the libraries is a much better economical and environmentally friendly way of consuming thoughts and knowledge.

so i have been visiting this library for a week now and amazingly there are people that are regular visitors and read regularly. you see, i have been biased all these years, maybe as an inuk, but more likely having had the luxury of books stores and southern high-mindedness, and always thought that not many people use nunavut's public libraries, but i have been proven wrong. or is it just iqaluit for its "cosmopolitan" attitudes and northern high-mindedness? when i went to Pang's library, i had opened books that actually had dust inside the pages, not only outside.

i was looking through the books and realized that the only way these "western" treasures can be kept open is by regularly using them and making sure that as many people use the facility. the more they're used the more books can be obtained.

anyways, i am saving money and paper and feeling very good about it

i saw the light

2010-07-13T17:32:00.002-04:00

walking upon the land... birds chirping, mosquitoes buzzing, water slapping against the shore and a bee flies by and i run, like the they're killer bees. it's just a bumble bee, harmless insect.

then...

the world got dark, darker than black, if there is such a thing. so dark i cannot see my hands, cannot see my breath and for a moment, my hearing goes away. the silence is deafening and starts to hurt my ears. i never knew that silence can hurt, but it does.

and from nowhere, i am on the road, right in middle of it and its paved. paved so clean that i can almost slide on it and i have to be careful not to slip. but slip i do. it hurts my ass and the pains reaches all the way up my spine and for a moment i am paralyzed.

then...

the light, a bright light dawns upon me. for a moment i think "this is the stairway to heaven". but nope, it a big rig truck coming towards me.

and i wake up, near sweating, nine in the morning, with the sun shining on my face.

NS conference

2010-07-03T14:01:00.002-04:00

this should be easy to write about...

i took Nunavut Sivuniksavut back in the year 2002-2003, back when the world was flat and we had never heard of the internet or even email. i even think tyrannosaurus rex were running around in south america back then, and Dr. Dre was producing big much music hits. way back then...

the 25th year of nunavut sivuniksavut was celebrated last month on the eighteenth of june and went on for the weekend up until the 20th. i am guessing about 70 people registered but disappointedly not many of them attended the actual discussions. the conference consisted of the usual teachers, meaning morley and murray and they provided many of the steps.

many of the alumni that went there had successful jobs and were starting successful lives, owning many things and having many possessions. i am glad that they are successful. and of course i have objections and i will explain.

if you went to NS, do you remember the passion and disgust that we developed regarding nunavut? disgust because we were appalled that we never learned what we did at the school? disgust because we thought nunavut had lots of maneuvering flexibility and to find out it might not be so. passion because we had a promising start to start contributing to the idea of nunavut and what the land claim could have been. passion because we were ready to make a difference.

and having attended the conference, i am unhappy to say that there really was none of that great excitement and passion that is generated from being at NS. why so was that?

my explanation is that many of us have really good jobs and honestly it was easy for most of us to get jobs. have you thought that it was too easy for you? for myself, it has been too easy for me to get a job and i know that it has been pretty easy for you as well. you have great connections and good networking colleagues. what is missing though is the passion to make nunavut into your own, make it into your own place and actually feel like its yours. where did that go? where is the disgust and passion?

obviously, it is not the same for all of us. i don't have the same passion as well.

so what can we do to remedy that?

what makes it hard?

2010-07-01T00:28:00.002-04:00

writing... umm, whats makes people write?

writing was usual as breathing for a while, as long as i was in Ottawa.

the reason i say that is because, i have been in nunavut for about 5 months and i have only posted one blog. and what might be the reason?

i have thought about this question since i realized i haven't written in more than a week since i got to nunavut. that was way back in march or april, i can't even remember. but here i am again, writing and trying to write at the most, which is being really hard, but the words do come, but questioning my mind has been best since arriving in nunavut.

writing to me was not prohibited. writing was not so questionable and was free thought until nunavut came along and why is that?

iqaluit and nunavut in the whole, has been eye opening and has made me realize what i had left and coming back to it has made me conscious of myself and what i might be saying. maybe it's not the best but i have a lot of respect for it and i had to give it some time. so maybe the time is now.

it is canada day and writing is flowing, not that it's canada day, but because writing just feels good right now. it just feels good to be putting thoughts on a page.

maybe writing is free more than freedom and has to be better than freedom so maybe i haven't been free enough to see writing as liberating! this is liberating - even if i don't make sense, it feels good.

nunavut has become personal and ottawa wasn't, that has become the most prominent factor in what i want to write about. in ottawa i don't know anyone and iqaluit, i know many more people. knowing people in a small communities scares me, maybe because i have been in un-personal worlds and i am now.

so to end it, beer is calling

a pulled muscle and picking grey hairs

2010-04-30T16:04:00.002-04:00

one day i had a nap and i woke up with a pulled muscle on my back. i don't know if i am growing old (finally) or i am really unfit. so here i am with the pang mountains in the background and it feels like june already when it is only the end of april. is it global warming? or are we just more aware of the envioronment to finally notice any change?

to tell the truth, i really don't feel like writing right now. maybe its the lack of weed or the lack of that delicious - greatest invention in the world - beer but i don't have the itching to write. maybe its the lack of books and bookstores. whatever it is, i am doing this because i feel obligated to.

when i came through town i went to the local library and went to go check on the internet and see what was available on the bookshelves. what there was pretty pathetic, and the only book that actually caught my attention was a book by dan brown, just because it had familiar book cover. while i checked through there was a world atlas book that i was pretty sure never has been opened in the last ten years. every page was covered with dust and not just dust, the kind of dust that you only see in movies.

so back to that nap, i woke up with a sharp pain and its been a week since then and i am finally getting up to use my muscles. it is no fun.

and what is this about picking grey hairs?

what most people don't know abhout me is that i grew up picking grey hairs from both my parents heads. and i am trying to do that good deed that i did when i was a small kid. i think, if you grew up in the before the advent of computers, our parents made us do something constructive, like play outside and invent games and if you stayed at home for too long, pick grey hairs. so, out of memories and respect for my father, i had been picking grey hairs and he loves it.

i don't know if qallunaat do that and they probablt find it gross and weird but it is a source of bonding between me and my father and mother, where we gently talk and discuss issues and watch TV. its kind of like group meditation and collect thoughts because you are kind of forced to be corteous and polite with your words.

anyways. i don't know when the next time i'll be writing again. just in case, good luck. if i do come back, i'll think of something genius to write about next time.

