I normally don't write about my dealings with my colleagues. It's not that I don't have any interesting stories. Oh, I do. By far some of my most noteworthy experiences come from my working relationships. It's just not very professional to write about it. (If you ask me, over coffee sometime, I'll probably tell you some good ones. Hey, I live in a small town. We all gossip behind each others' backs.) Come to think of it, I don't know what the difference is between telling tales about co-workers and bosses and writing about my life in the community. I guess I can't get fired for it, and I like money. Today however, I am feeling liberated, so I am going to write about a conversation I had with a colleague. I can't get fired if I don't have a job! Not that this conversation is that controversial or anything.
I can see Sophie rolling her eyes as she reads this. If you find my writing tangential, try having a conversation with me. It's just one long parenthesis after another. You don't know how many times I am writing and go to put a phrase in parenthesis (like this whole paragraph), only to realize that I'm already writing in parenthesis (this has already happened once in this post). I have actually had to make a unwritten (until right about now) rule that I cannot double-up and employ the square parenthesis [like this] to get me out of a literary mess. In fact, I have already used up my self-imposed parenthesis quota for this post (like you care!) Anyway, on with it James!
"How are you doing?" she asked me.
"I'm great! I haven't worked in a couple of weeks," I replied.
"No, I mean you're leaving very soon. How do you feel about that? Happy, excited, depressed, melancholic?" she inquired.
"Exactly." I responded. She really hit the nail on the head. "What about you, are you coming back next year? Have you decided? When do you have to decide?" She arrived here a few months ago to replace another teacher.
"June 1st I think." she said. "I keep flip-flopping back and forth. Being single here is tough, and I just don't know if I need to spend more than a few months up here."
"Yeah, I whole year is quite a commitment," I replied.
"I admire you guys for having come back year after year like that..."
I interrupted her "I'm sorry, but I don't find what we have done to be admirable. We love it here. We get paid well to do something we like. I would agree that it's very hard sometimes, but not admirable."
"But if you talk to people in the South, they mention all of the things you give up to be here. You sacrifice a lot."
She's right, there are some sacrifices involved in living in the North. We don't have access to quality fresh produce all year round. Once in a while, there's no milk or eggs in town. But it's not that bad. We don't get to hang out with our friends from the South. However, I had moved around so much in the decade before coming up here that I was already quite used to that feeling, and besides, we've made some excellent friends here too. The biggest sacrifice is our extended family. You can make new friends, but you can't make new grandparents for your kids. At a certain point, we realized that this was too much for us, so we decided to move to Montreal.
However, there are plenty of advantages to living in a little community like this. I made sure to let her know how I felt. "Sacrifices? Like an hour-long commute? I can leave the school and see my kids one minute later. We also don't have to stress about money while we live here. And, the people here are very nice to us. We like it here, no... I love it here. That's why we kept coming back. I guess my advice to you is this," I could detect a little condescension building in my voice for which I will have to apologize the next time I see her. She didn't deserve that. However, I would offer this advice to anyone who is working in the North. "If you like it, come back. If you don't, don't. Otherwise, you're going to be miserable."
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Friday, May 27, 2011
The Vatican Vaults Revisited
You can do things in the North that you can't do anywhere else. Two and a half years ago, one of the graduating students informed my colleague that the graduating class of 2009 would like to go on a school trip. After a couple of weeks of hemming and hawing, they decided that they wanted to go to Rome and Athens.
Such a trip in the South would involve a lot more students, a great deal of planning, and some fund raising. Here, however, things can happen a lot more quickly. The parents are not expected to contribute much to such things in Nunavik, but there is plenty of governmental money to be had for positive youth projects. Normally, they have to be cultural. So, before proceeding any further, I did a quick google search: Inuit Rome. The first hit at the time was about a Toronto businessman who had heard about a massive collection of Inuit artifacts in the Vatican vaults. Half of them had not been seen by the public for 85 years. It had been more than a century since the other half had been on display.
I thought, "It would be cool if we could go see that."
So, we wrote letters to the Vatican, to the guy who saw them, to anyone who would listen, not really expecting anyone to respond. It was merely a means to an end. As long as we were trying to make this happen, we would probably get enough funding from local governmental programs to get the students to Europe.
The Avataq Cultural Institute took us seriously and put us into contact with a Quebecois-Italian anthropologist named Gabriella Massa (for whom I have the greatest of gratitude and respect), who had made an Inuit exhibit for the 2006 Turino Olympics. She got back to me, and said she would contact the Vatican on our behalf. She was sure to mention that it was highly unlikely that this could happen. However, it gave us a glimmer of hope.
A couple of weeks later, Dr. Massa wrote me an emphatic email exclaiming that they had, beyond all expectations said yes! Apparently, archaeologists at the Vatican were actually in the process of cataloging the collection and even restoring some of it in hopes of doing an exposition sometime in the future. We were going to do it!
After that, the money began rolling in and soon enough we had booked a trip and were on the red-eye across the Atlantic.
