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Escape from Babylon

RACHEL QITSUALIK

Last week, I wrote about my years at a residential school, and about being asked by a classmate what our teacher meant when she referred to "a harlot."

Obviously, it was us. To the abusive Mrs. Aech, it was all of us girls. There was never anything wrong with the boys; but to this strange, bejewelled teacher from the South, Inuit girls were all harlots.

The word became a trigger for my plan to get out of this hell. I wanted to be anywhere else, anywhere myself and the girls around me were not constantly dubbed harlots and the Whores of Babylon.

A desperate desire to never again be targeted by Mrs. Aech grew into an inner resolve. I would beat her at her own game. The way out, I reasoned, was to excel, to give her no ammunition for criticism. From that day on, I wore nondescript clothes. Everything I owned was navy or brown. I wore almost no makeup. Chapstick was all that touched my lips. I would comply, outwardly. Inside, I had promised myself a year of nothing but straight As (okay, B+). But it was a plan. Three more years, then freedom.

I more or less stuck to it. Involvement in sports characterized my "I'll show them" attitude toward the males. If they were going to be Mrs. Aech's favourites, I would simply play that much harder, that much better. They were not superior to this girl. Soccer, basketball, track-and-field, I was never a good athlete, but I did it all and it seemed the way to go.

A friend and I once jogged all the way out to the airport, 16 kilometres, just to see if we could do it (although we had to hitch a ride back). When I wasn't in the gym, I was studying. I went far beyond what was expected of me - more frighteningly, of what I expected of myself.

The harder I worked to dig myself out of the pit of self-pity, the more I got involved in activities that took me outside of myself. The harder I worked, the more there was to do.

Today, when I come across fellow residential school students (I hate that victim-word "survivor"), especially from Stringer Hall, I often see evidence of them having adopted the same game plan. Many became involved in politics, business, leadership, etc.

Ironic, since we were without positive role-models in "school." I also recognize what lurks behind their successes: the loneliness, the bitterness, the battles with self-esteem. The fatigue.

Nowadays, I have realized something about it all: The drive for success was a game strategy that worked then. I had intelligence, and the strategy helped me get through residential school. But there is a difference between intelligence and wisdom, and I have a bit of wisdom now.

These days, I work to live. No living to work. I live for the things that matter: immediate family, those I love best, living and dead. Maybe, in a way, Mrs. Aech was right. We were the Whores of Babylon anyway, but not in the way she meant. Are we not whoring out ourselves when we are passive, invisible, acquiescent in order to succeed in a system not of our making? Are we not whores, of a sort, when we sell ourselves out to get a little back?

Girls that I grew up with no longer joke about Mrs. Aech, the "Dragon Lady." It's not respectful to speak badly of the dead - a respect we pay her, in death, that she could never afford us in life.

If I could say one thing to Eva: Thanks for asking that question. It made me search for answers I would never have invented on my own. None of us ever thought to look up "harlot" or "whore" in the Bible. It's somewhere in Revelations, I guess. Like residential school itself, it is one of those things I could never figure out, and am probably better off not dwelling upon.

Some people say abuse builds character. Perhaps it does. Some say that the abused are survivors, victims needing therapy, sympathetic ears. This, too, may be true. Nevertheless, I say that it is also a game - like chess for your life. And you must play it with strategy. Just learn to recognize when it is finished, and time to turn your back on the board.

Pijariiqpunga.

School days, cruel days

RACHEL QITSUALIK

"Hey Rachel, what is a harlot?"

"Shut up, I'm trying to study," I replied with my usual teenage sensitivity. It was study time at Stringer Hall, our residential school, and that also meant it was officially quiet time.

My classmate had such a gift for asking jarring questions out of the blue. Questions like, "Where do you suppose that guy got his clothes?"

As though I knew the answers to everything. Mostly, I think she was just using her rhetorical inquiries to lead into something else she had on her mind. She had to do it now, of all times, when I had an urgent assignment due the next day.

But I was curious now, so I had to know:

"Why do you ask?"

"It's just that Mrs. Aech was razzing Ethel earlier about doing her makeup the way she does. She said she looked like a 'harlot.' Okay, so what's a harlot?"

"It's some kind of a whore from the Bible, okay?" I answered peevishly. "Anything else you want to ask me now that I can't concentrate?"

"Doing her makeup the way she does," meant too much blue eye-shadow, pasted on mascara, and any number of other garish colours collected from wherever it was that Ethel found her makeup.

Privately, the girls often joked that she had a secret supply of "ugliness" she would dip into from time to time. Cruel, but quite ordinary. It is one of life's mysteries that, while we are in our teens, our sense of cruelty for some reason becomes honed to a fine edge.

And then there are those who carry that cruelty into adulthood. Mrs. Aech (not her real name) was one of those, and she took every opportunity to humiliate Ethel (also not her real name) and the rest of us girls.

It seemed a trivial matter then, part of day-to-day existence, but looking back upon it all through adult eyes makes me shake my head at Mrs. Aech's complete tactlessness.

Back then, it seemed, we had no identity of our own. It was bad enough to be herded into a dining room like cattle for study period, but to have your appearance made the subject of comment for all to hear was bordering on abuse.

