let's tell the story

"How you tell the stories of Africans is much more important that what the story is; because if you are showing me as voiceless, as hopeless [then] you have no space telling my story. You shouldn’t be telling my story if you don’t believe that I also have the power to change what is going on." -Rosebell Kagumire on Kony 2010 via Racialicious

The same is true for Inuit and the recent Tragadie Inuite articles in La Presse.. i know its old news and its done and done, but the fact remains that a lot of people still think that those who spoke out were wrong to speak out, that we were just being over sensitive and defensive. 

I'm a very strong believer in stories, and the rights and responsibilities of people to *tell their own stories*. It comes with breaking free of oppression, the ability to tell your story from your perspective, the ability to have a voice and not be spoken for. 

My fellow Inuit, we have a voice, we have a story, a history, a her-story, we have OUR story. The injustice in La Presse was not that the truth or some variation of it was told, the injustice was in the delivery, the wording, the injustice was in the fact that the outside had the gall to come into our lives, into our story and bend the perception, to influence others and speak on our behalf with all the authority in the world and tell our story for us. 

It's our culture to be story tellers. I know for a fact that each and every single one of us Inuit has the ability to tell our own story, to tell our version of our collective story and that's legitimate. it cannot be disputed. As long as we have integrity and respect for all those involved, as long as we can speak as honestly as we should, than nobody in the world can come and tell our story on behalf of us and get away with it. 

Not only do we have the god given right to tell our story, but we also have the responsibility, and if we do not take that responsibility, do we really deserve the right? let's stop waiting for our story to be told for us, let's speak out and tell it, write it, film it, paint it.... let's work to change it. lets work to protect it. 

That's all.... good morning folks :) 

Guest Post: Letter to La Presse regarding the recent racially charged articles about Inuit

Here's a post from a very silatujuk (intelligent) friend of mine, Joey Flowers, the first Nunavik Inuk to graduate from Law School. He wrote a beautifully diplomatic, relevant and thought-provoking letter to the Editor of La Presse, after the publication of some very racially insensitive articles in the Saturday February 25 edition of La Presse. The series of stories, though published in French have absolutely outraged the people of Nunavik. It's provoked a very strong reaction from Nunavimmiut, and Joey, did a fantastic job of responding diplomatically, reasonably and swiftly.

The clearly racial image of a Inuk man's juxtaposed with the body of a dog were enough to spark tensions, a picture certainly is worth a thousand words, but accompanied with 6 articles, 3 videos and a photo essay, this was a mistake that La Presse should have thought seriously about before making...


 Here is the letter: « La tragédie inuit » is not too different from the anonymous racist pamphlets distributed in the context of the transit house for inuit patients in Villeray, in 2010. These pamphlets proclaimed that wit the arrival of inuit, people in Villeray could also expect to see “an major increase in criminality in the neighborhood, prostitution, drug trafficking including crack and methamphetamines, the presence of syringes, condoms, bottles on the sidewalks, alleys, and in parks, vandalism, theft, violent crime, smells that make you want to vomit, and people urinating here and there.” Your series betrays a tendency similar to the deplorable prejudiced anonymous racists. But you, Pascale Breton, instead of hiding in the shelter of anonymity, present a story in which we, the Inuit, are murderers, alcoholics, drop outs, lazy, homeless, negligent parents, and citizens insensitive and unconcerned about the issues we face in our region. Not only that, but little children in grade 4 yawn in class! What a tragedy! These poor 10 year old Inuit, bored in school! “White” kids in the south, do they never whisper amongst themselves in class? Outremont youngsters never wiggle in their chairs at school? What a joke! On the other side, southerners you call “white” (why don’t we see inuit in quotation marks?), those franco-professors who offer themselves as saintly families saving the poor “Inuit” children who “by the force of things” are losing their culture. What forces are you talking about? The Indian Residential Schools, the official policy tool of the government to assimilate the young heathen savages? The famous “sixties scoop” a project of excessive numbers of apprehenssions by social services to take native kids away from their families? Not fair, you might say. Pascale Breton is simply telling us what she observed when she spent seven long days in the north. It’s true, I reply, that we have major problems in our communities, there’s no question about it. But to tell a one-sided single story after having spent a short week in one village in the north is no way to give southern Quebeckers (after all, we are northern Quebeckers, not “pure laine” but instead “pure seal skin”) an idea of the nuances, of the richness, of the potential that northern life offers. No story about the wisdom of our elders, of the successes of our youth, of the innovative systems of governance we have, of our citizens’ economic, political, and social engagement in the villages. Instead of such a nuanced report, we see a photo of a canine body with the head of a homeless Inuk man, no different than Rudyard Kiplings “White Man’s Burdern” in which he describes those poor African children as “half devil, half child”. Chimamanda Adichie has said “Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.” I submit that Pascale Breton has abused her power.