Tommy Tsunami & Newfies & the mistaken Innu boy

2010-04-01T18:04:00.002-04:00

"you know, i have complete respect for your people and the respect you guys have for the land. your Innu right?" asked René, the St. Johns man, who minutes before said that he loves the weather and the fog and how you can get wet just from walking two block in the fog. He wiped his face and said he is going to the hotel bar in Sheraton.

Mr. Tsunami had travelled to the republic of newfoundland and labrador before during the fall and of course it was as foggy back then as the night he met René, the St. Johns man. Mr Tsunami was a film maker and was in the republic to promote his latest documentary about Inuit land claims and Nuntsiavut had signed their claim back in 2005 and he hoped that the film could be used to teach the younger generation about how important their land claim was. He was on a mission.

Of course people thought his last name was weird and asked him if he picked it on his own. But no, he didn't pick his name. His name was from a great tsunami caused by a great wave of lemmings that jumped off the cliff in his hometown of Cumberland sound. Yes i know, that's impossible, but the impossible always happened around Mr. Tsunami and those wave of lemmings were millions upon millions that sacrificed their lives for the balance of nature. Those lemmings now preside in heaven beside St. Peter's right foot, eating the lice and dead skin of St. Peter. His parents saw the whole thing and Tommy was just two at the time and that is how he got his name Mr Tsunami.

He had travelled with a co-worker who made the film with him and they were revered in the land of documentary film making for their innovative thoughts and pictures. this time it was to the Inuit town of Nain. Nain is an Inuit community with a population of approximately 1300. On their way to Nain, they stayed at the Sheraton hotel in St. johns and were immediately welcomed like they were lost old aunts from the republic who were away for residential school. His co-worker had remarked that the people of the republic were known for their extreme kindness and he realized it too. they were kind to the point that he was called boy by everyone he saw.
"Haw's de foo' dere ma by?"
what?
"haw's da foo' dere ma by?"
ahh, it's good.

In the Inuit community he showed the film and people liked it and they clapped and yes, they did want to use the film to teach the younger people of Nunatsiavut. so there they were, almost done and on there last night in Nain and decided to go out for a drink at the local bar. And what a show it was. People bought them drinks and were treated like they were celebrities and its as if people were fighting to sit with them. One old man kept saying, go away, I'm talking to my new friends. They both blushed with their new found glory of being celebrities.

The next day, they left the Inuit community and started heading back to St. Johns and they expected to be home to Ottawa in a couple days. Of course that is the night he met René in the fog drenched street of St. Johns and the story just kept getting weirder. So off to dinner with his co-worker, who kept getting hit on by old men and they liked her a lot. She laughed with Mr. Tsunami about the old men and their infatuations about her. Those newfies can get pretty weird sometimes and they were about to find out even further how weirder they can get.

WEIRD

After dinner they stuck around the bar and of course there was René, who loves the fog. He asked the question if Mr. Tsunami was Innu, at first he tried saying he is not but the fog lover must've thought that Inuit and Innu were the same people and he kept persisting that he is Innu and that they have a great tradition and culture. He wouldn't have it that inuit and Innu were different.

As the night wore on, René got drunker and drunker and kept saying how much he respects "his" culture. He got so animated and told Mr. Tsunami that he is a geologist and he said he likes maps and would one day like to map all the hunting grounds of the Innu, Mr. Tsunami's supposed land. He started saying that people have one common ancestors and Africa is the birthplace and that the people of north america, meaning the innu and Inuit came from mongolia. So Mr. Tsunami now was mongolian and he wondered if he can do the mongolian throat singing. René kept saying that the world separated in many different continents and Mr. Tsunami's people were once living in mongolia until the world split into many big islands.

It was as if René knew more about Mr. Tsunami that he knew about himself. In a matter of an hour, he had become the anthropologist and a historian. Beer was a great genius maker. the more beer one has, the more the genius comes out of people and René was no different.

At the end of the night René gave Mr. Tsunami a book about Mongolia and said that it will change his life.

It's been a day or two now since St. Johns and he wasn't sure if he had come from Mongolia still and his life was no different as of yet, even though he had looked through the mongolia book twice so far now. He still didn't know throat singing and he still didn't feel mongolian.

maybe time will tell

and he realized that he had changed identities at least three times that night in St. johns - from an Inuk to an innu and now he was mongolian.

How to tame an Eskimo into an obedient Inuk

2010-03-26T15:37:00.004-04:00

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.

Sensitivity of MY People

2010-03-25T10:42:00.003-04:00

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.

The new conservatory/territory of Ushualuit

2010-03-22T17:55:00.002-04:00

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.

Left Eye moves to a new neighbourhood

2010-03-21T20:21:00.003-04:00

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

2010-03-21T17:02:00.003-04:00

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.

The adventures of Left Eye

2010-03-18T19:58:00.003-04:00

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

2010-03-18T15:20:00.002-04:00

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.

What was the Nunavut dream?

2010-03-17T14:46:00.002-04:00

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?

Can I touch your little mustache?

2010-03-15T11:05:00.002-04:00

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.

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

2010-03-12T10:05:00.004-05:00

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.

The single goalie dilemma

2010-03-07T16:43:00.002-05:00

"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!

I want a SOCIETY not a GOVERNMENT

2010-03-01T14:53:00.002-05:00

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.

On being stopped by cops in Quebec and Ontario in a span of 15 minutes

2010-02-27T17:12:00.002-05:00

Strange things always happen in this strange world.