It was a given, though, that Mrs. Aech seemed to have it in for the older girls - especially in the looks department. A day didn't go by where an unfortunate wouldn't be sent back from sitting down to lunch or dinner, made to change a "too revealing" blouse or skirt. Sometimes, it was to re-style the hair.

The boys, oddly, didn't seem to become the objects of Mrs. Aech's wrath. The boys, it seemed, could get away with anything from ripped jeans to long hair. The girls could not.

This was not the only double standard. There was also the fact that Mrs. Aech herself was a livid mess of powders, bloody red lipstick and rouge. Her hair was a perpetual nest of thickly dyed purple.

It seemed strange to me that the least bit of makeup on us girls made us "The Whore of Babylon!" as Mrs. Aech liked to call us. All this from a woman armoured in cosmetics, whose every gesture was accompanied by the sparkle of numerous jewels.

Not only was this double standard damaging to a developing girl's self-esteem, but, in a way, it betrayed exactly what Mrs. Aech thought of Inuit girls.

Or wished to think of us? Were we, in her mind, really little Whores of Babylon? According to this overly made-up woman, the least bit of makeup on us (as well as giving us cancer, in her opinion) made us harlots.

Most of us Stringer Halls kids came from small Inuit communities, and almost all of us had no money to spend on clothing. We wore the school uniform of white, long-sleeved shirt, navy slacks, and boarding-school-issue mukluks. And, of course, when we needed glasses, we got the nice, big, black, standard, welfare issue things.

I have always felt that the residential school system was somewhat schizophrenic in its approach to raising kids. True, it was cruel as well, but this is a well-known fact. But what exactly did they think they wanted us to be?

Next week: Lessons in adversity

October 17, 2003

Vegetable, animal and medicinal

In last week's column, I described how the lack of consistency and predictability in the availability of plants made it difficult for Inuit to rely on them entirely as a source of medicines, as people in warmer climates did. Instead, Inuit medicine was typically based upon the most common Inuit resource: animals.

Numerous traditional treatments utilized specially prepared skins, fats, sinews and oils from a wide range of creatures. Seal fat, for example, was essential for treating snow blindness and burns. The neck skin from a ptarmigan was prized as a light dressing. Lemming skin was used to drain boils. The bile from a seal's gall bladder was good for skin problems.

Despite their tendency to rely upon animal-based materials, however, Inuit did possess reasonably extensive herbal knowledge. The exact knowledge varied from area to area, just as the plants did. Inuit near the treeline, for example, could access pine, the inner bark of which is rich in acetylsalicylic acid (natural Aspirin).

More importantly, treeline Inuit could gather juniper berries, known the world over for their antiseptic properties, as well as their utility in treating kidney and bladder problems, gas and mild infections.

Yet even Inuit without access to the treeline still had many uses for the plants available to them. One of the most important plants, at once medicine and utensil, was Arctic cotton grass. The oil from the stem was used to remove warts. Additionally, as one might imagine, the cottony head of the plant made an excellent all-purpose swab. A mixture of cotton grass and charcoal made a good temporary wound cover.

There were numerous other plant medicines, as well. Freshwater algae, boiled first, was used for just about anything relating to the skin, from boils to impetigo. Moss not only made a good lamp wick, but was used for extreme snow-blindness, skin problems, frostbite, and wound dressing.

Fireweed leaves, when chewed, supposedly stopped nose-bleeds. The roots of dwarf willow were peeled and held against a sore tooth (I still do this myself if I get a toothache while hiking). Some sorts of mushroom were used externally for cuts and frostbite. Mountain sandwort was good for diarrhea.

More often than not, Inuit used plants as tea, and various tea recipes have existed across the Arctic since time immemorial. Tea-drinking was both recreational and medicinal, but the former at least explains the modern Inuit fondness for store-bought (i.e., Asian) tea.

Fireweed has always been one of the most popular teas for universal intestinal complaints (everything except the root is boiled), although Inuit and other cultures found it useful for myriad things, including muscle spasms, nervous irritation, irritation of the mucous membranes, regulating menstruation, and healing sores and blisters (as an external balm). I have heard that the Blackfoot Indians rubbed on fireweed powder for cold protection, but I have never heard of this usage among Inuit.

Cloudberry leaves, bearberry leaves, and alpine smartweed were used for general stomach-aches and kidney problems. Bearberry tea, in particular, has strong diuretic and astringent properties, and is said to be good for bladder troubles. Some Inuit believed that rock tripe tea was good for tuberculosis, although I don't think this belief was widespread.

The most widely ingested tea, however, was Labrador tea. The entire plant (especially the leaves) is rich in a pungent, volatile oil called ledol. The more it is steeped or boiled, the more ledol is released, so that overdoing it can quickly turn an otherwise pleasant tea into a smelly mess. A strong solution of it can even remove lice or other skin parasites.

It has a reasonably strong sedative effect, being quite relaxing, although it shouldn't be used by people prone to heart problems and seizures. If one is unused to it, it can cause giddiness and lightheadedness the first time it is imbibed, but the body quickly adjusts to it. Medicinally, Inuit most often took it to relieve stomach problems, mild constipation, and fever.

