Well today is my 20th consecutive day of work. Not a record by any stretch and in no way am I going to complain especially when compared to sweatshop workers in the thirdworld. Still its a bit tiring and leaves little time for a personal life. But now my first teaching placement is complete (I passed with flying colours by the way) and if there is one thing that I know, I know that I want to be a teacher.
I had always been a bit hesitant about it all, particularly with the idea of working with young kids, however that is all gone now. I am 100% secure in my decision to become a teacher.
The thing that cemented it all for me was after a morning away from the students that I had been teaching for two and a half weeks. When I returned to the class in the afternoon they were all over me, demanding to know why I wasn't with them and wanting to know where I was. It made me feel really good to know that I had been missed and that they had enjoyed having me in their classroom.
I can't wait to get back into the classroom.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Canada 2020: part 8
Rachel A. Qitsualik
Rachel A. Qitsualik writes regular columns on Inuit culture for Native Journal and News/North. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including Indian Country Today, Nunatsiaq News, Rabble.com, Up Here magazine, Aboriginal Voices, and the Ring of Ice anthology. She is currently working on a personal anthology and a novel. She lives in Nunavut.
Nalunaktuq: The Arctic as force, instead of resource
Rachel A. Qitsualik Aug. 31, 2006
In a much warmer 2020, the white bear's tracks no longer grace Arctic snows. The remnants of Inuit culture stand baffled as the last sea mammals perish, as creeping grasses and trees surround them, as southern industries pillage what many call the "New South." Ice is but a memory, while the Northwest Passage serves as the Arctic replacement for the Panama Canal in this new boom era.
The histrionic paragraph above reflects an all too popular vision of the Arctic's future, one generally held by those who have never lived in the Arctic. I, however, grew up in this place: I've lived in igluvigait (igloos) as well as in southern houses, untangled dogsled traces as readily as I've bought bus tickets. And my mind's eye renders me in the Arctic of 14 years hence as easily as five minutes from now.
Can you feel the warm August air? It's 2020, and:
In the hills, my husband and I chuckle at the staccato noise of a raven, shortly before bird and laughter are submerged beneath the roar of vehicles. We turn to see a trio of military helicopters flying over Frobisher Bay.
"Is it another CASP?" my husband asks. "Or a rescue?"
I shake my head, unsure, since these days there are as many rescue missions as Canadian Arctic Safety Patrols, or CASPs. The acronym replaced the old SOVOP (Sovereignty Operation) around 2012, when the federal government decided it needed a friendlier term. I can still remember the first one — Operation Narwhal in 2004 — where vehicles were hobbled by unexpected frost, and the military had to call upon the assistance of Inuit Rangers after losing contact with two communications specialists in the hills. Those operations improved significantly by 2010, however, just in time to address our contemporary problem: foreign shipwrecks.
The ice remains
It's at once embarrassing and alarming, the way wrecks are piling up in the so-called Northwest Passage, Arctic waters where Inuit have hunted for ages. They still hunt out there, of course, since Inuit can hunt just as easily from a boat as upon the once-common sea ice. It's tricky, navigating the sludge of icebergs in a small boat, but definitely worth it: global warming, it seems, has caused plankton populations to rise, increasing the numbers of fish and sea mammals with easier access to Arctic coasts. I can't recall a time when the hunting culture was this strong, though bears are no longer hunted. Warmth has made the recently stabilized bear population more dangerous, since the animals are reverting to the coastal and island hunting style of their ancestors; but their numbers are small. The end of the bear hunt is no loss, especially in comparison to the gift of food that comes with bountiful sea mammals.
Unfortunately for many, another prospective boom is starting to resemble bust. It's amazing to think back on all the sabre-rattling between the United States, Denmark and Canada over rights to the Northwest Passage, only to have so many ships ripped asunder by unanticipated icebergs. In 2018, there was a great deal of hoopla over Canada's new licensing system (favouring the United States, of course) for foreign usage of Canadian Arctic waters, even though the U.S. had already been using the waters since 2009. The issue only came to the forefront of public awareness in 2011, when an American oil tanker (the Rose of Texas, I think it was) split open 300 kilometres from Gjoa Haven, ruining local fish stocks and poisoning coastlines.