I slept in this morning, well more than usual, and got up at 12. The best thing about not having a 9-5 job is that you get to choose the hours of work. And this morning i chose to take my time and do everything slowly.

so i walked slowly and deliberately. I made sure that i walked like everyone else and was even aware of my bow-legged walk. I wanted to look like everyone else. But to my surprise, i didn't look like everyone else. hahaha

as i was about to cross the street, right when i pressed the cross button, a cop car stops right beside me and tells me to take my hood off and give him my identification. So i complied. He looked at my ID and he talked in french to his radio. I don't understand french but i knew he was describing my look, because i understood the word black in french, which is noir and my jacket is black. Someone in dispatch said something and he just let me walk and said sorry to me in English.

As i walked, he was looking at me. he made me feel like i had done something wrong. he watched me as if i was an animal he couldn't hunt on a sunday.

I started thinking: is it the colour of my skin? I don't like to think like that because its usually not the case. But i started wondering that probably some native guy who has brown skin was wanted and i must have fit the description and the reason they stopped me.

I kept thinking about race relations in the nations capital because i have been the victim of racial profiling by the general public, especially cab drivers. Cabbies like to point out to any aboriginal that there are too many of us that just drink. "how come you guys can't get jobs? You guys even have help through federal departments. you don't even pay taxes." Those are just a few comments i have received. I never have a straight answer and sometimes just to put them in my shoes i wanted to ask: "why is it in your country, you treat all the women as if they were dogs? they have no rights and are subjected to strict controls." but i never say that because they would launch a human rights violation lawsuit, while the aboriginal people's of Canada experience this every single day, we never bring a lawsuit to any people.

As i crossed the bridge to Ontario, another cop car stopped me while i was walking and asked me what my name was and I said Tommy Akulukjuk. He asked me how i spell it and I do for him - A.K.U.L.U.K.J.U.K. He types it in the computer and he says: what are you doing now? And i tell him that i am going to work to translate and that i have to open the office. He looks at me sternly and long and studies my face as if he wants to recognize me. I cooperate and he tells me to have a good day and i do the same.

I really started to feel like a criminal. made me feel like i had done something wrong without ever doing anything wrong. The only illegal thing i have done lately is jaywalking and maybe littering.

When you have been faced with discrimination of any sort, systematically or not, you gain a distrust for authority right away. you feels like you can't trust them or that you can't gain their trust. when a cop is nice to me, in uniform, i start thinking that he is staking me, studying me. I think it's just how they've always looked at me. I feel the same for some teachers, nurses and politicians. It's a feeling of that "third class" stare, where you feel lower because in some ways you've been taught to feel lower from the nurse telling us we have bad health, teachers telling us that we always have bad school marks, politicians telling us they can fix out lives. Its always either telling us we are unhealthy and uneducated and that they are here to help us.

We no longer need your help, thank you very much.

Conversation with T.J. Akulukjuk

2010-02-24T19:16:00.003-05:00

Have you every thought of talking to yourself? Or do you already have a daily conversation with yourself?

Maybe the real thing about going insane is that you start believing that you are not yourself. I know i am myself, because i pinch myself every morning just to make sure. When i pinch myself, i feel myself saying ouch and it is not someone else. My cat would know that i am going crazy and leave me, so until then, i am not crazy and talking to myself.

What do you think of the world outside T.J.?

Snow and wet. The worse thing about living down south is that the snow is never the same. Well, it is the same, I guess, its just the presence of so many people that ruins the joy of snow. The people are enjoying the hockey game that Canada is playing and they have no idea what it is like to lose your own land. The outside is so full of itself, so full of ego and so full of hate and hardly any joy or gratefulness. The outside is full of fake compassion.

So how about seals?

Seals are cute and tasty. But the tasty wins over any cuteness in the world. The people who see animals and see nothing but cute have never had to struggle. Only through struggling, through physical ordeal and endurance will people appreciate the environment. If you never have frozen your ears or cheeks on a hard winter caribou hunt, you have no right to reduce my culture to a caricature. If you never had to eat nothing but crumbs of bannock because you ran out of food other than country food, you have no right to oppose my people's right to continue their traditional existence. Seals are creations of the earth and this earth is sacred, so is everything part of earth.

Left or Right?

It's not a questions if it's left or right, not even if it's bottom or top. What matters is the discussions of everything around us without being labelled anything. We are all of the political or social parties. We can all become rich or poor or we can all become conservative or liberals. If that is so, then we are just as the same as everyone, regardless if its Stephen Harper or Jack Layton. Our feelings may not be as sensitive as people suggest, we are a people with a consensus government that encourages people talk to each other. We are more democratic in many ways than the freest of people.

How about tradition?

Ha ha. Tradition... I recently realized that i am becoming a conservative when it comes to traditional activities, especially drum dancing and throat singing. I just believe that we have made them to be playthings, too much entertainment and not much soul. I am creating a new traditional dance that people can use rather than drum dancing all the time. It's called the Macarena!

Government?

My government's should be scared of me, rather than us being scared of the government. The government pretends to listen but they never get to work. i wish i were a government servant so that i can have a pension for the rest of my life. I basically have no respect for governments of any kind. Well, maybe i care about Ghana, but everything else is just cakes and cream, or whatever that saying is.

Money?

One of the greatest inventions of the mind that has ruined more lives than all the wars combined and all the atomic bombs added. money is not only the root of all evil, it is also the tip of all goodness. The tip is usually pointy as an ice pack and has to be picked up carefully.

Any advice?

My only advice would be to have fun. laughing is one of the best that evolution has given us. Laughter has the a better chance of surviving than frowning. I try to laugh everyday, even if it's on my own, watching a movie or reading. Fun is more medicine than emotion. emotion is suggestions while fun is the action.

The joy of being colonized!

2010-02-22T13:18:00.001-05:00

I am not admitting defeat.

I am merely challenging the fact of colonization by accepting and embracing the good parts of it. Actually, i never really had a chance to confront colonization until now, personally and trying to write about it.