While these herbs outlined above might at first seem like an impressive array of traditional medicine, bear in mind that most can be described in only a single article, such as this one. Southern herbal traditions, conversely, can fill volumes. So if Inuit elders do not talk a lot about their herbal lore, it isn't because they are without such. It is just that such lore is so undependable that it is not in the forefront of their minds.

Personally, I like my Labrador tea, but I have to tell you: If my finger is bleeding, I want a Band Aid.

Pijariiqpunga.

October 10, 2003

Arctic pharmacopia

I think I am safe in stating this as fact: Anyone who is unaware that Inuit are the consummate hunting culture has never heard of Inuit.

And since everyone knows that Inuit are a hunting culture, and since everyone knows that Inuit dwell in some of the coldest places on Earth, Inuit don't get a lot of questions about their traditional herbal knowledge. Most folks, in fact, assume that herbalism would be an alien concept to Inuit, that the Arctic doesn't hold enough variety, in its flora, to base a body of herbal knowledge upon.

Well, the truth is that the assumption is a bit true; but it is also a bit false. I'll explain.

It is true that pre-colonial Inuit, in general, were not especially engrossed in the pursuit of herbal lore. Plants were often not plentiful enough to command the attention of Inuit. This makes sense, since the Arctic can be maddeningly cold, and the time when plants are able to flourish represents a short window of opportunity - the all-to-brief summer months.

Arctic plants are evolved to lie in wait for that seasonal warmth, then explode into action. Three-quarters of the Arctic year is white, grey, black, and blue - until summer warmth elicits a sudden burst of orange, scarlet, violet and green from the patient, low-lying plants that carpet the landscape.

Those who are foreign to the North often have a difficult time understanding just how much plant life there is, all quite low to the ground, but thick and spongy underfoot. Such plant life seems to appear out of nowhere when the snow and ice recede.

Sometimes, it seems as though, in one moment, the world is all crisp, white, crunching angles. In the next, it is endless, moist, yielding colour, a thousand different floral shapes in which fat black spiders, dancing flies and numerous other creatures make innumerable homes.

And, believe it or not, the stuff is useful, too.

The truth is that Inuit have always known that the plants around them are medicinal. They have always known, just as southern aboriginal peoples have, that they are medicines waiting to be used.

Now, southern aboriginal peoples have always made a great deal out of their traditional herbal knowledge - and justifiably so.

Some of the stuff that I have learned from reading and from talking to Indian elders, can make a modern pharmacy look like a cheap candy-store by comparison.

And no human culture, if we look at its ancestry, is different from any other in this respect. We are all human, and therefore all heirs to the same genius, the ability to observe and learn whatever edge our environment might offer us in order to survive.

Ancient Celts, for example, once used the leafy branches of their sacred mistletoe (not the poisonous berries) to soothe nervous disorders. Zulu warriors rushed into battle after ingesting a complex concoction of roots and fungus that dulled pain and amplified aggression. The ancient Greeks and Romans both used lavender for its sedative effect - and in order to make a nice bath.

While many cultures have abandoned their traditional herbal knowledge in favour of modern pharmaceuticals (which I am not criticizing, by the way), the aboriginal peoples of North America were overrun with European colonists only recently, and so many of their elders still retain some useful herbal knowledge. Luckily, a lot of it has found its way into book form. This is due, in part, to the great importance southern aboriginal peoples (i.e., Indians) ascribe to their plant lore.

So why don't Inuit ascribe the same importance to their own herbal knowledge? Well, there are really two factors that combine to make up the answer to this question. One is that Inuit were nomadic over almost incomprehensible distances.

This is one of the reasons why different "Eskimoan" cultures can pretty much understand each other's languages and customs from one end of the continent to the other. The other is that the Arctic landscape varies greatly, causing the available plant life to do likewise.

In other words, unlike in the South, there was little consistency in the types of plants Inuit were able to access. And consistency - predictability - is what survival is based upon.

(Continued in part two.)

October 3, 2003

When spirits become demons

“My name is Rachel and I’m an alcoholic.”

I have used that line many times in jest, to break the ice during presentations. It always gets a laugh, as well as a few “Hello Rachels.” There was a time, though, when it was no laughing matter.

My battle with alcohol is not unlike that of many in my generation, with roots in residential schools, the uprooting of Inuit culture, dysfunctional family, a low sense of overall worth. From the inside, looking out, I somehow felt alone and different in my problems.

I was leaden with Monday mornings of sleep deprivation and hangovers, hidden under cosmetics, streamlined by cigarettes and caffeine.

People in recovery often talk about “hitting the bottom,” or words to that effect. It just never happened to me. Mine was a no-man’s-land of lukewarm life. Nothing great ever happened, nor were there any disasters. Just day-in day-out of the same old grey: go to work, pick up kid, pay bill, get food, go drink with work friend. A nice little self-perpetuating cycle. In between bouts of depression, throw in a few pills to go up, down, whatever — the exact direction didn’t matter.

There were a few rage moments in there, taxi drivers, waitresses, and telephone operators getting the brunt of it. And it all eventually spiralled up into one exceptionally bad night, which finally led me to someone who pointed out the path I was treading.

I was visited by a pastor (Lutheran, I think, but it was the man who mattered, not the religion). He kindly visited my apartment, holding up a mirror, showing me a not-so-flattering image of myself.