Inuit made little headway complaining that the bacterial strain used to clean up the oil was giving their children skin ulcerations, but the Canadian public at least roused itself once the pictures of afflicted seal pups came out. The result was the licensing system of two years ago, along with heavy costs in CASP operations to make sure that no illegal dumping, immigration, speculation or fishing occurs. Add to that the cost of rescue efforts for foreign ships that dash themselves like dazed juggernauts upon this new and unfathomable Arctic.
The Land, you see (as Inuit call the Arctic), has always liked to play tricks. In this case, all the profiteers were so busy expecting Arctic waters to stay open that they forgot one thing: the Pole is still far from ice-free, and global warming goes on. As ice farther north warms and breaks off, the resultant "slush" — ice chunks from the size of a baseball to that of a high-rise — floats south. Instead of the expected, ice-free Northwest Passage, the Danish tankers shipping fresh water from Greenland (there is, after all, a global freshwater crisis in 2020) and the U.S. tankers shipping (what else?) oil have instead found themselves negotiating a treacherous boreal labyrinth.
Iqaluit sprawl
So many lives have already been ruined as a result of greed and lack of foresight; but that, too, is an old story in the Arctic. I pick an Arctic dandelion (holding it under my chin, yep, I like butter), and turn to the town of Iqaluit, the edge of whose sprawl lies nearby. The housing crisis of years past is over for now, having been solved by global warming. The illusion of boom, of less permafrost and more shipping, lured hordes of southerners to the North over a decade ago, believing that the Arctic was destined to become prime real estate amid rushes for gold, sapphires and diamonds. They found, instead, an Arctic that was warmer but nevertheless treeless and incapable of becoming any nation's new breadbasket, and in which shipping costs and fair practices left a bitter taste in the mouths of the most rapacious companies. They built homes and complexes but were already fleeing by the time 2015 rolled around — homes that are now occupied by mostly Inuit families.
And as they retreated to the South again, pockets empty and lips curled, with bittersweet memories of a beautiful but strangely unprofitable land, they were haunted by a single, frustrating mystery: the knowledge that they could never say exactly why the Arctic hadn't been what they'd expected.
But Inuit elders could have told them. If anyone had bothered to ask, Inuit might have explained the Land to them. And you can bet the word nalunaktuq would have been uttered.
Come back to the present for a bit, even the past, and we'll talk.
The root word of nalunaktuq is nalu, or "not knowing." In Inuktitut (the Inuit language), nalunaktuq loosely means "difficult to comprehend" or "unpredictable." But why should the Inuit perspective on such a thing matter? Well, besides the fact that their burgeoning population makes up 86 per cent of Nunavut, Inuit have learned the harshest lessons from the Land. The best such lesson has been that of nalunaktuq:: the fact that general trends serve as poor indicators of what the Arctic will actually do. Many people believe that Inuit survivability and Land-knowledge are one, but few suspect that both hinge upon an acceptance of the Land's protean nature. Much of the popular shock over signs of warming in the Arctic stems from the assumption that, of all environments, the Arctic is traditionally the least inclined to change. This variety of pop sophism, however, is easily unmasked through even cursory examination of the era that birthed Inuit culture itself: for the truth is that Inuit are a young people, and they were shaped by previous global warming.
The first great warming
The planet Earth, between AD 800 and AD 1200, was a hot place. There are tales of rich apple orchards in England, and sunburns being common. At any time, in any place, when things begin to heat up, people move around. History shows this was one of the greatest eras of tribal migration and rising empires. Inuit first emerged out of Alaska, around the very time of the warm period's onset. The warmth had given sea mammals ready access to Canada's Arctic archipelago, and Inuit culture had adapted to specialize in hunting them — basically eating their way eastward via innovations such as improved boats. They did so well that, by AD 1000 (the time of Leif Ericsson's discovery of "Vinland"), they were across Canada. By 1200, they were settled into Greenland, just in time for the planet to fall into its chilly phase once again. Nevertheless, folklore — that subconscious history of a culture — never forgets; and to this day, Inuit ajaraaq (string games) retain the string figure called Kigiaq.This is the beaver, an animal that ranged as far as the Arctic once, during the Earth's last warming period.
