Shooting the Breeze

RACHEL ATTITUQ QITSUALIK

In darker moods, I bemoan the seeming inability of many North Americans to understand Inuit thought. Nevertheless, quite a few have come close to complete understanding. They know who they are. As well, many haven’t, but they might not know who they are.

Take Inuit story telling, for example, an admittedly fun activity that I — hopefully — am contributing to in a small way, both by right and tradition.

These are the unikkaaqtuat, — “that which you play at telling.” Heroes, fools, monstrosities of the capricious elements, grotesque abominations of night-born fever.

In most vulgar telling, in mechanistic translation, the “themes” of such tales may seem no different from those of any other cultural tradition. And, repulsively, such theme conformity has in recent years enjoyed promotion by the “politically correct” movement — that Orwellian religion adopted by those who, reveling in banality, would “rescue” us all from our ethnic and social differences, rendering the human race as dry and colourless as mud brick.

Never.

Never will the Inuit cosmology be identical to the Welsh, or the Welsh to the Bunyoro, or the Bunyoro to the Indonesian. Despite the fury of political correctness, not all human beings think the same ways.

I would ask of those who claim to fully understand my culture’s themes: where did you aquire your understanding of Inuktitut? Can your mind think like that of an Inuk?

These unikkaaqtuat are our worlds. They reflect our minds as well as our lives. When we see ourselves thus reflected, it is as though our thoughts have birthed new realities based upon our shared ancestry. We are lifted from the mundane, transported back along the lines of ancestral thought.

The Inuit cosmos is ruled by no one. There are no divine mother and father figures. There are no wind gods and solar creators. There are no eternal punishments in the hereafter, as there are no punishments for children or adults in the here and now.

For those suit-and-tie, high-heels-and-broach types out there, stop telling me that I’m supposed to worship the “sea goddess” Sedna, or that I’m supposed to spirit-travel as a shaman, or that I’m supposed to drum-dance or build igloos or let spirits guide me.

And don’t you ever dare to tell me that I’m somehow resistant merely because missionaries have beaten my culture into submission. You weren’t there.

You don’t know, because you cannot and will not learn the Inuktitut mind. The insistence that I return to my culture’s past not only runs contrary to the Inuktitut code of respect for the mind of another, but it is also no different from some old-fashioned missionary telling me what to think and believe.

I was there. I saw yesterday’s colonists telling Inuit what to believe, for the sake of money and status — to facilitate their pioneering efforts, their trade empires, their swollen congregations, and their cheap labour.

Now I see new colonists pressuring Inuit to return to the “old ways,” telling them that they are deluded and foolish to believe in Christ or Jehovah. Can they not realize that the modern faiths now belong to Inuit as much as the old ones ever did? Can they not understand that Inuit have not been converted, but have only adopted and even engineered Christianity to suit their own needs?

Yet before I slam a righteous door in so many faces, let me address those gentler, worthy souls.

You can know the Inuit mind, and you can know it through the unikkaaqtuat. But as with any worthy knowledge, its acquisition is demanding in discipline, and simple in approach.

Listen. Only that. Defy the comparisons of themes and universal cultural images and, most of all, seeming. You may read a tale that reminds you of Robin Hood, perhaps, but that does not mean that they are the same.

Listen to what the tales say, to what they say about the Inuit mind, and don’t try to read into them. For those of you with the opportunity, talk with Inuit, but genuinely listen to what they have to say, and shut up until they are finished, or you will miss out.

The one that cares tries, and the one that tries has embraced the universe.

Pijariiqpunga.