I tried to be as offensive and harsh as possible, throwing in a few “F” words, chain-smoking, lying on the floor. I think I was even still a little drunk from the night before. I tried to impress him with how unfair life had been to me.

(But, inside, I was glad he had come over, that someone was listening.)

I had a disease, he claimed, no less a disease than diabetes or cancer. “But the curse is the gift, and the gift is the curse,” he said. “Someday, you’ll understand that.”

What a flake, I thought. What a waste of time….

The encounter nevertheless drove me to seek help. Now, there were two things I was aware of about myself. First, I knew that a “typical” approach to healing would not work, since I did not trust non-native institutions. Second, I instinctively knew that a non-spiritual path would fail — the problem was so deeply rooted that only a healer could touch it.

To make a long (and, I hope, not predictable) story short, I ended up going for alcohol treatment at Poundmaker’s, a native treatment center in St. Albert, Alberta. And, next to having my children, next to my current marriage of nine years (which came afterward), it was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.

The spiritual aspect of it was mind-boggling — the ultimate self-confrontation, sitting on the grass, literally relearning how to pray. One of the treatment steps went, “Come to believe in a power greater than yourself.”

At the time, I had no higher power. My power was false success, false egotism, false self. There, I became resigned to letting the creator be the maker, myself be the made. There, I learned of the cunning, baffling, powerful nature of addiction.

I unwove the web of crap I had spun around my being, examining the things that I felt were ugly about my life — and beautiful. And I wish I could say that light illuminated me from within, that I was cured! But that wasn’t the case. Instead, it began the long, rewarding, painful repatching of my life. My new path.

One day, I opened my eyes, looked around, saw some tiny brown birds flying about me. It seemed that I had dreamt of those birds upon that hill, overlooking the fields of Poundmaker.

Now, after a dozen years or so, I’ve begun to understand the gift side of the curse.

I try not to judge those I see staggering about. I even buy drinks for those not afflicted by the disease. I have no problem with those who like a bit of alcohol. Yet I can never again mistake its nature — cunning, baffling, powerful.

Pijariiqpunga.

September 26, 2003

Beulah Land

I live in glory,
I drink from an eternal spring
And I eat manna;
I live in Beulah Land…

That is some kind of hymn my father always sang aloud when tending to mundane chores.

I would tag along, listening, a small shadow absorbing a vision of a much better land beyond. "Beulah," in Inuktitut, sounds a lot like "piulaaq," which means "the best."

Where did my father think he was headed? A vision of a far-off place, a much better land, danced in my head. I suppose singing of his personal paradise swept his mind away from the dull repetition of knotting and unknotting countless little squares of fish net.

My paradise, then, was a living one, with endless summer days under a stunning blue sky. The world was a kaleidoscope of vast wild flower patches, bird nests containing tiny, perfect, pale colored eggs, tundra as far as the eye could see.

Only children can actually make work out of intense play. There were the constant trips to a friend's tent for games, where I would watch kids cook homemade candy over a camp stove, getting the caramel consistency just right by adding powdered milk.

I was not allowed to play with food. Both sugar and milk were in scarce supply. To my parents, a couple of cups of sugar seemed a scandalous amount to waste on such an uncertain experiment. Was that what it was like to live on manna, I sometimes wondered, as in my father's song? Was it being able to use as much of an ingredient for your cooking as you wished? Was that the manna, falling like snow?

I tried asking my father such questions, the answers never satisfactory. The limited answers only encouraged more questions.

For example, if my dad died and went to heaven, where would I be? Would I find him up there? What if I got lost or taken somewhere else, like one of my friends who got sent to the wrong community upon returning from a prolonged stay at a southern hospital. Would "they" (whomever regulates the afterlife) know where to take me?

Most importantly, what if my father didn't go to Beulah Land? What if he went somewhere else? Where would that place be, and did spirits have to "live" someplace? What if we died as children, never growing into adulthood. If my sister died first and I got to see her much later, as an adult, would she know it was me?

I got the usual: Don't ask so many questions. To this day, I don't remember ever being given a satisfactory answer as to what happened to children when they died, except some stock thing about angels bringing children up to God. I remember thinking, in frustration: Who wants to go to Heaven? You would just have to listen to angels sing all day.

And I was haunted by that song of my father's, for he wasn't singing about Heaven. He was singing about Beulah Land, where everything is piulaaq ... the best.

Sometimes, when I've thought back upon my father's answers concerning angels and Heaven in the afterlife, I've wondered: At what point did all that, his conversion, take place? My father was brought up in a most traditional society. There shouldn't have been anything in his background to make his ideas so Judeo-Christian. To this day, his conversion still nags at me. Not the fact, just the "when" and "how" of it. What is it like to be ... converted?

Yet I suppose Inuit have always modified Christianity to suit themselves, a traditional cosmology with the formal overlay of religion. And behind it all are hidden personal beliefs - the isuma - reflecting the individual's secret cosmology. That was why I wanted a glimpse at this Beulah Land, my father's secret paradise, so perfect to him that he had to express it in song. But the fact that it was my father's own vision precluded my ever seeing it.

The strangest thing happened last week. I called my father to wish him a happy 83rd birthday. I ended up chatting with my youngest brother, mentioning that there was this hymn our father always sang during chores. My brother told me that he still hums that very tune.

