I am a flake, a poor, lost, confused little wanna-be birdie... help!!

the other day, i was talking to my dad about.. i dunno.. stuff.. we dont spend a lot of time together, only because we're always living in different places, so whenever we do finally get together we sort of 'catch up' on whats going on in our lives.

Then the subject of my future came up -as it usually does- and yea.. Those who really know me know that i'm a total flake. I have so many hopes and dreams and big ideas... I have so many opportunities and interests, and no focus.

Anyway, the conversation went like this:

Me: I want to learn to fly a plane. I wish more than anything i was born a bird, I want to be like Amelia Earhart.. i love Amelia Earhart.. I could get my private license in like a year at Cornwall.. but i dunno if i can live with KSB again right away.. it's not like i would become a pilot.. i just want to be able to fly a plane.. I also want to learn how to para sail.. you know, jump off cliffs with those giant kite wings.. I wish i could fly. But that's kind of unlikely right away.

Dad: well, KSB does offer the flying course at Cornwall.. but Air Inuit dosent need any new pilots right away, it would be hard for you to get a job

Me: I know, but like i said.. i wouldnt make it a career. i just wanna know how... that's probly not gonna happen right away tho. It depends on whether i renew my contract with NYHA.. if i do renew, i want to try to live in Montreal. I bet i could work from there since i travel a lot for work anyway.. there's no real need for me to be based here, it's almost not fair to all the other communities i supervise :P

Dad: When would you have to decide by?

Me: i want to move in like july if i do.. its 'moving season' right?.. but that's ONLY if i can renew my contract and live there too... i dont want to have to look for a different job. I would need a decent roommate too.. But I'm also seriously considering taking a midwifery course here. They have them in either POV, Inukjuak, Salluit and Kuujjuaq.. I would take it in Kuujjuaq or Inukjuak probably. Ajak said i can live with her in Kuujjuaq and have her car while im there.. Plus it would be cool to live in Kuujjuaq for a bit. I always thought it was cool that Anna was a midwife, plus so many of my friends have babies.. I'm just amazed by the human body, the female body! I feel like hospitals are a harsh environment to give birth in.. so impersonal and cold and rushed.. I think i would make a good midwife too..

Dad: that's cool that you're interested in midwifery, we definitely need more inuit midwives in Nunavik, especially on the Ungava side. It's amazing that [then he gave me some statistics about something, comparing the Hudson and Ungava hospitals on the maternity service they offer that i cant remember exactly and i dont want to misquote anyone] .. so something about only 20% of women on the Hudson coast had [that procedure where they cut to ease birth] compared to 80% on the Ungava coast. (or something like that)

Me: I'd also want to do a couple of contracts with Doctors Without Boarders as a midwife.. the website says they're always looking for midwives.. but the again, all i want to do is write. I want to take journalism in University.

Dad: then write!

Me: I do! dont you read my blog? i write a lot that i dont publish too.. it's pretty much all i do lately.. but if i were to take journalism, i would want to do it somewhere...like England!.. or something.. maybe Scandinavia?.. they have free university, but maybe i would rather live in an English speaking country to study journalism.. I'm already confused about languages in my head.. But KSB only funds school within Quebec and Canada.. I would need to find a way to finance it........................ I dunno!! I really dont know!!!

Dad: I wish i could have recorded this conversation. You just gave me like 4 completely different things you're interested in. you should take a career aptitude test

Me: But I KNOW what im interested in.. there's just so much that i cant focus on one thing

Dad: well, im glad you;re looking into different things, then you;ll eventually find the one you love...

And that, ladies and gentlemen is my dilemma.. I have no idea what to do with my life. I'm sorry to say too that this conversation outlines only a fraction of what i actually think about doing. If you have any advice at all.. any direction or suggestion you think i could use.. please dont hesitate to say it! I welcome (and actually kind of request) your input!

What should i DO?

Mmmm....

I love amazing food. I completely love it. it's probably one of my favorite things in life, the sensation of taste.. think about it! how often do you just eat to fill your stomach or kill time? now, how often do you actually enjoy your food?.. really really enjoy it and appreciate it for everything its is -sticky, gooey, sweet, savory, creamy, crunchy, flaky, smooth, hot, delicious... Mmmmmm..

I make a point of enjoying whatever it is I'm eating everyday. I just love food that much. Even if it's just bread and cheese, or fish eyes or banana split or leg of lamb or chocolate cheese cake or roast chicken or anything in the world.. just love it.

anyway, now that you know my opinion on food.. i will get to the point.......