  French Translation:

  « La tragédie inuit » n’est pas loin des tracts racistes distribués en anonymat en 2010 dans le contexte de la résidence pour patients inuits dans le quartier de Villeray. Ces tracts annonçaient que l’arrivée des Inuits à Villeray, entraînerait aussi « une augmentation majeure de la criminalité dans votre voisinage, prostitution, trafic de drogues tel que le crack et les methamphétamines, présence de seringues, de condoms, de bouteilles, sur les trottoirs et ruelles, dans les parcs, le vandalisme, les vols et les crimes violents contre la personne, odeurs nauséabondes, gens qui urinent par-ci, par-là. » Votre série fait preuve d’une tendance pas loin des préjugés déplorables de ces racistes anonymes de Villeray. Mais vous, Pascale Breton, au lieu de vous trouver à l’abri de l’anonymat, vous présentez une histoire dans laquelle nous, « Inuits », sommes meurtriers, alcooliques, décrocheurs, paresseux, itinérants, des parents négligents, et des citoyens insensibles et indifférents envers les enjeux auxquels nous, la population « inuit », faisons face. Qui plus est, les petits enfants de la 4e année bâillent à l’école. Quelle tragédie! Les pauvres « inuit » de 10 ans, ennuyés à l’école! Les jeunes « blancs » du sud, ne chuchotent-ils jamais à l’oreille de leurs camarades? Ne gigotent-ils jamais dans leurs chaises, les gamins d’Outremont? Quelle farce! De l’autre côté, les gens du sud, dits « blancs » (pourquoi le mot inuit n’est-il pas entre guillemets?), ces franco-professeurs qui veulent saintes familles sauvant les pauvres enfants « inuits » qui, « par la force des choses » perdent leur culture. Par quelle force, au juste? Les pensionnats indiens, projet officiel du gouvernement pour assimiler les jeunes païens sauvages? Le fameux « sixties scoop », projet de signalements par le DPJ et les taux surélevés d’enlèvement d’enfants autochtones? Pas juste, direz-vous : Pascale Breton ne fait que raconter ce qu’elle a observé pendant son gros sept jours d’expérience dans le grand nord. Il est vrai, je réplique, que nous éprouvons des problèmes importants dans nos communautés. Mais raconter une histoire unique et unidimensionnelle après une courte semaine passée dans un seul village ne peux donner aux Québécois du sud (car nous sommes les Québécois du nord, non « pure laine » mais plutôt « pure peau de phoque ») une idée des nuances, des richesses et du potentiel de la vie nordique. Aucune histoire des sagesses de nos ainés, des succès de nos jeunes, de l’innovation de nos systèmes de gouvernance, ni de l’engagement de notre population en matières économiques, politiques et sociaux dans les villages. Au lieu d’un tel reportage nuancé, une photo d’un corps canin avec la tête d’un Inuk itinérant, pas loin du fameux « White Man’s Burden » de Rudyard Kipling qui décrit les pauvres Africains comme « moitié-diable, moitié-enfant ». Selon Chimamanda Adichie « le pouvoir est la capacité de non seulement de raconter l’histoire de l’autre, mais de le présenter comme l’histoire définitif de l’autre. » Nous soumettons que Pascale Breton abuse son pouvoir.