For half a century, singing of Beulah Land.

Pijariiqpunga.

September 5, 2003

Physical intelligence (Part two)

(Continued from part one.)

China, being very old, enjoys as much mythic past as verifiable history. One of its myths tells of an Indian monk, known as Bodhidharma, who visited China's Shaolin Temple.

There, he supposedly found the Chinese monks in poor health, and consequently taught them various breathing techniques and physical exercises. It is said that the Shaolin monks eventually used such techniques as the basis for hand-to-hand fighting styles. Over the centuries, such styles gained renown and were eventually taught to non-monks, spreading over China, then all of Asia. Thus do the Asian martial arts exist today.

The truth of the matter is similar, but much more complex, and I'll only write of it briefly. As with the rest of the world, Asia has been pumping out martial arts systems, in various areas, at various times, since the advent of bronze weaponry (in China) around 1500 BC.

Even the Mongol wrestling style called "cilnum" (interestingly utilizing the same edge-of-the-fist blows Inuit traditionally used in unarmed fighting) is incredibly ancient.

Yet none of these fighting systems has persisted like the sort of martial arts that began to trickle out of China since 500 AD - roughly two thousand years later. Why?

The most likely reason is that, while Bodhidharma's visit is largely mythical, the Shaolin tradition nevertheless did influence many of the martial arts in Asia, however indirectly. And its influence left such martial arts with a semi-religious, ascetic flavour. In this way, the people who today practice the descendant systems of such martial arts might not be monks or Buddhists or even Asian, but they are still peppered by such ethics as:

1. Violence is a last recourse.

2. Respect family and culture.

3. Master the self.

4. Exercise restraint and discipline.

5. Struggle to improve society.

The example above is not a military code, but a civilian, even semi-monastic, one. It is the difference between the martial art studied for war and that studied for the sake of self-discipline. In this way, such martial arts merely offer, as a bonus, the fact that they are useful for self-defence, while their real goal is perfection of the self.

In part one of this column, I described my experience of undergoing a form of traditional Inuit training under my father. He was harsh - even what people today might call cruel - but once I overcame my self-pity, I came out of it with new skills, a new sense of pride in what I could endure.

There was only one other thing that made me feel the same way: karate, a discipline that has its roots in civilian - not military - tradition. In the late 1400s, the Okinawan king Sho Shin banned all weapons. Okinawa, at that time, was an international Asian trade centre.

The response to the weapons ban was that the Okinawans borrowed Chinese martial arts, fusing them with local "te" ("hand") boxing traditions for self-defence. By the early 1900s, the art was generally known as "karate-do," or, "empty hand way." Like my experience with my father, I initially thought it would kill me. As with my father, it was instead an awakening, the sense of being reconditioned into someone better. Like my father, martial arts was a call to my natural physical intelligence.

I wasn't able to continue with karate because of relocation, but I have sampled other martial arts, and I've talked to other Inuit who have done so. Inuit seem to take to martial arts like birds to air, and I've decided that this only makes sense.

For there is something strangely Inuktitut about the martial arts. Their philosophies share the same kind of holistic, or "circular," thinking intrinsic to Inuit culture. Their movements are suited to the Inuit Mongol body-type. But, most importantly, they are about harmonizing conscious mind with unconscious potential, what Bruce Lee called "neuromuscular conditioning."

In other words, they are about awakening that physical intelligence ancient Inuit used to find so valuable - the ability to act toward survival instinctively, leaving the conscious mind free.

Often, I think about the needs of the younger generations - the need for pride, for focus, for something to do - and I wonder: How would Inuit react if there were more martial arts schools in the North?

Pijariiqpunga.

Physical intelligence (Part one)

RACHEL QITSUALIK

He who knows others is wise;
Yet he who knows himself is enlightened.
He who conquers others is strong;
Yet he who conquers himself is mighty.
He who is sated is rich;
Yet he who directs himself has power.
- Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

There;
How shall I go to compose this important song?
How shall I invent it to help me?
I am wholly ignorant.
There;
Those who dance with elegance,
I will get inspiration from them.
- Ogpingalik, a Netsilingmiut songstress, 1960

Inuit have always believed that physicality is a sort of intelligence unto itself - and a vital one at that. Southerners who have travelled with Inuit have remarked that Inuit show an amazing ability to fix nearly anything, constantly finding new uses for old parts and tools. An Inuk can take one object, made for a single purpose, and find a dozen new uses for it.

Similarly, explorers have expressed a great deal of amazement at Inuit endurance and pain tolerance: a hunter's ability to run full-tilt for several hours; the ability to stand utterly immobile over an aglu (seal breathing-hole) for an interminable amount of time; the ability to haul a heavy kill, perhaps more than the hunter's own body weight, over vast distances. These are all good examples of the kind of physical prowess Inuit have needed simply to exist at all.

And it doesn't end there. When a tool or toggle or part of a qamotik (sled) breaks on a hunt, a substitute must be made fast. Lashings and traces must be fixed, detached, or untangled with utter urgency. Shelters must be erected or taken down as quickly as possible, depending on sudden shifts in the weather.