As heretical as it sounds within the context of pop dogma, the last time the planet grew hotter, it was actually good for Inuit. This is because Inuit are the embodiment of adaptability itself, and other peoples who direct eyes toward the Arctic — however warmer — would do well to emulate such plasticity. Lately, we've become inundated with sweeping, nigh-hysterical pronouncements along the lines of "Global warming will render 95 per cent of Arctic species extinct within 10 years" or "Climate change will destroy Inuit culture within a decade." We humans instinctively love a crusade; but a crusade is past-oriented, while adaptation is future-oriented. We cannot trust crisis, since someone always profits from fear; nor can we trust prediction, until the day science can provide us with an accurate five-day forecast. But we can trust in our heritage as an ancient species, and an adaptive one. We can trust in our own ability to change, if the Land will not.
The truth is that the Arctic is warming — but I fear more for how the South will react to it than I do for Inuit. The common southern perception seems to be that global warming will reshape the North into the South, as though the Arctic were defined, up to this point, by cold alone. Many businesses view the Arctic as a new fruit ripe for the picking, counting on global warming as the friend who will give them a boost in reaching out for it. But ask anyone who has lived in the Arctic for a time and they will tell you that its islands and shores are strewn with the bleached remnants of such ambition: shipping costs that mounted beyond control, inconstant yield, disastrous turns of weather. Who can count the number of disappointed ventures?
Inevitably, the next couple of decades promise the illusion of boom for the Arctic — perhaps, in some greed-maddened brains, the mistaken belief that a warmer North is about to sprout trees and spawn its own little Toronto. It simply won't happen, because even with the eventual melting of permafrost, the Arctic is poor in topsoil and gravel, twin requirements for the agriculture and construction necessary to sustain large populations. Some might resort to the argument that population is a non-factor, and that fleets of international ships will directly connect North to South. But the attempt to have this very thing is what, I believe, will lay the groundwork for tragedy. My greatest fear is that shipping interests, driven by blind speculation, will brave the slew of icebergs resulting from inconstant freezing only to spill their ice-gutted bellies into Arctic waters as they fail. How long, I wonder, will Arctic communities have to suffer such disasters before those companies finally pull out?
Inuit, until that day, will have to be patient and adapt: no new trick. Inevitably, they'll watch it all, endure it as usual and feed the latest sea mammals — which will also use the Northwest Passage — to their children. Just like their ancestors did the last time the planet warmed. And Inuit will stand over the wreckage left by the overambitious, whose nerves shattered around the time they realized the Land would not obey a clock, and they will use the ruins as a picnic area or an outpost camp. And they will adapt, even as they whisper a prayer over the skeletons of those who refused to do the same. For Inuit have never owned the Land, having learned of old that it is no man's resource.
It is a force, and it is nalunaktuq.
Pijariiqpunga. (That's all I have to say.)
Link ...
Rachel A. Qitsualik writes regular columns on Inuit culture for Native Journal and News/North. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including Indian Country Today, Nunatsiaq News, Rabble.com, Up Here magazine, Aboriginal Voices, and the Ring of Ice anthology. She is currently working on a personal anthology and a novel. She lives in Nunavut.
Nalunaktuq: The Arctic as force, instead of resource
Rachel A. Qitsualik Aug. 31, 2006
In a much warmer 2020, the white bear's tracks no longer grace Arctic snows. The remnants of Inuit culture stand baffled as the last sea mammals perish, as creeping grasses and trees surround them, as southern industries pillage what many call the "New South." Ice is but a memory, while the Northwest Passage serves as the Arctic replacement for the Panama Canal in this new boom era.
The histrionic paragraph above reflects an all too popular vision of the Arctic's future, one generally held by those who have never lived in the Arctic. I, however, grew up in this place: I've lived in igluvigait (igloos) as well as in southern houses, untangled dogsled traces as readily as I've bought bus tickets. And my mind's eye renders me in the Arctic of 14 years hence as easily as five minutes from now.
Can you feel the warm August air? It's 2020, and:
In the hills, my husband and I chuckle at the staccato noise of a raven, shortly before bird and laughter are submerged beneath the roar of vehicles. We turn to see a trio of military helicopters flying over Frobisher Bay.
"Is it another CASP?" my husband asks. "Or a rescue?"
I shake my head, unsure, since these days there are as many rescue missions as Canadian Arctic Safety Patrols, or CASPs. The acronym replaced the old SOVOP (Sovereignty Operation) around 2012, when the federal government decided it needed a friendlier term. I can still remember the first one — Operation Narwhal in 2004 — where vehicles were hobbled by unexpected frost, and the military had to call upon the assistance of Inuit Rangers after losing contact with two communications specialists in the hills. Those operations improved significantly by 2010, however, just in time to address our contemporary problem: foreign shipwrecks.