Upon arrival, we were immediately ushered to the Pigorini Museum. En route, our EF tour guide (we booked a tour with them and took eave of them from time to time to do our own thing) mentioned in passing that all museums in Rome were closed on Mondays. I approached the door of the unlit, empty museum, and pulled on the door. Of course, it was locked. A security guard arrived shortly, and I mentioned Dr. Massa's name, at which point he stopped speaking to me and turned around. He motioned for me to follow. We stopped at a telephone and he dialed. He handed it to me. It was her. She said she was about to arrive. We were let into the museum, and Dr. Massa arrived shortly.
We followed her to a laboratory where we sat down, and a team of anthropologists and archaeologists brought out boxes of artifacts and bombarded the students with questions about the artifacts. The students were not ready for this to happen. After a few minutes, I politely told them that this was not a very open cultural exchange, and asked them why all of this old Inuit stuff was in Rome anyway. They looked at me funny, and I explained to the students that there was a movement for the repatriation of much of the cultural artifacts that had been taken by anthropologists all over the world. After that, the scientists cut the kids a bit of slack, and the rest of the visit was enjoyable.
The next morning we met Dr. Massa outside the Vatican Museums, which are some of the largest museums in the world. There were thousands of people outside waiting to get in, but we were able to jump the queue like millionaires. We actually by-passed the security, but a guard made sure to look in my bag, where there were three sculptures from local artists that we were going to give to the lab and to Dr. Massa. They guard was about to confiscate them, but Dr. Massa said, something like, "It's okay, he's with me," at which point the kind man handed me my bag and turned around to deal with the hordes of tourists clamoring to get in.
We were whisked away through dark, closed, and empty parts of the Vatican Museums, where new exhibits were being prepared and old ones were being taken down. We arrived at a lab only to find another team of archaeologists there to welcome us. We were brought in to the lab and I thought, "here we go again," but to my surprise, the experience was far more agreeable. The scientists still did bring out artifacts and ask my students questions about them, but it seemed to be less abrupt, and more respectful of the students. Perhaps a few hours sleep in a good bed merely changed my perception of how things were going down.
At one point, an archaeologist laid what she thought was a game in front of one of the class. She said,"How do I play this game?"
Now, I must say that many Inuit teens, including this one, are pretty disconnected from their traditional roots. But this was her moment to shine.
"That's not a game," she said as she rearranged the pieces."It's a necklace."
She may not have known much about old games, but she sure knows beautiful jewelry when she sees it. The archaeologists were completely floored. They had spent a lot of time surmising as to what this thing was, and they were not even in the ballpark.
After about an hour, we were then led to the vaults themselves. The archaeologists led us down some stairs where they opened two stainless steel doors only to reveal an incomprehensible amount of ... stuff. We walked past the treasures of the cultures of every corner of the globe. My eyes did not even know where to focus. I saw thousands and thousands of artifacts but cannot remember a single one. Eventually, we arrived in front of a kayak from the 1870s. The archaeologists asked us a few questions about it, and one of the students interrupted.
"Can we take it back?"
The scientists didn't know what to say.
"It is ours, isn't it?"
They started to explain how it was very difficult to repatriate things when there was nowhere to put them.
"But we have a museum," he continued. "There's even an old kayak in it."
They started talking about red tape and complications at which point the student asked, tongue-in-cheek, "Well, maybe we could just take some Ancient Roman artifacts instead?"
I beamed with pride.
Such a trip in the South would involve a lot more students, a great deal of planning, and some fund raising. Here, however, things can happen a lot more quickly. The parents are not expected to contribute much to such things in Nunavik, but there is plenty of governmental money to be had for positive youth projects. Normally, they have to be cultural. So, before proceeding any further, I did a quick google search: Inuit Rome. The first hit at the time was about a Toronto businessman who had heard about a massive collection of Inuit artifacts in the Vatican vaults. Half of them had not been seen by the public for 85 years. It had been more than a century since the other half had been on display.
I thought, "It would be cool if we could go see that."
So, we wrote letters to the Vatican, to the guy who saw them, to anyone who would listen, not really expecting anyone to respond. It was merely a means to an end. As long as we were trying to make this happen, we would probably get enough funding from local governmental programs to get the students to Europe.
The Avataq Cultural Institute took us seriously and put us into contact with a Quebecois-Italian anthropologist named Gabriella Massa (for whom I have the greatest of gratitude and respect), who had made an Inuit exhibit for the 2006 Turino Olympics. She got back to me, and said she would contact the Vatican on our behalf. She was sure to mention that it was highly unlikely that this could happen. However, it gave us a glimmer of hope.
A couple of weeks later, Dr. Massa wrote me an emphatic email exclaiming that they had, beyond all expectations said yes! Apparently, archaeologists at the Vatican were actually in the process of cataloging the collection and even restoring some of it in hopes of doing an exposition sometime in the future. We were going to do it!
After that, the money began rolling in and soon enough we had booked a trip and were on the red-eye across the Atlantic.