I AM COLONIZED!

I think everyone is colonized and some people just realize it better than others. For instance the aboriginal people's of the world just seem to notice colonization sooner and more plainly than the majority of the world. For people who are noticing globalization, that is colonization at its best.

If i were not colonized, i would never have had school, never would have read a book, never would have fired a rifle, never would have driven a snowmobile, never would have flown on an airplane, never would have eaten vietnamese, chinese, thai food at all, never would have tasted hummus.

Colonization is a part of life, even white people are colonized, maybe even more so than the aboriginal population. They have been colonized so far they they intend to colonize for the rest of their history. They have created policies and and taught in schools how to properly colonize people better than many people. They have become so good at it they don't realize the depth of their colonized minds. They defend colonialism and are willing to die for it, just as the Canadian and american troops are doing in Afghanistan. They colonize themselves so well that the questions about school and their governance system has failed through out the years.

I take the pleasure of being colonized by buying books that further colonize my mind. I take pleasure in eating the food that the Canadian have made their own which i get unhealthier from. I take pleasure in the fact that i make paper currency one of my cornerstone activities and will be for the rest of my life. I have rubber boots in Pang that were made from petroleum products and i had to pay for the rubber boots which further contributes to an economy that id hardly regulated even thought it is far from being natural.

I am not afraid of being colonized and the earlier i accept the fact that there are people that want to change my life, the better i have a chance of actually realizing the scope of lost i will have to endure. And by accepting anything less than colonization, I will have a better chance preserving anything that they are trying to get rid of, like seal hunting and whaling.

My name is Tommy. I like long slow walks on puddled roads during August when the moon just came back. I like eating frozen foods with Soya sauce slathered on them. I like reading on a soft comfortable chair and learn about Che, the history of reading and the occupational hazards of being a politician.

My name is Tommy and i willing to decolonize myself by admitting that i am an colonizer myself.

Are we too nice for our own good?

2010-02-18T14:50:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking about this question for a while.

Are we, as Inuit, too nice for our own good?

The reason I ask is that i was in Iqaluit last week and went to a concert where the half or more than half the audience was Inuit or English speaking Inuit. No french, well maybe, but you could count them in your hands. But in spite of that, the audience was listening to french performers from Quebec and an over-hyped french MC.

I have nothing against the french, except that they are kinda arrogant. And I know because I have lived among the french-canadians. They are nice people and are not too nice for their own good. I like their toughness and insistence that people who go to Quebec speak their language, which is french. I like that about them.

So back to being an Inuk.

When I was growing up I have been told to be nice through out my whole childhood and to respect people no matter who or what they might be. And I believe I act in such a way sometimes. Not all the time but sometimes and anyways, who was the last person that was absolutely nice to everyone? Even Jesus wasn't nice in the church when he went mad. Buddha wasn't always nice either and made some mistakes. My parents who are mostly nice are not always nice either. Even you who might disagree, your grandparents were not always nice. Inuit were not always nice. Its a fact. We are just human beings.

So to that concert, again. No one understood except the two black performers who spoke french and maybe the MC. After the concert, I was having tea with my father when i told him the show sucked because no one understood them and he said something that surprised me: imagine you were bilingual and you get mail from the government and you have no idea if you are summoned for a jury or if you own money or if its just mail. It hurt me that my father has been on this earth for 68 years and has never had a good service in Inuktitut.

And then, it hit me again. Are we just to nice to not be demanding Inuktitut in our services? Are we too nice not to force the Northwest Company to start hiring Inuktitut speaking managers, or make every traveller have a difficult time understanding when they come through?

Do you think this is bad?

It never stops a white man to travel to China just because he doesn't speak chinese or to Japan. Those countries don't succumbed to english just to welcome their money or just to be nice to them. They've had enough of people going to their country and accommodating them.

Have you had enough of accommodating these people?

I have had enough of turning the other cheek. Not only turn the other cheek, it's as if we had been bending over for them, walking on fire for them and even zipping their fly for them.

I am going to force the next person who doesn't speak Inuktitut to hire an Inuk to translate for him or her and not just succumbed to being nice.

I went to a government of Nunavut services desk and, get this, its an Inuk lady that say qanuippit perfectly, but when i start speaking Inuktitut she gives me a look of disgust because she doesn't understand anything i say. This is a government that prides itself of being in an Inuit territory. Its not the way to go anymore and we have to be assertive.

I am doing this because i no longer want my father to feel like an outsider in his own town, territory and country.

the ii, pi, ti, kii of Tommy

2010-02-16T13:41:00.000-05:00

I recently came back from a trip to Iqaluit. I haven't been up north in about three years.

Before i write too much about my trip to Iqaluit, I want to point out that I like Ottawa. I like Ottawa so much, i have said it is my home now. When people ask me what i like about Ottawa, I usually point out that I like the books and the cheap DVD's here in the city, which there is plenty of. I also like the privacy that i get here, where not a lot of people know me and the best part is, where they actually don't care. That might sound bad but it's not. I also like the bums of Ottawa, they are easier to talk to and they are honest and direct.

Now, lets get back to the trip to Iqaluit. I went to Iqaluit for the Nunavut Language Summit, where some 200 people from all over the circumpolar Arctic came to Nunavut's measly capital. I have never really liked Iqaluit ever since I first went there when i was 7. I was born there when it was still called Frobisher Bay, when it was still an Inuit community and still had the candy store and Ventures was called Salluminiq.

I am a cheap. Cheap. I have a phone that runs out of minutes every month. I eat many noodles. I have shoes that smell so bad it would disgust a skunk. I have a t-shirt that I have had since i was 18. I will take a free drink, especially at government and institutional events, to quench my thirst.

When I landed in Iqaluit, I turned my phone on and the first text i get is from a lady named Amber and it reads: I got your number from a friend, want to have a good time tonight? I laugh alone, just before i board off the plane. First thing I notice is the cold on my legs. I am a skinny guy, always have been and my legs are cold in two seconds. I am not ashamed of that. I get to the airport and there they are, my sisters waiting for me. I give them a hug and kuniks and i especially give a kunik to my most beautiful niece Sheema. I am happy to be around them.