Human existence itself can hinge upon improvisation. Improvisation with speed. With these kinds of needs, it is no wonder, then, that Inuit have come to depend not only upon the intelligence characteristic of the conscious mind, but that of the unconsciousness as well. Their survival has come to depend upon a physical intelligence, that which exhibits itself when there is no time for thought.

While this kind of physical intelligence is to some degree genetic, a result of Inuit having been engineered by the extreme environmental conditions, it is also a result of culture. Inuit culture has almost obsessively emphasized the importance of spatial coordination and athleticism. Whether the ajajaaq (string games) taught to children as soon as they were able to learn them, or the amazing traditional athletics still exhibited at the Arctic Winter Games, these were all training methods of one kind or another.

As a girl, I was privileged, in that my father allowed me to assist in his hunting. I became used to running for lengthy periods of time alongside a qamotik, and I became able to untangle multiple dog-traces in record time.

But it did not come easily. I had to be conditioned first. So, one day, near Prince of Wales Island, my father decided to train me. His demeanor suddenly changed from gentle, indulgent parent, to barking hellion. Nothing I did was quick enough, good enough. Lift this, toss that, coil that rope, set this up, make this, go here, faster, faster, not fast enough. I wept. I was sore day after day. Comfort became a stranger.

Yet I cannot dispute the fact that it improved me. I learned to act from reflex rather than thought, and I loved it. I was proud like never before.

I later learned that this was one traditional way of introducing Inuit youth to the adult world. But since Inuit don't practice this kind of thing anymore, it has left us with a sticky problem: How can future generations still gain the personal benefits of traditional conditioning? How can the natural physical intelligence be used to improve modern existence?

Sports are a good way. Whether through southern sports, or the more traditional nature of the Arctic Winter Games, such athleticism is indisputably valuable. Nevertheless, the one flaw of a sport is its competitive nature, a nature that tends to repel those with no interest in testing themselves against others. Conversely, the traditional Inuktitut way of developing physical intellect is characterized more by its tendency to test the self.

Yet there is one activity that accomplishes such self-testing quite adequately, a physical intelligence with roots in Asia.

(Concluded in part two.)

Glutton (Part Three)

RACHEL QITSUALIK

The blind son thrust the spear outward with all his strength, his mother's hands guiding him. In this way, again and again, he thrust at the bear, until he heard his mother cry,

"It's driven away!"

Not a word from his sister.

What the blind son could not know was that he had in fact killed the bear. The old woman raced over to her daughter and began to whisper harshly that her brother must not know.

"Think of all the food there will be!" the crone hissed. "He's of no use! He would want us to have it."

The girl simply stared at her mother in stunned horror, but when she finally opened her mouth, the old woman shook her violently, repeating what she had said.

So, cowed into silence, the daughter acquiesced to her mother's wishes. They dragged the bear outside, and kept the blind son from knowing that it was there at all.

Days went by, and the women had plenty of meat, but the old woman always told her son that there was none. Secretly, however, the girl kept her brother alive by smuggling him some of her portions. Whenever this made the old woman suspicious, the girl would simply say that she was particularly hungry from having gone so long without.

The blind son was saddened, of course, when he finally learned of this, but he was blind, so the deception went on and on. Finally, however, he got sick of it all, and began to whisper to his sister that he wanted her to bring him to an isolated place, a peninsula or island. Waves of horror ran through her whenever he asked such things - she didn't want him to kill himself.

Yet he was insistent. One day, he finally convinced her to bring him to a little island close to shore. She left him lying there, alone, upon the ground. And it was there, or so it is said, that something miraculous occurred:

The blind son heard the call of loons. Abruptly, two loons landed on his chest. They walked up and down the length of him, then seemed to circle, taking turns landing at either side. Somehow, he understood that something special was going on, so he took great pains to remain very still while the loons went about their business.

Eventually, they began to lick at his eyes. He could barely stand the feel of their rough little tongues upon him, but he refused to move, for with every lick, it seemed that light was coming to his eyes, growing brighter and brighter, until he at last could see the blurry sky above.

By the time the loons had finished their work and departed, his sight was restored.

Overjoyed, he made his way back to his mother and sister. As soon as he approached, he could see the great bear skin lying outside, but he resolved not to make an issue of it.

The women greeted him enthusiastically upon his arrival, the sister, out of relief; the mother, more out of guilt and fear that he knew what she had done. But he spoke little about the bear, and the old woman was pleased. It was not long before she was pressuring him to hunt. The bear meat had run out, and she was desperate for more.

So it was that the son announced that he would take a walk along the shore. And another miracle occurred! A walrus suddenly presented itself, and he quickly harpooned it. But the rocks were slippery and he was not strong enough to fight the animal, so he called for help. The women raced over and grabbed the line, but the rocks were still too slippery, and the son realized that they would all end up in the water if they did not let go. So he cried to the women to release it.

"No!" the old woman screeched. "We can get it!"

"Let go!" the son hollered. He and his sister let go.

"No! Mine!" the crone shrieked.

In her eagerness, she had wrapped herself up in the line, and now she could not disengage herself. And so it was that, with a wail of despair, the walrus pulled her into the water, and then beneath it forever.

Thus, in Inuit tradition, goes the glutton's end.

Pijariiqpunga.

Glutton (Part Two)

RACHEL QITSUALIK

While overeating has become a mark of gluttony among most southern cultures, there was really no such thing as overeating among traditional Inuit.