Upon arrival, we were immediately ushered to the Pigorini Museum. En route, our EF tour guide (we booked a tour with them and took eave of them from time to time to do our own thing) mentioned in passing that all museums in Rome were closed on Mondays. I approached the door of the unlit, empty museum, and pulled on the door. Of course, it was locked. A security guard arrived shortly, and I mentioned Dr. Massa's name, at which point he stopped speaking to me and turned around. He motioned for me to follow. We stopped at a telephone and he dialed. He handed it to me. It was her. She said she was about to arrive. We were let into the museum, and Dr. Massa arrived shortly.
We followed her to a laboratory where we sat down, and a team of anthropologists and archaeologists brought out boxes of artifacts and bombarded the students with questions about the artifacts. The students were not ready for this to happen. After a few minutes, I politely told them that this was not a very open cultural exchange, and asked them why all of this old Inuit stuff was in Rome anyway. They looked at me funny, and I explained to the students that there was a movement for the repatriation of much of the cultural artifacts that had been taken by anthropologists all over the world. After that, the scientists cut the kids a bit of slack, and the rest of the visit was enjoyable.
The next morning we met Dr. Massa outside the Vatican Museums, which are some of the largest museums in the world. There were thousands of people outside waiting to get in, but we were able to jump the queue like millionaires. We actually by-passed the security, but a guard made sure to look in my bag, where there were three sculptures from local artists that we were going to give to the lab and to Dr. Massa. They guard was about to confiscate them, but Dr. Massa said, something like, "It's okay, he's with me," at which point the kind man handed me my bag and turned around to deal with the hordes of tourists clamoring to get in.
We were whisked away through dark, closed, and empty parts of the Vatican Museums, where new exhibits were being prepared and old ones were being taken down. We arrived at a lab only to find another team of archaeologists there to welcome us. We were brought in to the lab and I thought, "here we go again," but to my surprise, the experience was far more agreeable. The scientists still did bring out artifacts and ask my students questions about them, but it seemed to be less abrupt, and more respectful of the students. Perhaps a few hours sleep in a good bed merely changed my perception of how things were going down.
At one point, an archaeologist laid what she thought was a game in front of one of the class. She said,"How do I play this game?"
Now, I must say that many Inuit teens, including this one, are pretty disconnected from their traditional roots. But this was her moment to shine.
"That's not a game," she said as she rearranged the pieces."It's a necklace."
She may not have known much about old games, but she sure knows beautiful jewelry when she sees it. The archaeologists were completely floored. They had spent a lot of time surmising as to what this thing was, and they were not even in the ballpark.
After about an hour, we were then led to the vaults themselves. The archaeologists led us down some stairs where they opened two stainless steel doors only to reveal an incomprehensible amount of ... stuff. We walked past the treasures of the cultures of every corner of the globe. My eyes did not even know where to focus. I saw thousands and thousands of artifacts but cannot remember a single one. Eventually, we arrived in front of a kayak from the 1870s. The archaeologists asked us a few questions about it, and one of the students interrupted.
"Can we take it back?"
The scientists didn't know what to say.
"It is ours, isn't it?"
They started to explain how it was very difficult to repatriate things when there was nowhere to put them.
"But we have a museum," he continued. "There's even an old kayak in it."
They started talking about red tape and complications at which point the student asked, tongue-in-cheek, "Well, maybe we could just take some Ancient Roman artifacts instead?"
I beamed with pride.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Pizzas
An important part of teachers' tasks in the North is ordering materials. This year, I was able to order two new novels for the Secondary 6 program. I chose a book called Cut, by Patricia McCormick, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Little did I know that there is a cool teacher in Kuujjuaq who had already taught the latter to three of my students. So, I went on a search throughout the school to find a novel that no one in my class had read. Between the students, who come from several different communities, they had read them all.
So, I asked them what to do. We had no more budget, and we needed to buy something to read.
"Let's fund raise."
Fundraise to buy a book to read? Uhhh, my students were apparently much cooler than I had thought. We decided on a book called The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian which comedically chronicles the adolescence of Sherman Alexie, a Spokane Indian who left his reservation to go to an all-white school in a nearby town. It was not only appropriate for my students to read, but also ridiculously hilarious.
So, after a few minutes of brainstorming, we decided to do a takeout Pizza night, using the school's kitchen.
I make great pizza. At least that's what everyone tells me. It involves a lot of work, but with the team I had, it was not going to be a problem. Making enough money to cover the cost of the novels was not problematic either. There is no restaurant in Kangirsujuaq, so anytime people can go a night without making their own food (which is not very often) they jump at the chance.
The class decided, to make it worth our while, we should make 40 pizzas. At 15 bucks a pop, that would give us $600. Because of our participation in an earlier contest, we had the ingredients furnished free from the school's cooking program. It would all be profit. The cost of the novels was a mere $115, so we needed to find something else to do with the money.
"We could buy more books," one of the students suggested.
At first, I thought that this was a good idea. My students want to work to get money for books? Okay, no problem.
When I mentioned it to Sophie, she had some questions. "Cooking pizza once during school hours is not exactly work. It's fun. Why not have them buy books for little kids that they know so they can read it to them?"
Thus the Youth Partnership for Nunavik Literacy was born. The goal of the group was to promote literacy of the very young by providing them with books to read with a role model (my students) who also loved to read.It was an ad-hoc group that lasted all of one afternoon and held but one event, but I thought it sounded cool.