The Nunavut Language Summit was organized by the Nunavut Department of CLEY (Culture, Language, Elders and Youth) and they asked me if i could be part of a panel and i agree to come up to Iqaluit to speak. How i go about speaking is that i don't think about it too much until its one hour before the actual talk, which i did too in Iqaluit. Its not important what i said, so i am not going to write it down.

I have been to a bunch of conferences and summits countless times. Me and a friend of mine say that we save the world one conference at a time. But this summit in Iqaluit was different, so different that i can confidently say that it actually worked. I am still motivated by it and i feel very good about the discussions that went on. Many types of issues were talked about, such as the standardization of Inuktitut writing, inuktitut in working environments, popular music in Inuktitut. And i am glad to say, i didn't hear throat singing through out the whole week. I have heard enough throat singing to last me into the afterlife.

The elders were all there as well. People say that the elders are the holders of knowledge. I agree with the statement but not fully. I believe there is no limit to knowledge and wisdom and even though they have accumulated a wealth of knowledge, they still can be stubborn and make mistakes. I had this point out to me by a respected elder from Pond Inlet, when she said that she still learns and makes mistakes and she still tells herself that she needs to be open. The only advice she gave me was to not become not too hard emotionally and intellectually. One of the best advice i have received in a long time. She said that we disregard laws nowadays, especially Inuit laws and the repercussions are too much sometimes that people lose lives and fall into a pit of self-despair. I agree with her. She also said that too many young people think they are adults when they are far from being an adult and how the western thought says that an 18 year old is an adult is not true at all. I agree with her too because i thought like that too when I was 18, and got angry at my parents for trying to give me advice and i lashed out and said that i am old enough now. We laughed at what i did. It was me and her conversation, so you, the reader, is out of luck into what i did. too bad, its the power of being a writer. hahaha, look at me calling myself a writer.

Since i am talking about a conference, I feel compelled to tell you about the awful food that these events usually offer. Hey but remember about me being cheap? Well, I'll take free food anytime, no matter how bad it might be. So i ate the horrible sandwich lunches we had. I mean i am sure my 14 year old niece can feed a group of 20 people better than what they fed us.

The most i liked about the event was to have such respectable people (to me anyways) such as Zebeedee Nungak, the writer of the qallunology series and former Inuit politician. Jose Kusugak, a teacher, politician and an advocate of standardization of Inuktitut. Carl Christian Olsen a co-founder of Greenland University and a linguist. And of course the political community of Inuit across Canada and Nunavut. The talks were very agreeable, especially when it came to the standardization issue. I believe that Inuktitut has to be standardized as well, just to ease the communications between regions, territories and countries. I would love to be able to freely communicate with a person from Greenland as much as i like to talk to my father. I want to be able to write and translate in any dialect and have every Inuk understand it. I want to be reading Ernest Hemingway in Greenlandic. Don't you?

This was not the typical thing about language. People talked about language and i was very glad that they didn't talk too much about education. But rather Inuit talked about Inuktitut as a living thing, talked about using it at home more than using it at schools. I want to see Inuktitut in the school system just as other concerned citizens, but there is a limit into how much we put power into schools. I rather give power to the parents and have them design the school system rather than Louis Tapardjuk telling the parents what their kids should be learning. Language should be as natural as taking a shit, and you don't hear Mr. Tapardjuk telling us how to take a shit, do you?

Just as i am ending this, i want to tell you now why i liked this trip, personally. I liked this trip because I reconnected with friends and family. I learned something about myself and what i like and get ready for this: I liked the slow pace and the eased atmosphere that everyone has. Laugh is the first language of Nunavut. I laughed with my good friends that I went to NS with on the trip and joked around with them, such as the opening ceremonies at the Olympics, the absurdity of Year of the Inuit and just the general gossip and rumours that are always flowing like holy water in Iqaluit. I realize there are no good bookstores in Iqaluit but that didn't matter when i was there because i saw families eating together, fathers playing with their daughters, friends laughing at the time we were drunk in Quebec, and sisters making me coffee and breakfast in the mornings made up for all the books this world might offer.

as this ends, i want you to sing the ii, pi, ti, kii song.

INAC Will Implement NLCA

2010-01-31T16:19:00.000-05:00

“Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty over the Arctic. We either use it or lose it. And make no mistake, this Government intends to use it. Because Canada’s Arctic is central to our national identity as a northern nation. It is part of our history. And it represents the tremendous potential of our future,” said Stephen Harper back in July 2007.

Indian & Northern Affairs Canada and the Prime Ministers office along with the Privy Council of Canada announced this morning that they will implement the entirety of the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement (NLCA) to be true to what the Prime Minister said back in July 2007.

Chuck Strahl, the minister of INAC, PM Stephen Harper and Nunavut MP Leona Aglukkaq gave a press conference to a packed conference room in downtown Ottawa hotel to announce their intentions and to apologize for the unnecessary agony that Inuit families and politicians alike had to endure for the past 17 years, since the signature of the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement in 1993.

PM Stephen Harper said this personally: "We apologized to residential school victims and now we are doing another historic initiative to mend our twisted view of the world, that we have been imposing on the Inuit of Nunavut. We have been telling Inuit how to live, telling them how to go to school and how to spend their money. From now on we are giving all control of government operations to the Inuit of Nunavut and as additional improvement of our relations with Inuit, we are recompensing them with an extra $5 Billion for the destruction of their traditional lifestyles. Inuit of Nunavut, Canada is truly sorry!"

As the Prime Minister was reading the speech written personally by himself, a tear of guilt slowly ran down his cheeks as he remembered all the wrong-doings that the government has done to Inuit. Chuck Strahl was there for his boss and held his hand (more like clutching), as they both wept out of sheer embarrassment.

