survival

March 4th, 2010.. I sit here in my big warm house, music playing, stained glass pictures hanging in the windows.. eating tomato basil cheese on German rye bread.. imagine me 70 years ago.. 7 in the morning, i would probably be up, preparing seal skins or on the ice fishing, maybe sewing parkas and kamiks for my family (at 20, i would certainly have a family already)..

the point i'm trying to make here is that, colonization, as much as i've bitched and whined about it in previous posts and conversations (maybe not necessarily on this blog) does have its benefits.. as my blogger friend Mr. TJ Akulukjuk, pointed out in his post about colonization a few weeks back..

point made, i want to focus on what that means for people in the north, rather than someone living in the city..

I'm home right now in Aupaluk, Nunavik on the Ungava Coast of Northern Quebec (one of the '13 must experience now' winter destinations in Canada.. yeeaa boii). The caribou are no where to be seen, i think the entire Ungava coast is experiencing the same phenomenon.. the George River herd has completely disappeared into thin air, it's unusual because this area is generally the winter home of this particular herd and only once in my life do i ever remember them missing.. There havent been any seals in Hopes Advance Bay (my little inlet off Ungava) and even if there were, the danger of venturing out on to the volatile sea ice is becoming more of a gamble every day (every day, every plastic bag and water bottle, every time you use your car and eat factory farmed meat, every Copenhagen failure and COP-BIS.. juust sayin')..

70 years ago today, under these conditions, we would be hungry. We would be hungry, starving, eating the seal skin of our kamiks and the caribou hides of our beds. My mother's aunt (my nukak, complicated inuit kinship.. maybe i'll explain in another post) talks about the times when they would be hungry. She would eat her seal skin boots. This woman is here today, having survived times of famine because she ate seal skin clothing.

I know i know! I'm sick and tired of that debate as well.. but it's still going on whether we care or want to hear it or not.. it still exists. A group if european activists sitting comfortably in their developed countries have made it their life's mission to tarnish the reputation of seal skins. Do they even understand the significance of such a (by)product in the lives of thousands of circumpolar peoples around the world? This is not factory farming, it's not organized agricultural domestication and domination of living, feeling animals. This is a traditional practice dominated by the seasons the earth and the times.. and these times are tough already for those who depend on seal meat and skin..

I know very well that times have changed (obviously, i have a laptop and a blog), we do not live in igloos anymore (and -this is a common misconception, but we do have running water and flushing toilets), we do indeed have stores where we can buy food, but where does that food come from? That ground beef from the Coop or Northern.. where was it born and raised before it ended up on our plate? what happened to it's hide after its journey through the slaughter house? how on earth did it get from its original home to a freezer on the 55th parallel?.. that poor cow's life was predetermined generations before it was born. And that's what people expect us to want to eat? a poor defenseless animal who literally had no chance at life?

the traditional seal hunt is a complex and beautiful thing. A man can only wait patiently for his prey, with no guarantee that it will even come. Tradition says that a seal will only give itself to a hunter if he is worthy of it. There is a relationship between the hunter and the seal, the hunter and the community and the community and the sea (as in ocean, not a typo).. As long as there is a balance there will be prosperity for all, human, seal, everything.. even in times of imbalance, when seals wont give themselves to hunters, there was always the skin to fall back on.

today, we have been stripped of the opportunity to fall back on seal skins. We need to buy our food because the land is not sustaining us as it used to. We need money to buy our food. Money that is actually hard to come by in these remote regions. Money we could have made at a community level through the sales of seal skins.

People truly do not realize the interconnectedness of their actions on the global village. We are starving for the old ways, for the right to self government, the right to health, food and culture. Our people and our traditions will soon be washed away, melted into the sea of globalization in the same way that Tuvalu and Yap and Barbados and Seychelles will be washed away if our glaciers continue to be attacked.

Since when is it ok to destroy entire nations in the name of development?.. hmm, what a naive question.. I guess it's always been accepted that that's the way to progress.. but now those under the thumb of imperialistic capitalism are rising up and defending themselves. All we ask is that you understand where we are coming from. We just want to live in peace, in comfort.. we want our families to be safe and fed. We want our grandchildren to know their roots.. to the people of the arctic and the small island states of the world, that is not going to happen if global progress continues in this direction.

some of you may remember the chant "Tuvalu Survival" from the Copenhagen conference.. here's one for you "Uvangalu Survival"

Uvangalu, meaning me too in Inuktitut.

all this, in love..