I woke up this morning thinking about pancakes. Not just any pancakes. Perfect pancakes... Pancakes with my simplified cheesecake filling (I love raw cheese cake so much that i have a cream cheese recipe that requires no cooking but is exactly like cheesecake batter.. SO easy but it's a secret. sorry.).. cooked fruit filling (or topping in this case), melted milk chocolate (fondue) whipped cream and crushed cashews.. and maybe even ice cream! (I truely, deeply believe that anything in the world can be improved significantly by simply adding ice cream and drizzled chocolate.. seriously, try it sometime).. I was determined to have those pancakes today. But, of course the day ended up being pretty hectic.. first day back to work after an incredibly long easter break, mom travelling and a bunch of little things every friggin minute (yea, it was one of those days).. So, after 6 pots of amazing coffee, a canceled flight, a criminal record check and a near crash on icy roads, I could finally, finally start thinking about those pancakes.

I went over to my best friend's house in the evening, I had bought a pancake mix that requires no egg (usually, I make my own batter, but in a community of 180ish, small luxuries like eggs are not always available at your convenience) and brought it there earlier in the day, while she was out.. anyway, i barged into her kitchen (which is also mostly mine sometimes because i use it so often) and started making pancakes. I mixed the batter, adding cinnamon and sugar to try to mask the store-bought-ness of it.. but.. it was.. i dunno.........off......... for some reason, it didnt taste right, and i asked L (my friend, whose name i'll keep confidential) to try it.. she tasted it and said the same thing. I was like.. 'Fuck. no pancakes today? :( '.. then we asked our old friend (who is in town for work) to try and he said it was fine....... ok........ so i put it in the pan and just hoped it would be better cooked. It was. Thank god. thank freakin' god.

Mmmm but that was just the begining.. we had some frozen berries and a brand new slap chop to experiment with.. i like to keep things relatively simple, so after having my fun with the incredibly frustrating Slap Chop!.. i just put the berries in a saucepan with some sugar.. so simple, so amazing.

Mmmmmmmm and then my cream cheese filling.. sorry.. no recipe details :P naah naaah nah naaah naaaaah!.. But i will say that mixing cream cheese and milk requires a whisk for best presentation. If you just use a fork it looks kind of cottage cheese-y.. i didnt really care, so i left it that way at first... then L had to make some stupid vagina comment and i had to whisk it. I just had to.

The best part (besides eating it) was plating it.. Imagine two whole wheat pancakes with a BIG spoonful of cream cheese icing, cooked, warm berry filling and hot drizzled chocolate.. I wish i had my camera with me (I never think to bring it places).. oh! it's mouthwatering just picturing it back.. Mmmmmmmmmm.... **que long, awkward food porn fantasy***

yum.. it was yum.


The moral of this, ladies and gentlemen is....... Enjoy the hell out of your food. It's amazing and delicious and it pretty much keeps you alive.. need anymore convincing?

she knows very well..

She talks and she speaks and she wants to be heard.

she yells and she screams, she just wants to be heard.

all she wants is to give to the world.

with her words

with her stories, her stories of pain and her hurt.

she pains and she hurts and it just dosent work.

no ears to listen no eyes to read. what will it take for the world to take heed?

who wants to listen to a little girl? nobody, that's who. Because nobody cares. she knows this, she knows this; and yet she speaks out.

she speaks and she speaks and she screams and she shouts.

The deaf ears will hear, one day, they will and she knows this, she knows this. she knows very well.

so she speaks and she speaks with her sweet little voice.

one day they will hear her, and they will rejoice
at the sound of this sweet little girl's lovely voice.

then her words, all her words, her poems her prose
will grace this wide world; then we're all gonna know....

they would always remain..

She's lost as she walks all these gray city blocks..

all these hours and hours she takes from the clock.. just wandering; lost; the young lady walks

She walks and she walks with no destination -impressive- almost with pure dedication..

She knows she can find that road she must take.. She knows that she knows the right choices to make.

And yet, for some reason the girl remains lost. She stays on these cold and these gray city blocks.
They know her too well and she knows them right back. She knows every alley, each brick and each crack.

They know all her flaws and all her setbacks.

To them, she can wave her imperfect flag, and yet their support for her still wouldn't lag.

the pillars she had in these gray city blocks, were solid, and steady. Her foundation. Her rock.

and with this false sense of security came, her fear and her pain.. they would always remain.
with her, they stayed and that's why she was lost..

the fear and the pain of leaving her past, were overwhelming and scary..

Why cant it just last? she thinks to herself..