As they both cried, you could see a smirk in the face of the Nunavut MP Leona Aglukkaq, as she delivered what no other MP has done for their constituency, the implementation of a land claim. When asked what she thinks of the historic announcement, she said, "I am really happy, ecstatic and hardly can keep my laughter out, out of sheer happiness. When Gandhi was asked what he thinks of Western civilizations, he replied, 'I think it's a good idea' and now, we are saying that as Inuit, Western civilization has only been a good idea, didn't mean we had to accept everything part of it and what this government is saying is precisely that."

Inuit representatives from Nunavut Tunngavik were not available for comment. There were persistent rumours that the executive of NTI didn't believe the announcement as they thought it was hoax and didn't see the need to attend the press release. They are rumoured to be in Iqaluit, watching the whole event on television.

"Going Commando" to meet some Ministers

2010-01-29T15:15:00.000-05:00

Man. I am really arguing with myself to write about this. But a blog is a blog and i have to reduce my self to a lint if i am to attract some readers.

Going Commando is a word that don't go very well with "going to meet the minister of health."

Wait, wait, wait. Does everyone know what "going commando" is? If not I'll explain my best. Wikipedia says this: is the practice of not wearing underwear under one's outer clothing.

am i weird yet?

Don't ask me why i went "going commando" to meet the minister. I am not a pervert and politicians don't turn me on at all. there was nothing sexual about it. Maybe i just didn't have clean underwear and forgot my mother's advice: always have a fresh pair of qalliralaaqs (under wears).

So there i was, at Hotel Marriot, at the Victoria room, standing among people wearing ties and dresses, with a few cameras in the room. One lady showed me in and asked if i am part of the media? I said nope, here to see the minister and she said, oh, your a Inuk. I said yes and told her i am part of a research team that is getting the funding she is announcing.

That's where it began. Her eyes popped open, she just saw the best picture opportunity of the minister's career: a young Inuk man, wearing a white shirt with a black and white striped tie. Hair so dark and thick hanging across his face, little slanted eyes that just woke up an hour before, and a bow-legged walk.

the white people there must have thought, "wow is he a chinese politician? is he from Vietnam? He must be a foreign dignitary?" by the way the lady ushered me in, pushing people away, saying she has to go up to the minister. i was like Tom Cruise being led to meet Oprah Winfrey. By the way i was handled, i could have been a chinese martial artist or an entourage of the Dalai Lama. I felt important because i have never been led by a white person who wasn't either security or a cop. I was smiling from that, not because i was going to meet Leona. I have met Leona. but this was too good to her entourage.

She shook my hand and the flashes went off. cameras and flashes. she held my hand and they felt like nurse hands, cold and almost boney. She smiled and looked at the camera like she was Penelope Cruz. she asked me what i do and i told her i was researching and the funding you announced is good for us. And i told her i write a blog and other things as well. She kept saying "ajungii." Actually that belittled me more than anything because she kept saying it as if i was a little kid. I am my parents youngest child and they don't even say "ajunngiii" to me.

anyways, there i was going commando with the minister 1 inch away from my butt and who knows what and i felt weird. i wanted to get out ASAP. which i did actually, As soon as it was over, i left. i left like i was being chased by lynchers. I got out so fast that all i left was a foot mark on those plushest of carpets in downtown Ottawa hotels.

and on my way to NS all i could think of was my day is horrible. I was angry and angry at nothing and everything. Just two minutes ago, i was the greatest actor with my fake smiles and fake enthusiasm. and here i was on the bus, feeling like lashing out at people. But i didn't. But i gave people the look of seriousness and the look of anger. I was angry.

Got to NS. Opened a book and just two minutes into the book, the minister of environment and the premier of Nunavut show up to the class. I am embarrassed again as i think, "will they know i have no underwear?" And minister Shewchuck shakes me hand and shook his hand too. I don't like how qallunaat think it is good for men to shake so hard, which he did and i had to yank away. handshake is a hanshake, is a gesture, not some goddamned indicator of manliness. i didn't say that!

anyways, we were sitting and i asked him, you are the minister of environment and he says yes. I don't like politicians and i had to make a remark, because i think its absurd you can be a minister of the environment, so i remarked to him what he thinks of the weather today as the minister of environment. He says its warm. hahahaha. Does he know that i am without underwear in this warm weather?

Because i had already met a woman politician, i didn't go say hi to the premier. not because she is a women but because she is a politician. I detect fake smiles better than NASA detect new planets. i don't feel like talking to people today. remember i was angry.

to end this off, i will tell this: The minister of health Leona said "its not everyday that i get to meet my constituents" And i feel like lashing out "I am not your damn constituent, i have been living in Ottawa longer than you have." Which i don't do because my father tells me to be nice.

You decide if this is a true story. you decide if i really went commando to meet the minister of health. but i did meet all those people the other day, the question is was i or wasn't i wearing underwear?

Hospitality of Montreal

2010-01-25T18:27:00.000-05:00

I just came back from a day trip to Montreal. it is now 7:30 and i am now writing about my day in Montreal and how refreshingly hospitable it was in such a big city as itself. Maybe its a once in a lifetime hospitality that I'll never experience from complete strangers again.

We left this morning, me and Derek, and started driving in the rain. We talked about a poetry reading we went to the other day and how one of them was very good. He managed to talk about Canada in a positive way but at the same time exposing what is negative about the country. I really like his show. if you want to see him, he is here.

to get back to the point, we drove through the rain. The mist from big trucks was hard to see through.

We made it, without getting into an accident. We made it with our bodies intact, with eye balls still in the socket. We made it to the second largest city in Canada, with confusing traffic signs and even crazier drivers that don't really care if you swerve two meters away from them. We went through the endless traffic of downtown Montreal, with faces of black, green, brown, many brown, white and all sorts of colours that there is no label for. We make it to our destination and head to the elevator.