We started to make pizzas. I am normally my own worst critic when it comes to food, but I know my pizza is good. Thus, I was confident that this was going to turn out well. Nevermind the fact that I had not made them in mass quantities before. Nevermind also that I am not familiar with the convection ovens in the school. I know my way a round a kitchen, and I was ready.
It all started off reasonably well. In the morning I had one student make the sauce while the others prepared the dough. My pizza dough is much more humid than most, and the students had a hard time battling the stickiness, but eventually, everyone conquered the crust.
The sauce, however, was a different story. The onions and garlic went fine. It was when we added what I thought were two huge cans of crushed tomatoes to a pot that I first became aware that something had gone seriously wrong. It was very thick and hard to stir even for the largest of my students, who had sweat beading up on his forehead. I took a second glance at the cans and realized that we had used tomato paste instead of crushed tomatoes. After some reassurance from other teachers that pizzerias often use only tomato paste as their sauce (yeah, but have you tasted their disgusting pizza?), and that it didn't matter that much, I reluctantly decided not to start it all over.
After lunch, we constructed the pizzas, which went off without a hitch. We popped one in the convection oven at 400 F and 12 minutes later we had our first pizza. We used it as a test, and although I wasn't happy with the sauce, I knew that if they were all that well-cooked, it wouldn't arouse any complaints from the hungry masses.
We began baking them on a mass scale using the two convection ovens in the kitchen. We could make 16 at a time. This was not going to take long. The hot pizzas were coming out quickly, and we bagged them, ready for to take home.
At one point, the students cut into another pizza. It was raw in the middle. You know when you order pizzas and the crust doesn't go "crunch" when you bite into it? You know, the pizza doesn't stand up on its own but rather flops in your hand? Well, this was much, much worse. It was raw. I couldn't believe it. I suspended my disbelief long enough to eat not one but two pieces. Then I realized we couldn't sell them like that.
I began thinking, "Why was the first one so good and the rest were not cooked enough?" I began to connect the dots. We didn't have pizza boxes, so we found some aluminum plates at the Co-op. We only had 36 plates, so the first four pizzas we cooked were cooked directly on the large sheets that go into the convection oven. The rest, on the other hand, sat on the plates, on top of the sheets, thus leaving the crust undercooked. The one we cut into happened to be on a proper pizza pan on top of one of the sheets, which made it inedible.
We had time to salvage most of the pizzas, as they had not yet been sold, and we put them back in the oven. They weren't perfect, but the people who bought them would not be returning them or going on the radio to tell everyone how bad they were. Some, however, went out in partly-cooked form.
I began to feel a knot growing in my stomach. I couldn't decipher whether it was the disappointment or the several ounces of uncooked white bread in my gut, but it was truly a humbling experience. The final nail in the coffin holding my dignity was pounded by what happened when I returned home with a couple of pizzas for supper. Between the bad sauce and the worse crust, I found my family picking at the toppings and leaving the rest of it behind. I swear I could actually see the face of Edesia, the Roman goddess of food laughing at me in Sophie's cheeseless, mushroomless mess as I shamefully cleared the table (I should have tried to auction that sucker off on Ebay). I even started calling around and asking the people who bought pizzas if they were undercooked. Everyone politely said that they were excellent, although I wonder how many of them had to be returned to the oven before hitting the table.
So, probably contrary to popular opinion in Kangirsujuaq, I really do make good pizza. Seriously. Believe me.
So, I asked them what to do. We had no more budget, and we needed to buy something to read.
"Let's fund raise."
Fundraise to buy a book to read? Uhhh, my students were apparently much cooler than I had thought. We decided on a book called The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian which comedically chronicles the adolescence of Sherman Alexie, a Spokane Indian who left his reservation to go to an all-white school in a nearby town. It was not only appropriate for my students to read, but also ridiculously hilarious.
So, after a few minutes of brainstorming, we decided to do a takeout Pizza night, using the school's kitchen.
I make great pizza. At least that's what everyone tells me. It involves a lot of work, but with the team I had, it was not going to be a problem. Making enough money to cover the cost of the novels was not problematic either. There is no restaurant in Kangirsujuaq, so anytime people can go a night without making their own food (which is not very often) they jump at the chance.
The class decided, to make it worth our while, we should make 40 pizzas. At 15 bucks a pop, that would give us $600. Because of our participation in an earlier contest, we had the ingredients furnished free from the school's cooking program. It would all be profit. The cost of the novels was a mere $115, so we needed to find something else to do with the money.
"We could buy more books," one of the students suggested.
At first, I thought that this was a good idea. My students want to work to get money for books? Okay, no problem.
When I mentioned it to Sophie, she had some questions. "Cooking pizza once during school hours is not exactly work. It's fun. Why not have them buy books for little kids that they know so they can read it to them?"
Thus the Youth Partnership for Nunavik Literacy was born. The goal of the group was to promote literacy of the very young by providing them with books to read with a role model (my students) who also loved to read.It was an ad-hoc group that lasted all of one afternoon and held but one event, but I thought it sounded cool.
