Nunani: Saami

RACHEL QITSUALIK

Saami is not his real name, but it’s close enough.

Even if it were his real name, few people would know him — would know how he was — unless they knew him from childhood.

The “who” of Saami was this: he was the youngest child of a then-prominent family. The “how” of him was this: he was born a bit different. Only, I didn’t know it then, and by the time it mattered, it didn’t matter to me anyway. I’ll explain.

Saami’s oxygen flow had been disrupted when he was in his mother’s womb, leaving him with a paralysed eye and speech difficulties. He spoke rarely, and even then quite slowly, as though struggling along.

Before meeting him, the rest of us kids were told to be gentle with him; he had a heart condition.

But to see him play, we would never have suspected a problem. He was terrific fun, a regular kid. He was just Saami — one of our friends.

And I guess comprehending that is the key to understanding his story and ours, and the attitudes everyone used to hold, and how all that changed, much, much later.

You need to know that Saami had a heart of gold. He never threw tantrums. He never harmed anyone. He was gentle as the day is long. And in the Arctic summers, that is very long indeed.

We played with Saami throughout the winter, when only the northern lights brightened the sky, back when it was magical, a ghostly ball-game played out with a great walrus head. It was not long after that we were taken to boarding school — where lessons quickly transformed those lights into an atmospheric electromagnetic agitation, a bombardment of particles producing photons, absorbed by rods and cones in our eyes, perceived by our brains as colour.

These were the days of our cultural downfall, our lessons in English enforced with strappings for speaking anything but that language. We were an uncivilized people on the road to “meaningful employment”, becoming “part of the Canadian mosaic.” Our old values not only became invalid, but were openly reviled. We were “Eskimos”, “Qarmaaliit,” “Eaters of Raw Meat”.

These were the days of my harshest lesson: many people enjoy cruelty. I actually remember the day when it came to the forefront of my consciousness, crystallizing abruptly, like a slap. It was during lunch break. I was waiting for Saami’s sister, my best friend, to come out of the gym.

I overheard a couple of jocks, laughing over Saami being placed in “OT” (Occupational Therapy) — pretty much janitorial training. Saami was referred to as that “slow guy,” that “idiot.” What was it to them anyway? I raged within.

The bullying got worse, of course, as bullying does, so that it oftentimes seemed like the kids in Stringer Hall and Grollier Hall were really in training to refine this very skill. And trying to protect someone from bullying is like trying to chase gulls away from an exposed piece of meat — you can work all day, but there is an endless supply of gulls.

The gulls were being trained by the teachers, by the merciless hours of degradation in and out of class — some criminal in nature. Some of the students were morally weak, absorbing the hatred from their teachers. Such moral weaklings exorcised their frustration by taking it out on physically weaker kids, such as Saami. The nature of the bully.

In retrospect, I don’t think even one child could have been protected from the horrible treatment received at any of the “halls” established in the name of acculturating us. The institutions held all the cards, our parents knew nothing of what was going on, and I doubt that even a murdered child would have warranted much of an investigation.

But Saami’s abuse leaves me with one primary question: Was this the “Canadian mosaic” we were supposed to join? The promise of such schools was that children who once played together, with all as equals, would later be encouraged to focus upon each others’ differences, to think of some as superior, others as inferior.

This is better? You can’t show me a lifestyle that is so rewarding that it is worth this kill-or-be-killed way of relating to others.

I can only hope that when Saami looks up at the northern lights, he still remembers the great game they once were.

Pijariiqpunga.