Growing up Pang

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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