We started to make pizzas. I am normally my own worst critic when it comes to food, but I know my pizza is good. Thus, I was confident that this was going to turn out well. Nevermind the fact that I had not made them in mass quantities before. Nevermind also that I am not familiar with the convection ovens in the school. I know my way a round a kitchen, and I was ready.
It all started off reasonably well. In the morning I had one student make the sauce while the others prepared the dough. My pizza dough is much more humid than most, and the students had a hard time battling the stickiness, but eventually, everyone conquered the crust.
The sauce, however, was a different story. The onions and garlic went fine. It was when we added what I thought were two huge cans of crushed tomatoes to a pot that I first became aware that something had gone seriously wrong. It was very thick and hard to stir even for the largest of my students, who had sweat beading up on his forehead. I took a second glance at the cans and realized that we had used tomato paste instead of crushed tomatoes. After some reassurance from other teachers that pizzerias often use only tomato paste as their sauce (yeah, but have you tasted their disgusting pizza?), and that it didn't matter that much, I reluctantly decided not to start it all over.
After lunch, we constructed the pizzas, which went off without a hitch. We popped one in the convection oven at 400 F and 12 minutes later we had our first pizza. We used it as a test, and although I wasn't happy with the sauce, I knew that if they were all that well-cooked, it wouldn't arouse any complaints from the hungry masses.
We began baking them on a mass scale using the two convection ovens in the kitchen. We could make 16 at a time. This was not going to take long. The hot pizzas were coming out quickly, and we bagged them, ready for to take home.
At one point, the students cut into another pizza. It was raw in the middle. You know when you order pizzas and the crust doesn't go "crunch" when you bite into it? You know, the pizza doesn't stand up on its own but rather flops in your hand? Well, this was much, much worse. It was raw. I couldn't believe it. I suspended my disbelief long enough to eat not one but two pieces. Then I realized we couldn't sell them like that.
I began thinking, "Why was the first one so good and the rest were not cooked enough?" I began to connect the dots. We didn't have pizza boxes, so we found some aluminum plates at the Co-op. We only had 36 plates, so the first four pizzas we cooked were cooked directly on the large sheets that go into the convection oven. The rest, on the other hand, sat on the plates, on top of the sheets, thus leaving the crust undercooked. The one we cut into happened to be on a proper pizza pan on top of one of the sheets, which made it inedible.
We had time to salvage most of the pizzas, as they had not yet been sold, and we put them back in the oven. They weren't perfect, but the people who bought them would not be returning them or going on the radio to tell everyone how bad they were. Some, however, went out in partly-cooked form.
I began to feel a knot growing in my stomach. I couldn't decipher whether it was the disappointment or the several ounces of uncooked white bread in my gut, but it was truly a humbling experience. The final nail in the coffin holding my dignity was pounded by what happened when I returned home with a couple of pizzas for supper. Between the bad sauce and the worse crust, I found my family picking at the toppings and leaving the rest of it behind. I swear I could actually see the face of Edesia, the Roman goddess of food laughing at me in Sophie's cheeseless, mushroomless mess as I shamefully cleared the table (I should have tried to auction that sucker off on Ebay). I even started calling around and asking the people who bought pizzas if they were undercooked. Everyone politely said that they were excellent, although I wonder how many of them had to be returned to the oven before hitting the table.
So, probably contrary to popular opinion in Kangirsujuaq, I really do make good pizza. Seriously. Believe me.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Inuktitut
Yesterday, while I was at the Co-op buying an ignition for my Honda, one of the concierges from the school asked me, "James, aren't you supposed to be teaching right now?"
"No," I replied, "My students are all gone for the summer. I'm not working anymore."
"So, are you just going to stay here for the whole summer?" she inquired.
"No, we'll be leaving at the end of June," I responded.
Then came the inevitable question. "Are you coming back?"
"No, we're moving to Montreal,"I informed her.
"Why?"
I responded truthfully with one simple word: "Grandparents."
"Asuu," she replied softly. I understand. "Why do you guys have to leave now that you speak Inuktitut?"
"I don't speak very much Inuktitut." I answered. "Sophie and I just know a little bit more than the rest of the qallunaat."
That's not true. I've met plenty of white people who can speak more Inuktitut than me. All but four of them are either children (like Noah), or are in mixed relationships. One is Father Dion, the oblate missionary who has been in Kangirsujuaq for more than five decades. No one considers him to be a qallunaaq, or at least not one in the same sense that I am. Two of the remaining three were teachers who lived in Kanirsujuaq for eight and nine years respectively, and for one reason or another were able to get over the hump, so to speak. The last is a French anthropologist and friend of mine who really speaks Inuktitut. Fluently. Enough to make the rest of us feel bad. The guilt doesn't actually motivate us to learn how to speak Inuktitut, it just makes us sweat a little bit.
Let me give you an example of how little Inuktitut white people speak around here. At the beginning of the school year, we hold a general assembly. The teachers all line up at the front of the gym and introduce themselves (the turnover rate is so high that the kids will not often know as much as a third of the staff) to the students, parents, and community.
