Open Letter to Maria M and Irini T

Dear Irini and Maria, I know i told you both I would be back in the winter semester. It was easier for me in my emotional state to lie, than it was to explain my entire situation and plans that i had already made. I hope you can forgive me for that. I felt the need to write you both, even though you probably might never see this post. It's something that is slowly eating away at me -the guilt of just disappearing from your classrooms so suddenly.

I remember when i started the semester, I was very excited about being in the Liberal Arts program, even jurik (which is an inuttitut word for 'proud/cocky') because I was KSB's first student to enter the program, and i knew very well that i would be able to complete it if i set my mind to it. The thing is tho, that i had never really set my mind to it. I had just completed a year at Nunavut Sivuniksavut, which is an amaaazing post secondary program for Nunavut Students. It was originally created to train field workers to implement the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement. I was one of two students from Nunavik to do the program, the first two actually. The year I spent at NS with my 3 phenomenal classmates and truly gifted instructors shaped me and defined me more than i could have realized.

We spent the year learning, not in the conventional 'teacher teaches you' way, but in a very old way. The way in which Inuit would teach their children before colonial powers took that away. To Inuit, education was not separate from life. Rather life was education, you learn from doing, seeing and being. We learned by trial and error, by conversation, by play and through pain. We experienced a way of learning that we, as first generation 'community inuit' had never been exposed to. We were not taken from the land into schools as our parents were, they are the generation that was forced to learn a new way of learning. We are the generation that only knows the new way of learning. Your way of learning; your way of teaching. You stand at the front of the room with your chalk and your notes and you feed us information. You feed us what you have been told is important, so you tell us it's important.

Irini, I know you're passionate about the ancient philosophers, it's obvious in the way you teach and know. I admire that in you. Your history is that of Socrates and Plato, you can trace your roots back to them, they provide you with the wisdom through which you see the world. They give you the foundations upon which you live and function in the world, even 2000 years later. It's beautiful because it works for you. It applies to you, whereas it does not apply to me. I don't care about what they thought of fire, water, bile and blood. Their wisdom, as valuable and legitimate as it is, doesn't belong in my world. I grew up with the arctic sun, chasing lemmings under ply wood and catching fish from the streams with my hands. My grandfather took me hunting, my grandmother taught me to be an inuit woman. She even threw a party for me when i threaded my first needle. They have since passed, but their wisdom is what I need. I can take ownership of that knowledge. I cannot take ownership of what Aristotle says, you can; i can acknowledge, i can listen and discuss, but i can't give that knowledge a home in me. Not when my nukak is still alive to pass her knowledge of my people, my history and my peoples' philosophy.

Maria, I loved you. I think you're such a sweet, fun, charismatic teacher. I would go to your classes just to be around your energy. I know you were teaching the 'world's' religions strictly from an academic point of view, not because you are or are not religious. I know that our journey into the bible, the torrah and the greeks' mythology was just for education, so that we could understand the way those books have shaped the world. But please understand that I have come from a culture that has been destroyed by the 'truths' in the bible. My people didnt even have a place in the creation story. Genesis gives 'us' the 'truth' of creation and purpose. It's there to ultimately explain our role as human beings on earth. But it's very exclusive in its explanations. Genesis is the story of farmers, sedentary people whose ultimate goal is to procreate -tame the land and multiply, that's what god wishes of humans. For them to go forth and conquer and use land; to reshape it and colonize it as they see fit, the land was given to them to use. The Inuit way of life is considered savage and sub-human in the bible's idea of humanity. Even to this day, academic and lay people alike consider the 'hunter-gatherer' prehistoric and underdeveloped. The ability to survive in the natural world is seen as 'wild' and the idea that one needs to control the environment is 'progressive'. We (Inuit) live in what agriculturalists consider the margins of the inhabitable world. You couldn't grow a pile of shit if you tried. Trying to take what the bible says and apply it to life in the world of 24 hour darkness and -40 temperatures is next to impossible (I know, all the religious Inuit are going to be offended by this post. I'm sorry, I dont really care).

Anyway, Irini and Maria.. I really just wanted to apologize and thank you as well. Thank you for trying to help me. Thank you for understanding. Thank you for everything you do. Keep teaching, you're both excellent at it.

p.s. I'm sorry i never did any of the readings or put any effort into the papers. Seriously, I am sorry, not just to you guys but to myself. I could have gained a lot..