Sugami, sugami, why cant it last?...

why yes, that IS my hair....

"Janice! is that your hair?"

"Yes, that is my hair!"
----------------------------

My funny, curly hair.. apparently it's "special"
.. it cant just be my hair, on my head.. it never has been.. never has been.....

"It's amazing!"
"It feels like quniruq*"
"BOING!"

....
..........
................


...What would you do?..
.. if you were me...

Wouldnt you just want to scream?
i do.
sometimes, i wish to make a scene.....


To scream!
and shout!

and make it heard:

"It's just my hair.. it's just my hair. It's on my head. It grows & curls & tangles & is..
...cant we just let it be?"





*qunuruq is eiderdown

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..

Warning: some very disturbing things about arctic climate change are in this post.

So, I'm in Ottawa for the IPY Early results workshops. For those of you who dont know what IPY stands for, its International Polar Year. It's global initiative to encourage, promote and better polar research, in both northern and southern poles. One of the main focuses of IPY Canada is integrating indigenous knowledge into the research they do. although 'year' is singular, IPY is actually more of a 5 year initiative..

Anyway, I'm here just kind of tagging along with some delegates from Nunavik. I've been to quite a few IPY events but this is my first one completely on my own, not as part of a group or organization so i thought i'd somehow make my time here productive and do daily debriefs of what i saw happen.

The conference is being held at the Chateau Laurier (i know, right!).. which i think is completely ridiculous. They're paying for 200 people to stay at this crazy posh hotel AND have workshops in the conference rooms that talk about 'how to include northerners in all aspects of research'. Well, I have a little hint.. Maybe, instead of spending $300/person for hotels plus whatever it costs to use the conference facilities, maybe -now, forgive me if this is too much to ask- but maayybe you could have had this conference in the north? Then the people could hear about it, talk about it.. it might even envoke a desire to become active participants in the process. But no, we're here in Ottawa (I've been to IPY meetings in Quebec City and Geneva).. just another conference in the south. I think that sometimes, certain types of people take themselves way too seriously. I will not apologize for saying that.

Anyway, enough criticism, I do actually love the idea of IPY and everything it has accomplished for northern research. This morning, Dave Carlson, the head of thr entire program, gave a really interesting talk about a few things that i think should be shared (it's dave's birthday today by the way!).. he had a 5 point presentation that was a) very, very relevant to Inuit and Northerners, b) almost completely jargon free.. which is completely awesome for someone who's totally non-scientific like me and c) short and sweet, what more could you ask for? *note that i only mention a few of his 5 points because some things, i need to do more research on before i can be comfortable to write about them

1. Recent Arctic Climate: a multi-millennial study on the arctic climate showed that, yes, climate does fluctuate and the arctic does have warm(er) periods.. BUT the baseline year he talked about, 1950, there was an incredible spike in arctic temperature.. it's like the line of the graph sat on a pin and shot into space. Point being? Arctic temperatures in the last 60 years are warmer then they have ever been.

2. Sea Ice extent: in 2007, they started predicting what the ice extent would be for the next fall. This was kind of iffy, but they did it anyway.. the point of this is that even tho in '07 they werent really sure of their estimates, they are getting significanly better at it, so look out for the next estimates for sea ice extent in the next year, they might be pretty accurate. He also showed a graph of sea ice in 2000 compared to 2009.. scary shit..

3. Sea Ice Thickness: He showed a graph with the years 2000-09 that showed how thick the ice was during March (the beginning of melting season), the graph included melt and recovery. Melting patterns were prety much stable throughout the 9 years, but it was the recovery that should cause concern. Each year, the Ice didnt recover quite as well as before untill, in '09 it reached almost half of what it was in 2000 (4 milion square Km in 2000 compared to 2.5 in 2009). He gave a really good example to explain it better. Think of it as breathing.. ice melts it exhales, ice recovers, it inhales. get it?

4. Ice Sheets and Sea Level-- i wasnt really sure how to synthesize this portian.. but check out 'the Copenhagen Diagnosis'

5. Permafrost and Carbon: We have more carbon in the first 3 meters of (canadian)permafrost that we do currently in the atmosphere. 'nuff said.. I could write a whole post about this topic, and i intend to.. but not right now. (just a fact that everyone should know: there is 2x the carbon in Eastern Siberian Sea alone than there is in the atmosphere and they left permafrost emmissions completely out of COP15 negotiations).

Anyway, a lot more happened today but i'm exhausted, starving and itching to see some lovely people so i'm gonna stop it there. Lemme know what you think! much, much more to come..

love.