This year, when it was my turn I said, "Jaimisivunga. Iliniatitsijivunga secondary six qallunaatitut." My name is James. I'm the secondary six English teacher. That's all I said.
Two things happened. First, the crowd broke out into applause. I'm not talking about a few hands clapping here and there, I'm talking loud, sustained applause with whistling and whooping. Second, teachers, some of them who have been here longer than me, began to approach me and ask me to teach them how to speak in Inuktitut. I was incredulous, almost angry, and very ashamed that white people are known to speak so little Inuktitut that three ordinary words could evoke such an extraordinary response. I didn't even know (and still don't) how to say "secondary six" so I said it in English... and yet the people truly appreciated it.
I'll give you another example. A few weeks ago, I was at the Co-op and the phone was ringing. I was standing next to it, at the time, so I thought I'd answer. "Ai."
"Aa. Levina Arnaituk." The person on the other end said. In Inuktitut, there is no mandatory small talk on the telephone to start the conversation. You simply and politely name the person with whom you would like to speak. I've been in the Co-op countless times when someone called, so I knew the protocol intimately. However, I wanted to make sure I got it right. "Kina?" I asked.
"Levina Arnaituk."
"Levina!" I announced.
There were plenty of people around, and someone in the crowd responded, "she left."
"Tamaaniungituk." I replied. Not here.
"Taima." The brief exchange was over and I hung up the phone. I turned around and faced the dozen or so people in the two lines at the cash registers. I scanned their familiar faces, and I detected surprise, appreciation, and pride. One, an Inuk teacher, was clapping. The school secretary was giving me the thumbs up. I once again became embarrassed on behalf of my people. How is it possible that we are not expected to be able to have even the simplest of conversations in the local language?
Moreover, how are teachers, as the gatekeepers to knowledge, able to pretend that we are doing more than paying lip service to Inuit culture if we can't even be bothered to learn the language? Even as we expect them to openly try to learn ours? The people here really appreciate it when we attempt, no matter how feebly, to try to speak Inuktitut, and yet we're too shy or not interested enough to oblige? That is, in a word, unacceptable.
Sure, some of us try to learn how to speak Inuktitut. It's true. I began in my first year by taking courses with Father Dion who in an odd twist of fate, has become a guardian of the language. This is a man who, excuse the pun, practices what he preaches. However, I didn't find his lessons very helpful. He attempted to explain the grammar of the language, and he was doing it in French. When I arrived in Kangirsujuaq, I spoke some French, but not nearly enough to be able to take language lessons for yet another language in French... or at least that's what I was able to tell myself, and I stopped taking them. Now, I definitely speak French well enough to get more out of it, but something keeps me from going back.
I guess the reason that I'm feeling so crappy about this is because I'm leaving having not learned to speak Inuktitut. As long as I stayed, I could point out that I was improving, even if very slowly. The sentiment is even more acute now because I feel as if my knowledge of Inuktitut is on the cusp of exploding just as I am about to sever the fuse.
I don't know why it is that the vast majority of white people who move up here do not learn how to speak Inuktitut. Maybe it's the continued colonial mentality. It certainly has a lot to do with the fact that we don't have to learn how to speak Inuktitut in order to function in Nunavik. Whatever it is, we could do better. You know it's true. Shame on us.
"No," I replied, "My students are all gone for the summer. I'm not working anymore."
"So, are you just going to stay here for the whole summer?" she inquired.
"No, we'll be leaving at the end of June," I responded.
Then came the inevitable question. "Are you coming back?"
"No, we're moving to Montreal,"I informed her.
"Why?"
I responded truthfully with one simple word: "Grandparents."
"Asuu," she replied softly. I understand. "Why do you guys have to leave now that you speak Inuktitut?"
"I don't speak very much Inuktitut." I answered. "Sophie and I just know a little bit more than the rest of the qallunaat."
That's not true. I've met plenty of white people who can speak more Inuktitut than me. All but four of them are either children (like Noah), or are in mixed relationships. One is Father Dion, the oblate missionary who has been in Kangirsujuaq for more than five decades. No one considers him to be a qallunaaq, or at least not one in the same sense that I am. Two of the remaining three were teachers who lived in Kanirsujuaq for eight and nine years respectively, and for one reason or another were able to get over the hump, so to speak. The last is a French anthropologist and friend of mine who really speaks Inuktitut. Fluently. Enough to make the rest of us feel bad. The guilt doesn't actually motivate us to learn how to speak Inuktitut, it just makes us sweat a little bit.
Let me give you an example of how little Inuktitut white people speak around here. At the beginning of the school year, we hold a general assembly. The teachers all line up at the front of the gym and introduce themselves (the turnover rate is so high that the kids will not often know as much as a third of the staff) to the students, parents, and community.
This year, when it was my turn I said, "Jaimisivunga. Iliniatitsijivunga secondary six qallunaatitut." My name is James. I'm the secondary six English teacher. That's all I said.
