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Commentary
October 17, 2003 Notes of a non-native sonNunavut's openness is its greatest asset JIM SHIRLEY I've been having a recurring dream lately — something about being lost in shopping malls, at the centre of small cities which are both familiar and unfamiliar to me. The home I'm trying to find in my dreams is one that I knew growing up in New York. Perhaps these dreams represent my concerns about leaving behind my heritage as a resident of the United States, and adapting and embracing the heritage I have acquired over the past 30 years of life in Canada. For 24 of those years, I have lived in the North. Twenty-four years. It's an amazing length of time. Every once in a while I run into a younger person who asks me how long I've lived in Rankin. Nowadays, I am embarrassed to mention how long I've been here. It makes me seem older, somehow, than I really am. Nevertheless, I'm also proud to have been in one community for so long — and that I have had the chance to become a part of the society of friends and neighbours I have known for so many years. I've had a chance to see Rankin grow and evolve. It's been a wonderful process in which my family has played a small but positive role. It intrigues me when southerners, upon learning how long I've lived up here, comment that I must find it a kind of "paradise." They're perplexed when I tell them that I don't live here because I find it a paradise. After 24 years, this is my home. As is the case with any place a person might call home, it has its complexities. Often, it has become more of a matter of circumstances than it is choices that keeps me here. All of my "stuff" is here. Above all, this community is where I do my life's work. I am fortunate (maybe even lucky) to have found a sense of purpose in the work I do here in Rankin. Paradise? An interesting concept, but it certainly doesn't apply to the life I have found since I came north. Let me start on this subject by saying I have met the most wonderful and profound people here — Inuit and non-Inuit, many who have survived personal difficulties of all sorts. As northerners, they carry within them the benefits of the learning process they have gone through in their lives - a grace, courage, confidence, and self-respect. Every day of my life in this community, I am honoured to be among them. We have "broken bread" together. In fact, you might say that I have been around them long enough that I am becoming one of them. In the background, and surrounding us is this magnificent land - the greatest master and teacher of us all. On the other side of things, I have gone through my own share of difficulties - some of them are a result of my own errors, others as a result of difficulties imposed by others. Although the subject is rarely mentioned from a "people-of-colour" perspective, I've seen moments of the same garden variety racism here in the North, as the sort I was trying to get away from in the South. I have rarely run into this kind of attitude coming from Inuit. When I first came here 24 years ago, it wasn't often I saw other people of colour engaged in trying to make a life in the community. Now, our life as a community is rich with people from around the world. As a person of colour, it is wonderful to share life experience with other people of colour, to acknowledge our similarities and differences, the cultures and ancestries that we represent. I'm sure we all have stories to tell about some of the hard times we have faced. But in the sum total of it all, our life here in the North is a celebration of our collective humanness. The broad and emerging cross-section of cultures and backgrounds represented in the population needs to be recognized, encouraged and protected. Nunavut's greatest asset, at the moment, is that it is an open society. Each person who lives in this open society benefits from it. My own view is that, down the road, the welcoming and inclusive nature of Nunavut will be a source of incredible creativity, and social and economic strength. Regardless of the big picture, life has been mostly a personal, one-on-one affair for me over the past 24 years. My personal humanness has had its chances at expression, and I have lived to pick up the pieces. I've gone through every kind of joy and pain you can name. I've come through
the other side and learned lessons up here that are gifts to me as I live out
my life. This place, and the diversity of individuals I've known here have made
me who I am. October 3, 2003 The first time ever I saw this placeJIM SHIRLEY As an Afro-American, who spent most of his early life on the streets of New York, I have always been aware of the sense of connection that binds one person to one another, and to the totality of the environment they live in. I first read about the Keewatin through the works of Farley Mowat. I found his fiction fascinating; the idea of people who had lived for thousands of years in an area without trees, a place in which the snow and the cold predominated. Living in Brooklyn at the time, I recall thinking that my chances of ever visiting such a place were close to zero. But this was one dream that came true. In the spring of 1979, I stepped out of a Transair DC-3 and made my way across a stretch of hardened earth to a crude but functional quonset hut that served as the airport terminal back then. I had just been hired by the Government of the Northwest Territories as an arts and crafts development officer. It was my good fortune to arrive at a time many consider to be the most creative and prolific in the history of Inuit arts and artists in the Kivalliq. Rankin was one of the most exciting places I had ever seen. There was elegance and music in the way people went about their daily lives. I loved the sound of the language and the smiles on the faces of the people I passed in the streets. The oral nature of the culture was still strong back then, a reminder of my early days in the South Bronx. Here in the Kivalliq, I could see a beautiful and endless land in the faces and voices of the people. And I could see it in their art. It wasn’t long before I was taken by ATV over to the Diane River where lots of folks were fishing. What a sight — a rushing, frothing, blue-clean river, with people along the shore catching the largest and most beautiful fish I had ever seen. A natural, organic kind of politics seemed to be part of the way that people interacted with one another. There was sharing, and a mutual trust and respect — all of it anchored in an ancient balance between people and their natural environment. After 24 years, my mind often goes back to that time. Profound changes have taken place as far as the connection between people and nature, and the sources of their self-sufficiency are concerned. Increasingly, we’re living in a man-made, materialistic world in the North. The harmony and balance between people and resources is becoming secondary to a more “southern” view of reality — one based on the needs of the individual rather than the needs of the community. I know about this view of reality. As an Afro-American, I was born in it — I am a product of it. Years ago, when Nunavut was first on the horizon, I wondered about the ways a traditional communally-based, nomadic economy would make the shift to a modern one. I was intrigued with the idea of a modern economy driven by Inuit principles. This romantic version of a modern economy isn’t easy to achieve. We live in a wage-labor economy, consuming things that we import from other wage-labor economies. I am as much part of this puzzle as anybody, and we’ve all paid a price for it. There is an emptiness, a loss of purpose that has led to all kinds of serious social problems. We have some hard choices to make about our way of life. I know that there are lots of folks trying to figure out a way to create a
society that builds on its formidable strengths, rather than trying to react
to outside influences. I support them now more than ever. A modern culture and
economy based on Inuit traditional principles? Maybe some of our leaders and
politicians will take another look at this possibility. It’s something
that we should all continue to work for and keep as a political objective.
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