I Shaved This Morning

Hello world!
I am just a skinny Eskimo
Not very fit either
i don't eat seal everyday
i don't like igunaq (fermented meat)
I don't even have my own ski-doo
nonetheless a dog team

Hello world!
this morning, i shaved.

If you've met some awesome
Eskimos in your life,
you'll notice we like to say
"the cold doesn't bother me"
"I like to go out hunting and camping"
"mmm, raw foods"
and so on

but rarely do we here of an Eskimo
say
"I shaved this morning"
because it's a pretty momentous
occasion, probably deserving
a round of applaus
or an announcement through the radio
or a status update on facebook

i am, as you can tell, rather proud
that i shaved this morning
because i do so only once a week
and it hasn't even grown fully
just a millimeter long
and its only a small mustache
even little kids make fun of it

for instance, in Ottawa
one of my good friend's son,
when he was a small boy, once asked:
can i touch your little mustache?
or when a student of mine drew a picture
of me with small dot representing my mustache

Hello world!
i shaved this morning
and it is a brand new day
i expect the brightest of days

The Food

did you know? people have blogs totally dedicated to foods?
i never have a lot to say about food, except that i eat it.
lately, i have been watching anthony bourdain's no reservations
it is a show dedicated to foods, travelling and trying whatever food is given.

so i have been thinking about food, our foods
the so called traditional foods, country foods
and how that might affect our culture.

what do you eat? and once we add carrots, onions, broccoli or potatoes,
is it still traditional?
what constitutes traditional?

the liver of a caribou? does it just involve the meat?
how many of us eat the head of a caribou? are we traditional if we don't?

how many of us eat polar bear? igunaq (fermented meat)?
ptarmigans? seal intestines? male ringed seal (tiggaminiq)?
ducks? beluga meat, not just the maktaaq?

have you had qisaruaq (Caribou stomach lining)?
tunnuq? tongue? seal liver, kidneys?

what is available at what times of the year?
is the duck at its prime in july?
baby seals in august?
bull caribou in october?

is our diet dictated by seasons? when is food best?
cooked or raw?

can we still eat nothing but country foods?

can we eat these words? will they sustain us?

While you sit and watch

For a good part of
our lives
we tend to sit and watch
the commotion
the gathering
the consultations
people doing the work for us

For a good part of
our lives
we tend to stay quiet
while the people talk
while the people point
while companies make plans
while the government approves

and before we know it
you'll see the helicopters flying
and
the announcement of this and that
and one day you'll think
what the hell was i doing that whole time?

People from the south
come and go
as they always have
but we, who love the cold
the snow to its fullest,
will stay and have children and
grandchildren, nephews and nieces
we'll want to stay here and will do so,
have a responsibility
to be part of everything
that happens here

because while we sit and watch
there are people interested in
your language,
your land, and your life
and they'll do anything to
grab a hold of it
they'll even spend money to do so

because while we sit and watch
there are a group of people
from vancouver, toronto and ottawa
looking over maps
considering which areas have diamonds
gold, iron and everything else in
between

considering ways of making it
seem that they will help you, when
in the end
they want to fill their pockets
with hundred dollar bills

considering ways how they can
retire with a cottage by a lake
how they can put their kids through college
and all of this while we sit and watch?

don't you think its time
we stand up and ask questions
stop them in their tracks?

don't you think its time
we protect something that
cannot speak for itself?

don't you think we should
all stand up and demand what is ours?

Being happy to be cold

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

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?

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

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