The ice remains
It's at once embarrassing and alarming, the way wrecks are piling up in the so-called Northwest Passage, Arctic waters where Inuit have hunted for ages. They still hunt out there, of course, since Inuit can hunt just as easily from a boat as upon the once-common sea ice. It's tricky, navigating the sludge of icebergs in a small boat, but definitely worth it: global warming, it seems, has caused plankton populations to rise, increasing the numbers of fish and sea mammals with easier access to Arctic coasts. I can't recall a time when the hunting culture was this strong, though bears are no longer hunted. Warmth has made the recently stabilized bear population more dangerous, since the animals are reverting to the coastal and island hunting style of their ancestors; but their numbers are small. The end of the bear hunt is no loss, especially in comparison to the gift of food that comes with bountiful sea mammals.
Unfortunately for many, another prospective boom is starting to resemble bust. It's amazing to think back on all the sabre-rattling between the United States, Denmark and Canada over rights to the Northwest Passage, only to have so many ships ripped asunder by unanticipated icebergs. In 2018, there was a great deal of hoopla over Canada's new licensing system (favouring the United States, of course) for foreign usage of Canadian Arctic waters, even though the U.S. had already been using the waters since 2009. The issue only came to the forefront of public awareness in 2011, when an American oil tanker (the Rose of Texas, I think it was) split open 300 kilometres from Gjoa Haven, ruining local fish stocks and poisoning coastlines.
Inuit made little headway complaining that the bacterial strain used to clean up the oil was giving their children skin ulcerations, but the Canadian public at least roused itself once the pictures of afflicted seal pups came out. The result was the licensing system of two years ago, along with heavy costs in CASP operations to make sure that no illegal dumping, immigration, speculation or fishing occurs. Add to that the cost of rescue efforts for foreign ships that dash themselves like dazed juggernauts upon this new and unfathomable Arctic.
The Land, you see (as Inuit call the Arctic), has always liked to play tricks. In this case, all the profiteers were so busy expecting Arctic waters to stay open that they forgot one thing: the Pole is still far from ice-free, and global warming goes on. As ice farther north warms and breaks off, the resultant "slush" — ice chunks from the size of a baseball to that of a high-rise — floats south. Instead of the expected, ice-free Northwest Passage, the Danish tankers shipping fresh water from Greenland (there is, after all, a global freshwater crisis in 2020) and the U.S. tankers shipping (what else?) oil have instead found themselves negotiating a treacherous boreal labyrinth.
Iqaluit sprawl
So many lives have already been ruined as a result of greed and lack of foresight; but that, too, is an old story in the Arctic. I pick an Arctic dandelion (holding it under my chin, yep, I like butter), and turn to the town of Iqaluit, the edge of whose sprawl lies nearby. The housing crisis of years past is over for now, having been solved by global warming. The illusion of boom, of less permafrost and more shipping, lured hordes of southerners to the North over a decade ago, believing that the Arctic was destined to become prime real estate amid rushes for gold, sapphires and diamonds. They found, instead, an Arctic that was warmer but nevertheless treeless and incapable of becoming any nation's new breadbasket, and in which shipping costs and fair practices left a bitter taste in the mouths of the most rapacious companies. They built homes and complexes but were already fleeing by the time 2015 rolled around — homes that are now occupied by mostly Inuit families.
And as they retreated to the South again, pockets empty and lips curled, with bittersweet memories of a beautiful but strangely unprofitable land, they were haunted by a single, frustrating mystery: the knowledge that they could never say exactly why the Arctic hadn't been what they'd expected.
But Inuit elders could have told them. If anyone had bothered to ask, Inuit might have explained the Land to them. And you can bet the word nalunaktuq would have been uttered.
Come back to the present for a bit, even the past, and we'll talk.