I am lead to a room, a waiting room, which is so modern i feel like i am at the Jetsons cartoon show. It eerily has the same colours except there is no escalator to lead us everywhere. While we waited, a Mohawk comes through and he has to be at least 7 foot. Huge. I looked up to him and shook his hand. He did the English recording. Imagine that, a Mohawk encouraging all Canadians to become RCMP officers. And out of nowhere he says he hates the RCMP. He hates the RCMP, he doesn't get along with them politically. He says fuck this and that. He seems to be on his ground, but i wish he wasn't so angry, then i realize he has a five hundred year history with the authorities and the RCMP is one of them again: to encroach their ideas of justice to another group of people not like them.

In half an hour I am done with my recordings. At the beginning, the guy says he will be my director. I ask him to direct me on what? he says on my recording. So, i ask him how can he direct me when he has no idea what i am saying, unless he can learn Inuktitut in five minutes, only then will he direct me. He gave me an uncomfortable smile. I instantly start feeling bad for him and try to help him out as much. At the end, he shakes my hand and says i did well.

After the recording, i go meet up with my buddy Derek again, at a restaurant. We talk with another lady and have some soup and the greatest falafel sandwich ever. i was amazed by the taste and the atmosphere of the restaurant is peaceful and hippie-ish.

After lunch, we go to the bus station and he drops me off. I didn't have my ritual of smoking after eating, so as soon as i buy my bus ticket to go back home. I go outside in the rain for a cigarette. Now, i have been outside of that bus station many times and have been asked for a cigarette many more times. But this guy goes up to me and asks for a light. I give him one. He jerks his head so fast to look to towards me that it almost frightens me and asks something in french. In my best french i say s'il vous plaît anglais? He smiles and says in french accented english: I just came back from the country after two weeks, you want to smoke a joint? I say, no (pretty rare, if you ask me) and tell him i still have to work and be on the bus and says, "me understand, i don't do in front my parents too."

I didn't think much about it. And now a "guy", another french man, goes straight up to me and says something in french again. I say, sorry, i don't speak french. and the first guy who offered me weed, starts translating for me. At first i think he is kidding, but realize that the "guy" is serious. The "guy" asks: do you have 50 cents, i am trying to get to Quebec city and i can smoke with you. I hear this through a translator and i think he is kidding but he is serious. I had just arrived to the bus terminal and have been offered two joints in a matter of five minutes. Now this is strange, i don't usually get offered free weed. What is even more strange is the fact that the "guy" has shaved sideburns, with a hint of grey hair and on top of his head is nothing but neon green hair. I start thinking: he must be the oldest Emo that this country has! of course he asks me if i am chinese or first nation and i say no to both and i am glad he doesn't ask again about my identity.

I said no to them both because i learned on TV when i was a kid that a mother once said to her little girl, "never take offers from strangers" and i go off with this thought.

an hour ago now, i was getting off the bus and a student from University of Ottawa bumped into me pretty hard. he doesn't even look back to say sorry or just to acknowledge that he walked into someone. Nope, he doesn't, he just walks and bumps into other people as well, without regard to them. I start thinking, since this is Ottawa, his parents must be bureaucrats, that walk like a zombie as much as he does.

And Montreal was so hospitable!

ELMO

2010-01-17T15:09:00.000-05:00

I had wrote this piece back in August of 2009, basically out of sheer desperation to write something. Any form of creative writing should be welcomed by Inuit. We should demand novels, poems, and essays rather than health reports and "state of the Inuit" reports or such boring crap. We have been written in reports as if we are disappearing, even from our own organizations. I know some of the reports accurately depict life in our communities but with such deplorable explanations of life, it diminishes our expectation for life.

Even short stories will tend to have an effect on society where it comes from, no matter how small.

ELMO is an acronym for a new organization that is being started up by thoughtless and irresponsible E-Know-Its. It stands for: E-Know-It Liberation Movement Organization.

ELMO tries to represent people who call themselves Inuit or Eskimos or however they want to be called. it strives to collectively recuperate the lost tea and biscuits the people couldn't have in the early 19th century and early 20th century.

In a interview with it's reclusive "leader", who can't be named for criminal activity reasons, he stated the intentions of the organization.

what is ELMO?

Elmo is a stuffed animal created by Sesame Street in the early 70's, who achieved fame in the 90's with it tickle me Elmo doll. it's rather creep and high pitched.

No, what is your organization ELMO?

Oh, sorry, i was phasing out, looking out the window. ELMO is a organization that was started after a realization that the colonizers of our lands were tea drinkers and they brought in the infamous hard biscuit and the pilot biscuits, that go so well with tea, and that this realization culminated from drinking tea. ELMO strives to bring back "sivataarvik" which is Saturday in your language, which means: the day to receive biscuits. With this first mission, we plan to bring the community to its grassroots policies, instead of this assimilation and integration policies, that brings us further away from our people.

Why E-Know-It?

the current young population is the first generation to have the knowledge of the wide range of information and the internet and what people call E-commerce. We just basically know it. And you may not know it, our people love to say "Eeee" when they are disgusted or astonished by something. It's a kind of a play on words, combining Inuit, knowledge, Eskimo, and we are working on our way to E-Commerce. Does that suffice?

Yes it does. and what are you liberating yourself from and is it really a movement?

Well, liberation from the constrictions of the world economy and produce our own form of monetary management, without using the capitalist and socialist systems. we are liberating ourselves from that. and yes, how dare you challenge that it's not a movement, when it surely is. I may be the only member at the moment but i plan on doing an extensive media campaign and public relations tour around our territories which cover the whole arctic archipelago and circumpolar north. you dig?

Year of the Inuit

2010-01-15T14:14:00.000-05:00

This is my year!

If you are an Inuk, and living in Canada, this is your year. According to Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.

January 14, 2009 was the start of the year of the Inuit, which ITK has initiated, to raise awareness of Inuit issues to Canadians. On November 24, 2009, ITK president Mary Simon, announced the intention, before the start of the Olympic games in Vancouver. She stated, "While we are pleased that the Inuksuk, an Inuit symbol, is being used at the upcoming Olympics, we also have to ensure that our country sees us in more than just symbolic terms. The North wants in.”

