Culture Clash EDDY WEETALTUK
From From the Tundra to the Trenches. Published by University of Manitoba Press in 2017. Eddy Weetaltuk was born in James Bay in 1932. He enlisted in the Canadian Army and served in Korea, Japan and Germany. From the Tundra to the Trenches is the story of one of the first Canadian Inuit who decided to go to war. Weetaltuk died in 2005.
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e landed in Kure late in the evening and were loaded into trucks. When we arrived, we were told that we could stay at the camp for free unless we preferred to rent a room in one of the hotels downtown. Of course, staying at the camp was not an option for most of us, at least as long as we still had enough money to party. We all picked up our passes; we had fourteen days’ permission leave. It sounded like forever. I could hardly imagine I was ever going back to the front. Racette and I took a taxi to Kure. We had much fun going from bars to bordellos but I am not going to waste your time with more stories of that kind. However, I remember quite a funny episode from that leave. One day when we were too drunk to look for a hotel by ourselves, we were going to take a cab and ask the driver to find one for us, like we used to do in such circumstances. But that night Racette decided to take a rickshaw instead. I was not sure but he insisted: —Come on, Eddy. Let’s try it, at least once. You cannot go back to Canada without experiencing such a ride. I let him convince me and each of us took a rickshaw. We told our drivers to take us to the nearest hotel. When I sat in the rickshaw, the man pulling it gave me a whip and told me to use it on him if he didn’t go fast enough. I laughed and found it ridiculous. But as I was in quite a good mood, I shouted at him in Inuktitut as if I were mushing a dog team. After a while, I really
felt like I was on a sled, mushing my dogs, and I began whipping on his handrail yelling: —Oweet! Oweet! Arra! Arra! Aowk! Aowk! I was laughing and having fun like when I was a kid travelling with my dad on the ice floe. It was a unique moment. Of course, the rickshaw driver could not understand that the ride was bringing back feelings from my childhood. Now that I recall the events I am sure he must have been quite scared. After all, I was a soldier, I was drunk, and I was using the whip like a pro. Since he could not understand my language, he ran faster and faster, trying to satisfy his furious customer. The faster he ran, the more fun I had and the more I was using my whip. Behind us, Racette was laughing his head off, wondering what I was saying and why we were moving so fast. His rickshaw driver was doing his best to keep up behind us but could hardly follow our pace. Finally, we stopped in front of a small hotel called Senesin. The drivers were exhausted. I was impressed by the strength and the endurance of my driver. The more I got to know the Japanese people, the more my respect for them grew, though I was not sure about the idea of asking to be whipped by a customer. I was thinking to myself that these people were a bit like my people, ready to work hard to survive. And, somehow, running and pulling a rickshaw was very
similar to running behind a dogsled with someone on it. I gave five dollars to my driver to ease my conscience for having treated him the way I did. Unfortunately, my conscience did not stay awake long enough and that same night I was going to mistreat another member of those proud and highly friendly people. Now that I recall that time I am pretty ashamed, but I can only explain my situation by the fact that everyone in the army was acting with little respect for the people they were supposed to protect. When we got into the hotel, we asked for a girl to spend the night with, as we were used to doing. Racette got lucky and he had a very nice-looking girl; mine was pretty well-built but her face was not interesting. It looked like someone had kicked her face. At first I thought about refusing to take her, but I changed my mind thinking that I was not going to make love to a face but to a body. After all, I could still ask her to hide her face, like we used to say in the army: “Just pull down the hood and all the girls are alike.” During the night the girl did everything to please me. I was bastard enough to ask her if she was that good because she wanted to be forgiven for her ugliness. Now I realize that we were actually treating Japanese women as if they were meat in a meat market and not human beings with feelings. The war was turning us into predators, trained to kill men and to chase women, always looking for the youngest and the prettiest. That’s what war was turning me into. When I woke up the next morning, it was nearly eleven o’clock. I was completely naked. I looked all over for my clothes and I could not find them. I immediately accused the girl of stealing my clothes: —You cypsy, cypsy my clothes.
the theatres next week, the dialogue around menstruation has seemingly become more open with the #PadmanChallenge taking over social media. KATY PERRY ADMITS ‘I KISSED A GIRL’ LYRICS ARE PROBLEMATIC: Katy Perry has said that she would rewrite her breakthrough hit 'I Kissed A Girl' if she could, admitting that the lyrics contain “a
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