The root word of nalunaktuq is nalu, or "not knowing." In Inuktitut (the Inuit language), nalunaktuq loosely means "difficult to comprehend" or "unpredictable." But why should the Inuit perspective on such a thing matter? Well, besides the fact that their burgeoning population makes up 86 per cent of Nunavut, Inuit have learned the harshest lessons from the Land. The best such lesson has been that of nalunaktuq:: the fact that general trends serve as poor indicators of what the Arctic will actually do. Many people believe that Inuit survivability and Land-knowledge are one, but few suspect that both hinge upon an acceptance of the Land's protean nature. Much of the popular shock over signs of warming in the Arctic stems from the assumption that, of all environments, the Arctic is traditionally the least inclined to change. This variety of pop sophism, however, is easily unmasked through even cursory examination of the era that birthed Inuit culture itself: for the truth is that Inuit are a young people, and they were shaped by previous global warming.
The first great warming
The planet Earth, between AD 800 and AD 1200, was a hot place. There are tales of rich apple orchards in England, and sunburns being common. At any time, in any place, when things begin to heat up, people move around. History shows this was one of the greatest eras of tribal migration and rising empires. Inuit first emerged out of Alaska, around the very time of the warm period's onset. The warmth had given sea mammals ready access to Canada's Arctic archipelago, and Inuit culture had adapted to specialize in hunting them — basically eating their way eastward via innovations such as improved boats. They did so well that, by AD 1000 (the time of Leif Ericsson's discovery of "Vinland"), they were across Canada. By 1200, they were settled into Greenland, just in time for the planet to fall into its chilly phase once again. Nevertheless, folklore — that subconscious history of a culture — never forgets; and to this day, Inuit ajaraaq (string games) retain the string figure called Kigiaq.This is the beaver, an animal that ranged as far as the Arctic once, during the Earth's last warming period.
As heretical as it sounds within the context of pop dogma, the last time the planet grew hotter, it was actually good for Inuit. This is because Inuit are the embodiment of adaptability itself, and other peoples who direct eyes toward the Arctic — however warmer — would do well to emulate such plasticity. Lately, we've become inundated with sweeping, nigh-hysterical pronouncements along the lines of "Global warming will render 95 per cent of Arctic species extinct within 10 years" or "Climate change will destroy Inuit culture within a decade." We humans instinctively love a crusade; but a crusade is past-oriented, while adaptation is future-oriented. We cannot trust crisis, since someone always profits from fear; nor can we trust prediction, until the day science can provide us with an accurate five-day forecast. But we can trust in our heritage as an ancient species, and an adaptive one. We can trust in our own ability to change, if the Land will not.
The truth is that the Arctic is warming — but I fear more for how the South will react to it than I do for Inuit. The common southern perception seems to be that global warming will reshape the North into the South, as though the Arctic were defined, up to this point, by cold alone. Many businesses view the Arctic as a new fruit ripe for the picking, counting on global warming as the friend who will give them a boost in reaching out for it. But ask anyone who has lived in the Arctic for a time and they will tell you that its islands and shores are strewn with the bleached remnants of such ambition: shipping costs that mounted beyond control, inconstant yield, disastrous turns of weather. Who can count the number of disappointed ventures?
Inevitably, the next couple of decades promise the illusion of boom for the Arctic — perhaps, in some greed-maddened brains, the mistaken belief that a warmer North is about to sprout trees and spawn its own little Toronto. It simply won't happen, because even with the eventual melting of permafrost, the Arctic is poor in topsoil and gravel, twin requirements for the agriculture and construction necessary to sustain large populations. Some might resort to the argument that population is a non-factor, and that fleets of international ships will directly connect North to South. But the attempt to have this very thing is what, I believe, will lay the groundwork for tragedy. My greatest fear is that shipping interests, driven by blind speculation, will brave the slew of icebergs resulting from inconstant freezing only to spill their ice-gutted bellies into Arctic waters as they fail. How long, I wonder, will Arctic communities have to suffer such disasters before those companies finally pull out?
Inuit, until that day, will have to be patient and adapt: no new trick. Inevitably, they'll watch it all, endure it as usual and feed the latest sea mammals — which will also use the Northwest Passage — to their children. Just like their ancestors did the last time the planet warmed. And Inuit will stand over the wreckage left by the overambitious, whose nerves shattered around the time they realized the Land would not obey a clock, and they will use the ruins as a picnic area or an outpost camp. And they will adapt, even as they whisper a prayer over the skeletons of those who refused to do the same. For Inuit have never owned the Land, having learned of old that it is no man's resource.
It is a force, and it is nalunaktuq.
Pijariiqpunga. (That's all I have to say.)
Link ...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)