Two things happened. First, the crowd broke out into applause. I'm not talking about a few hands clapping here and there, I'm talking loud, sustained applause with whistling and whooping. Second, teachers, some of them who have been here longer than me, began to approach me and ask me to teach them how to speak in Inuktitut. I was incredulous, almost angry, and very ashamed that white people are known to speak so little Inuktitut that three ordinary words could evoke such an extraordinary response. I didn't even know (and still don't) how to say "secondary six" so I said it in English... and yet the people truly appreciated it.
I'll give you another example. A few weeks ago, I was at the Co-op and the phone was ringing. I was standing next to it, at the time, so I thought I'd answer. "Ai."
"Aa. Levina Arnaituk." The person on the other end said. In Inuktitut, there is no mandatory small talk on the telephone to start the conversation. You simply and politely name the person with whom you would like to speak. I've been in the Co-op countless times when someone called, so I knew the protocol intimately. However, I wanted to make sure I got it right. "Kina?" I asked.
"Levina Arnaituk."
"Levina!" I announced.
There were plenty of people around, and someone in the crowd responded, "she left."
"Tamaaniungituk." I replied. Not here.
"Taima." The brief exchange was over and I hung up the phone. I turned around and faced the dozen or so people in the two lines at the cash registers. I scanned their familiar faces, and I detected surprise, appreciation, and pride. One, an Inuk teacher, was clapping. The school secretary was giving me the thumbs up. I once again became embarrassed on behalf of my people. How is it possible that we are not expected to be able to have even the simplest of conversations in the local language?
Moreover, how are teachers, as the gatekeepers to knowledge, able to pretend that we are doing more than paying lip service to Inuit culture if we can't even be bothered to learn the language? Even as we expect them to openly try to learn ours? The people here really appreciate it when we attempt, no matter how feebly, to try to speak Inuktitut, and yet we're too shy or not interested enough to oblige? That is, in a word, unacceptable.
Sure, some of us try to learn how to speak Inuktitut. It's true. I began in my first year by taking courses with Father Dion who in an odd twist of fate, has become a guardian of the language. This is a man who, excuse the pun, practices what he preaches. However, I didn't find his lessons very helpful. He attempted to explain the grammar of the language, and he was doing it in French. When I arrived in Kangirsujuaq, I spoke some French, but not nearly enough to be able to take language lessons for yet another language in French... or at least that's what I was able to tell myself, and I stopped taking them. Now, I definitely speak French well enough to get more out of it, but something keeps me from going back.
I guess the reason that I'm feeling so crappy about this is because I'm leaving having not learned to speak Inuktitut. As long as I stayed, I could point out that I was improving, even if very slowly. The sentiment is even more acute now because I feel as if my knowledge of Inuktitut is on the cusp of exploding just as I am about to sever the fuse.
I don't know why it is that the vast majority of white people who move up here do not learn how to speak Inuktitut. Maybe it's the continued colonial mentality. It certainly has a lot to do with the fact that we don't have to learn how to speak Inuktitut in order to function in Nunavik. Whatever it is, we could do better. You know it's true. Shame on us.
Commuting
As a teacher in Nunavik, one never has a long commute. Sure, Kuujjuaq is now so spread out that, depending on where one lives, life could require a car. But it's not that big. There are no freeways, no jerks on the metro who won't get up for a nine-month-pregnant woman, and much less honking and fingering than almost anywhere else I know of.
For years, I regularly took the Greyhound from Edmonton to High Prairie. It used to stop in Slave Lake, but I'm not sure if the bus station still exists after the wildfires that destroyed 40% of the town last week. So, it would stop in Slave Lake for a half-hour while Orest the bus driver (I'm sure that there are many different ones but I have actually met not one but two Orests who drove the bus on that route) sat down at the diner in the Sawridge Truck Stop and scarfed down a hot-turkey sandwich with fries, gravy, and little peas (okay, sometimes Orest would get a hot hamburger sandwich too. As they say, variety is the spice of life). Then we would climb back on the bus and begin the hour-and-a-half trip to High Prairie.
Once, just as we were pulling out of the parking space, a woman ran up to the bus and banged on the door. Orest brought the bus to a stop and opened the door. A woman with whom I used to go to High school climbed the stairs and said, "Sorry I'm late. You know, traffic."
No kidding. Let me guess, you got stuck at the only light behind the other car? I digress.
Kangirsujuaq too has become subject to rural sprawl. In the last few years, a new development has popped up in which all of the houses on each street are the not only the same model pre-fab, but the same color too. I've heard it referred to as nouveau Kangirsujuaq, Wakeham by the lake (as it borders a lake instead of the bay), and East W-Bay. Actually, I made the last two up, but you get the point. Even living on the extreme periphery of the village would involve an eight-to-ten minute walk to work.
Luckily, I don't have to suffer that burden. I live in the teachers' ghetto, as much as there is one. Almost all of the teachers live on one street bordering Nunavik's premier golfing attraction, the Wakeham Bay public golf course. We've become accustomed to calling the street "Chemin du Golf" (Golf Course Road). Actually, the road has a proper name, "atsuuk", which roughly translates as "I don't know". You see, after five years, I am completely and utterly embarrassed about how much Inuktitut I can speak. I'm so out of it that I don't even know the name of my street (I'll bombard you with a rant about this tomorrow). Anyway, Sophie once wrote "Chemin du Golf" while filling out her address on some form, and it has stuck. Really. As far as the Canada Revenue Agency is concerned, I live on Chemin du Golf.