We want in. Inuit want in. Or is it ITK that wants in?

I believe this is great idea, and how many times in our lifetimes as Inuit, can we ever have a whole year dedicated to our issues and ambitions?

So this is where i start telling my night for the event. I just had to explain a little about the event and what it was for. But this is my story as much as it is Inuit organization's stories.

I consider myself rather lucky, but i think ITK is rather lucky as well for me to attend the event. I first heard about the event and laughed about it and made fun of myself by saying that we going to have bannock making classes, no taxes for a year, proper implementations of Inuit land claims and that we are holding Inuktitut dances every month for twelve months. I had fun with the idea.

Then an idea came around when me and a buddy were eating, and we talked about creating a blog, for me to start writing on a weekly basis. We thought it was a great idea and i thought about it for week and decided that a great way to start this blog would be to write about the year of the Inuit event, where Inuit politicians are to be found, and it would be a great story. so I contacted the director if communications of ITK and asked him for the events and if it's possible to attend the event without me having to pay $200. i told him i am starting this blog. the next day i received an email from him saying that I'll be going as a freelance journalist, for free! How excited i was! did you get that? for free!!!

maybe i was wrong. maybe its not such a great story. who knows, you decide.

I walked over with Murray Angus to the event, which was held at the National Art Gallery. Just before the night started, people were encouraged to go see the Cape Dorset 50 year anniversary of their art production. I didn't go see the arts. I've seen enough Inuit art through my 27 year of living on this blue planet. So Murray and I were one of the first to enter the room where the celebrations were to happen. But just before we entered the room, we saw the president of Nunavut Tunngavik, and the first remark he made to us was: "you don't even look happy" we laughed with him. And i wondered if he really was that happy too?

the room we entered looked like the Star Trek Enterprise space ship, with strange blue lights all over, flat screen TV's showing images of Inuit in the Arctic, and an ice carved with the numbers 2010, slowly dripping and melting in the room. The servers were going around the room with trays of "exotic" Inuit foods, such as: caribou meatballs with LingonBerry sauce, (is that even a food Inuit have heard of LingonBerry?), smoked char on baguette croutades with dried blueberry butter, (what are croutades, another form of bannock?) dried caribou jerky which the server pronounced in Inuktitut, nikku, dried arctic char which she called pitsi, also correctly, Baffin shrimp bisque, pan seared scallops, served with porcini mushroom relish and celeriac salad, birch syrup glazed arctic char with confit potatoes and braised greens, agnolotti pasta with muskox tomato sauce and get this: natsik shepherds pie with sweet corn and mashed potatoes topped with herbed goat cheese butter. Because the potato, tomato and herbed goat cheese are such Inuit delicacies. for dessert we had akpik berries and minnie blueberry cakes and cranberry tarts. thats how it was, the food. and throughout the night, inuit musicians were played through the speakers, from throat singing to Charlie Adams.

Then the night started. Mary Simon went up to the podium and started the process. you know the usual political speeches, thanking people and whatnot and she announced the money raised will be put towards the Arctic Children and Youth Foundation and also who will be performing.

first to perform were the Ottawa Inuit children's centre preschool choir, which i thought was the best performance, as they sang in Inuktitut, while all the others didn't even do anything in Inuktitut. what a night for the start of the year of the inuit. a bunch of dignitaries were there, ranging from regional presidents to Peter Mansbridge and the wife of the prime minister, whose name i can't remember. Peter Mansbridge received the award for excellence in arctic journalism. and i did get to shake his hand. he didn't even look at me, just shook my hand, as there was a more important white dude talking to him. Taqralik Partridge performed as well accompanied by a violinist. Susan Aglukark sang a song, but i didn't bother listening and went for a smoke, with a white wine on my right hand and a cigarette on my left.

that was one of the best things about this event, the free wine. an eskimo is likely to be happy when anything is free. and the wine was free. i saw inuit holding beer and wine in there hands, mingling with the nations capital's politicians and people who are interested in inuit issues, mostly white haired retired individuals who need any excuse to mingle with the prorogued politicians. we talked and talked.

many people i know and have worked with were at the event, with the usual questions of: what do you think of the event? do you like the food? what do you do now? where are you working? what was your favourite performance? and so on...

so i drank more white wine... five glasses later, i was starting to feel my blood heating up, intoxication creeping in to my blood stream, no double vision yet, but i got the feeling there were people who were feeling like i do. people were laughing now, mingling, asking questions, giving out business cards and so on...

at the end of the event, Mary Simon announced that Inuit organizations were contributing $100,000 towards the Haiti Relief, with First Air flying a couple planes down to Haiti. I commend them for it. By this time, people were leaving and announcing where they were going after the show. Many of us went for a drink. At one point, i was sitting with the minister of health, premier of nunavut, president of NTI, and many Inuit who work in Inuit organizations. We drank beer. We got intoxicated, but we were not the typical Eskimos of the north, we were the southern Inuit who try to act like Inuit, who without realizing are much more different than the people we represent.

If i were the president of this organization, i would have done things so differently. I would let the audience (who were mostly white) know the realities of life in the north. It wouldn't be a formal event and it'd be held at a local inuit residence, with the same housing conditions of the north. I'd have obituaries of suicides from inuit communities throughout the walls, bannock would be served with jam and peanut butter, raw and cooked seal meat, all done the way Inuit would have done it, on the floor or just plain boiled. Farley Mowat would be in one room reading one of his books. Instead of Peter Mansbridge, I would have picked an Inuit former journalist. Forget poetry and throat singing, get one of those Nunavik rappers and a rock band from Igloolik and computers throughout the room with the connection speed of Inuit communities internet. I'd get the children who sang to read out articles and policies that the federal government hasn't implemented yet from our land claims and just like a inuit community christmas games, we'd stay up until 4 in the morning, dancing and playing games. Now that's how most Inuit start there year!