In old culture, it was a good and healthy thing to eat as much as one wanted. Inuit did have the concept of gluttony, but an Inuit glutton was instead marked by the tendency to withhold food from others. One of the most monstrous acts one could commit, in traditional culture, was to deprive others of food by keeping the best or largest portions for oneself.

This ties into the Inuit concept of reciprocity, a practice that is fading today as the culture changes. When Inuit were nomads, it necessarily developed that food generally did not "belong" to anyone. Or, perhaps more accurately, it belonged to everyone.

Even today, Inuit do not customarily give thanks for food (except in prayer), since it was always considered every person's right to eat whatever food was available. As recent as only a couple of decades ago, this was the most practical way of doing things.

For example: Let's say family X has a store of caribou, while family Y does not. Family Y, then, has the right to eat some of family X's caribou - no need to ask permission or offer thanks for it (in fact, family X will urge the others to come over and eat). Much later, however, family Y is catching caribou and X is having no luck at all. Suddenly, it becomes more understandable why X allowed Y to eat their food. Now it is X's turn to come over and eat Y's food.

This seems like a very pragmatic and even heartwarming system, but it all hinges on one delicate feature: reciprocity. If reciprocity breaks down, even a little, the whole system suddenly becomes impractical and impracticable.

Even today, the tradition still exists across the Arctic, but it is more scattered and selective than it used to be, since it cannot persist where reciprocity wanes. Since Inuit have adopted southern living methods, participating in a market economy, they have necessarily adopted a cautionary approach to their resources and property.

If Y approaches X for money, sensing that X has a surplus, X now takes a risk by being "traditional" and giving Y money. Often, X will never see any reciprocity in return. If Y can always get money from X, why should Y bother working at all?

Far easier to wait till X earns some money, then come around for a share of it. This system cannot last for long, since X and Y are of no mutual benefit to each other.

Like a parasite that stupidly kills itself by killing its host, X and Y are both losing through Y's lack of reciprocity. In this way, a traditional system, born of practicality, is made to become singularly unworkable and un-traditional.

The potential breakdown of this system worried pre-colonial Inuit, as well. Being fully aware that the system depended upon reciprocity, they were quick to shame anyone who exhibited gluttony by the Inuit standard.

Several popular stories and monsters exemplified the glutton figure, and served as a caution against such deviancy. The best such example is the story of the blind son deliberately starved by his own blood.

Taitsumaniguuq:

Three people sat starving. One was an old woman, the other her daughter, and the other her son, who was utterly blind. No one is sure why they sat starving in their slowly melting igluvigaq (snow-house); perhaps it was that the old woman's husband had died out on the Land, taking the dogs with him. Yet, regardless of the reason, the three of them sat waiting for the thaw, or death, whichever came first. And all were going increasingly mad with hunger.

There was an ice-window in the igluvigaq, and it was one day obscured by something moving around outside. The women looked up to see the face of a bear, looking in on them. They began to scream. Once the blind son understood what was happening, he cried,

"Mother! I'll try to drive it off with the spear! Someone hand me the spear and guide me as I stab!"

He felt the spear being placed in his hands, just in time for his sister to scream that the bear was wriggling its way into the igluvigaq.

(Concluded in Part Three.)

Glutton (Part one)

RACHEL QITSUALIK

I have never seen a people who so enjoy their own food as Inuit. If there is one thing that modern Inuit have completely in common with their ancient ancestors, it is the joy that overcomes them when they are presented with a feast of traditional foods, or "country food," as people are calling it now.

While Inuit have always had guidelines for what portions go to which family members (on a fish, for example, the choice lower-middle part is the so-called "woman's part"), there is no cap on the quantity that one can consume. When a particular catch is brought home for dinner, it is generally quite a lot of food at a given time - a load of arm-length fish, a seal, a caribou, etc.

Consequently, there is enough food for everyone to eat until sated. The culture around eating reflects this expectation, so there is often no delicacy or restraint involved when Inuit eat traditional food. Old, young, male, female, it doesn't matter - all descend upon the food with equal passion.

Southerners who are invited to such meals generally eat very differently from Inuit. Even if they enjoy Inuit food, they often have powerful cultural inhibitions against freely digging in and eating as much as they please - quite understandable, since most Occidental cultures have long been used to carefully portioning out their meals. Of old, consideration for others meant eating with restraint.

It is important to remember that, while technology can be a boon to a culture, it can also be a curse, setting new standards that the culture must meet in order to survive. One such standard was set in the Europe of the late 900s (near the end of Europe's "Dark Ages").

Around the time Eric the Red was unknowingly on his way to a place he would dub "Greenland," Europe experienced one of its most important technological revolutions. In the West Frankish realm (soon to become France), horseshoes, horse collars, and mouldboard plows suddenly came into use. Until this time, a primitive plow was arduously pulled through rough ground by an unshod horse with a strap across its windpipe.

With the sudden innovation of horseshoes, a horse could work longer hours over rough ground. A proper collar allowed it to pull a more efficient plough with its shoulders, rather than its throat. This new technology caused an agricultural explosion, allowing Europeans to farm expansively in areas that had hitherto been too rough to tackle. The result was a corresponding population explosion, so that new states were founded in even the farthest reaches of Europe.