Right next to the red duplex on Chemin du Golf is the Mikijuq Day Care, where my children have been receiving their early childhood education. Our house, the day care, and our place of work are so conveniently located that we may have the shortest commute in the world of any parents who brings their kids to day care before going to work.
I'm not exaggerating. The day care is next to our house. It takes Noah sixty seconds to walk there (although most of the time he requests "something to ride" like a sled or bike before we leave the house). From there, the school is across the parking lot, a mere seventy seconds away. I timed it. Twice. We often leave the house at ten minutes to nine, drop the kids off at day care (which invariably consists of taking off at least three layers of their clothes), before heading out the door and over to the school where we can be comfortably in our classrooms before the bell sounds at the top of the hour.
I don't think such a short commute is possible in Montreal. Sure, it would be possible to live in a building which houses one's work, home, and childcare service. However, living and commuting in such a building would most likely involve waiting for elevators, a contingency that would inevitably have to be included in the time line of the daily routine.
All of this to say that life in a little northern village can be challenging, for sure. We are isolated from many of our friends and family, whom we miss dearly. We must make all of our own meals from scratch from a limited selection of ingredients. However, our commute is one of the many, many advantages of living here. And I'm sure I'll appreciate it even more as I'm commuting at least a half hour (if I'm extremely lucky) on the way to work in Montreal.
I love my commute. Love it. Love it. Love it. Who said that you don't know what you got till it's gone, anyway?
For years, I regularly took the Greyhound from Edmonton to High Prairie. It used to stop in Slave Lake, but I'm not sure if the bus station still exists after the wildfires that destroyed 40% of the town last week. So, it would stop in Slave Lake for a half-hour while Orest the bus driver (I'm sure that there are many different ones but I have actually met not one but two Orests who drove the bus on that route) sat down at the diner in the Sawridge Truck Stop and scarfed down a hot-turkey sandwich with fries, gravy, and little peas (okay, sometimes Orest would get a hot hamburger sandwich too. As they say, variety is the spice of life). Then we would climb back on the bus and begin the hour-and-a-half trip to High Prairie.
Once, just as we were pulling out of the parking space, a woman ran up to the bus and banged on the door. Orest brought the bus to a stop and opened the door. A woman with whom I used to go to High school climbed the stairs and said, "Sorry I'm late. You know, traffic."
No kidding. Let me guess, you got stuck at the only light behind the other car? I digress.
Kangirsujuaq too has become subject to rural sprawl. In the last few years, a new development has popped up in which all of the houses on each street are the not only the same model pre-fab, but the same color too. I've heard it referred to as nouveau Kangirsujuaq, Wakeham by the lake (as it borders a lake instead of the bay), and East W-Bay. Actually, I made the last two up, but you get the point. Even living on the extreme periphery of the village would involve an eight-to-ten minute walk to work.
Luckily, I don't have to suffer that burden. I live in the teachers' ghetto, as much as there is one. Almost all of the teachers live on one street bordering Nunavik's premier golfing attraction, the Wakeham Bay public golf course. We've become accustomed to calling the street "Chemin du Golf" (Golf Course Road). Actually, the road has a proper name, "atsuuk", which roughly translates as "I don't know". You see, after five years, I am completely and utterly embarrassed about how much Inuktitut I can speak. I'm so out of it that I don't even know the name of my street (I'll bombard you with a rant about this tomorrow). Anyway, Sophie once wrote "Chemin du Golf" while filling out her address on some form, and it has stuck. Really. As far as the Canada Revenue Agency is concerned, I live on Chemin du Golf.
Right next to the red duplex on Chemin du Golf is the Mikijuq Day Care, where my children have been receiving their early childhood education. Our house, the day care, and our place of work are so conveniently located that we may have the shortest commute in the world of any parents who brings their kids to day care before going to work.
I'm not exaggerating. The day care is next to our house. It takes Noah sixty seconds to walk there (although most of the time he requests "something to ride" like a sled or bike before we leave the house). From there, the school is across the parking lot, a mere seventy seconds away. I timed it. Twice. We often leave the house at ten minutes to nine, drop the kids off at day care (which invariably consists of taking off at least three layers of their clothes), before heading out the door and over to the school where we can be comfortably in our classrooms before the bell sounds at the top of the hour.
I don't think such a short commute is possible in Montreal. Sure, it would be possible to live in a building which houses one's work, home, and childcare service. However, living and commuting in such a building would most likely involve waiting for elevators, a contingency that would inevitably have to be included in the time line of the daily routine.
All of this to say that life in a little northern village can be challenging, for sure. We are isolated from many of our friends and family, whom we miss dearly. We must make all of our own meals from scratch from a limited selection of ingredients. However, our commute is one of the many, many advantages of living here. And I'm sure I'll appreciate it even more as I'm commuting at least a half hour (if I'm extremely lucky) on the way to work in Montreal.
I love my commute. Love it. Love it. Love it. Who said that you don't know what you got till it's gone, anyway?
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