 You can read more about the Villeray scandal in 2010 here.

everyone loves a quitter, right?

Whenever i make new years resolutions, i never, ever keep them. but this year, there were a lot of thing i really wanted to change in my life, and i knew that if i made them "resolutions" i was not going to accomplish changing them... so instead, i made myself a personal mission statement. It was more general, with a few specific little things. but i think it's going to be a good reference for me whenever i hit a block in the road. two of the things i put specifically into that statement were to quit smoking, and blog more. I have such a poor, neglected little blog here. and another blog that i was supposed to write for monthly, but nope. some of the posts in this blog are even embarrassing to me when i read over them again. its like, i was just trying to hard to get something into here that i didnt even bother making it worth reading. so this year, i will blog more and it will be worth your time and mine, dear reader. as for quitting smoking. that's what i wanted to write about today. i've gone 53 and a half hours without having a cigarette. It was mostly by accident, i was travelling north from Montreal and i had only one stick left the morning i was supposed to leave. i smoked it. then we had a layover in La Grande where i managed to bum a cigarette from an old friend of my mom's.. then when we got to pov, i didnt really know anyone at the airport enough to be comfortable to bum one. I got to my boyfriends place (who doesnt smoke!) while he was still away for work so i spent the night alone. I was too cold to go out and buy/bum cigarettes and i was too tired and too lazy. so i stayed in and before i knew it, 24 hours had passed since my last cigarette. i was desperate for one by that point, but i was still too cold to go buy some and i started thinking, hmm.. i've never ever gone 24 hours without a cigarette since i started smoking, i should just continue. and now im here, 53 hours later and still havent had one. I'm thinking A LOT about it, but not because i want to smoke one. Thinking about the way it made me feel... it gave me headaches, it made me nauseous each and every time i smoked, and yet i smoked like 6-7 times a day. i have asthma, so i would be taking my inhalers far more than the recommended doses per day, not to mention the 4am barely getting a breath in asthma attacks that came like clock work. and dont even get me started on the nasty shit i was coughing up every day... *ugh* it's hard. it really isnt easy quitting smoking. I've had two cups of coffee, a HUGE bowl of broth and im on my third herbal tea of the day. I'm eating almonds left and right and i keep bringing my two fingers to my lips as if there's a cigarette to puff... my body is itching for it, but my mind seems to be over the matter and that makes me proud. it's not necessarily the cigarette itself that i want either. it's the ritual. pulling a cigarette out of the pack, tapping the filter on my lighter or a table to compact it, sometimes i'd break the tip off, sometimes i didnt.. light and smoke, gag, smoke, gag, smoke, flick. cue nausea, cue headache, cue the "who cares, cause im so cool cause i smoke" feeling to justify it all. when something becomes so part of your day to day life, it gets harder and harder to let it go... wake up in the morning, make coffee, check my emails and have a cigarette. it seems so natural.. but i didnt smoke for years, and i wasnt a smoker for very long. in fact, i was that friend who would break your cigarettes or make coughing and gagging noises each time someone lit one up.. i couldnt face my parents, even though i knew that they knew; i still lied about it or changed the subject (rather harshly) if it ever came up. I never want to be like that. im going to be good to myself, and to others. being good to others means not blowing toxic fumes in their face, not being a bitch because i havent had a cigarette and not trowing toxic butts on the ground for someone else to clean up. my aunt told me something a few months ago that stuck with me, each time i smoked i would think of her. she smoked all her life, and now in her old(er) age, she's quit. she said "When you're older, and you've been smoking your whole life, you're going to wake up every day and realize how precious life is. you're going to be scared of dying every day because you're going to know you're going to die sooner than you were meant to because of cigarettes." she didnt say it spitefully or rudely like most people who tell you to quit smoking do, she said it honestly and genuinely, she said it out of love for me. it took me a few months to get it, but those words, i never forgot them and i never will....