The problem with this is that it set a new precedent. As centuries rolled by, ever expanding populations caused deforestation and the extinction of the larger animals. After a while, hunting was forbidden to all but the nobility, who, by the way, were eventually the only ones eating meat. All but these elite were subsisting on grains, and even then, off of the cheapest grains. The rich ate wheat - everyone else ate millet.

It was actually the colonial effort of later centuries that greatly improved the diet of the average southerner. Such colonists, wherever they went, found vast tracts of land that were perfect for cultivating herds. Being from highly competitive, overpopulated lands, they simply could not see how aboriginal peoples were putting their lands to any "use."

So they set to using the colonized lands in the same way that they would have back home - for agriculture. This time, however, there was a lot of room and a lot of grass, perfect for sheep and cattle. As more time went by, the average southerner got used to a diet of meat again.

The times of plenty and scarcity in the South have nevertheless continued to fluctuate, of course, and southern culture is now entering another one of those times when the average person has to worry about protein.

The South has run out of room for its herds again, becoming increasingly dependent upon the pasta and bread products provided by grain harvests. Southern meat is increasingly expensive, and truly good meat (by Inuit standards) is increasingly unavailable. Not coincidentally, we are seeing an upswing in the popularity of sauces and spice-mixes that are meant to improve, or at least conceal, the taste of less-than-choice meat.

More and more, eating until sated is identified with gluttony.

(Continued in Part two.)

Baby thief (Part three)

RACHEL QITSUALIK

Taitsumaniguuq:

On a dreaded winter's day, the sort that makes old injuries ache, the adults decided to lift their spirits by holding a drum-dance. One particular couple were off to the communal hall, leaving a grandmother to look after their boy. So it was that the old woman was alone and dozing, when she heard an odd noise near the entrance of the igluvigaq (snow-house).

There was no sign of her grandson. She crawled outside to spot a lone figure speeding away - something bent like an aged crone, smoky hair streaming out behind it as it loped with unnatural speed. It was gigantic, double a man's size, and upon its back was a vast amouti hood, heavy with something struggling therein. And the woman knew that her grandchild had been stolen by a creature known as the amoutalik.

She held only her ulu (crescent-knife) in hand. She could never catch up with the amoutalik. But she sang a little song she knew, sang it at her ulu, instilling in it her will that the amoutalik should become hindered hereafter. With this, she cast the blade at the creature, crying,

"Be confounded!"

The amoutalik ran until it disappeared from sight.

The old woman quickly stopped the drum-dance, informing the boy's parents of what had happened. She told them that, with her will upon the amoutalik, they might have a chance of tracking it down.

Indeed, the parents tracked the amoutalik with ease, and soon came to its igluvigaq.

Now, the captive boy had spent hours with the amoutalik, which was already referring to him as, "my son." Its face reminded him of nothing so much as an old raven, and its filthy igluvigaq was filled with lice the size of lemmings. He was already feeling weak, sore, covered in bites, certain that he would not survive for long.

He was longing for home, looking out the ice-window, when he spotted his parents standing outside. Emotion played across his face, and the amoutalik asked,

"What are you looking at, my son?"

"N-nothing," he said. "Just... two old ravens."

Then his grandmother's will began more of its work against the amoutalik. It became confused.

"I never noticed," it said, "there are too many lice here. Too many lice..."

The great hag began to systematically beat all of the skins in the igluvigaq, trying to shake the lice off. It beat at its own clothes. The boy was afraid that, at any moment, the amoutalik would beat him as well, so he carefully slipped out of the igluvigaq while the creature was preoccupied.

His parents met him outside, and the three fled together. They left the amoutalik beating at lice in the winter dark, and everyone closely guarded their children after that.

The End.

If we need evidence that baby-theft is not a singularly Inuit fear, we need only look toward world folklore. The faery lore of Europe is rife with the belief that faeries steal human children, replacing them with wizened substitutes called "changelings." Polish folklore has a similarly inclined race of wild women called "Dwiwozony." Finnish lore has a female night-demon called the "sukusendal."

Even more common is the belief in female monsters that simply wish to kill human children. In this way, the Inuit amoutalik becomes almost identical to the "black annis" of Scotland.

Similar creatures include the dancing "hotots" of Armenia; the cave-dwelling "kakamora" of Melanesia; the prowling "nocnitsa" of Eastern Europe. Judeo-Christian apocrypha includes "Lilith," the failed first wife of Adam, a consummate child-killer. And there is, of course, "Hansel and Gretel," featuring the archetypal, Occidental ogre-crone who devours children (but only once fattened - a finicky eater.)

So why is humanity anxiety-ridden that its children might be attacked by she-demons?

The answer is perhaps that the anxiety is deliberate. Folklore is important because it represents a pre-manufactured answer to a question that has yet to be asked. This particularly suits Inuit culture, where it is bad manners to lecture directly. Far better to help someone come to a conclusion on their own.

The hag, therefore, is offered as an inverse mother-figure. This baby-thief is offered as the gruesome alternative existence awaiting the child that is not properly attended by its parents.

The folkloric message is simple: Treasure your child. If you do not value it, there are others who may. For the entirely wrong reasons.

Pijariiqpunga.

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