THE AWESOME POWER OF SHAME //
QANUQITPIHI! I REMEMBER one time when I was hosting Suaangan and Uncle Edward Lennie phoned me and said “Qanuqitpihi.” I knew it was some kind of greeting and fumbled over some kind of reply. He told me it means “how is everybody?” He went on to say that Siglit use “S” and Ummungmuit WORDS BY use “H,” hence the different DENNIS ALLEN pronunciation. He said he was calling to correct me ‘cause I was opening my Suaangan show by saying “How are you?” instead of “how is everybody?” I sure miss hearing my dad and his friends speaking “Eskimo,” as they used to call it. They would laugh like hell and slap their knees. Even though I never understood them, it felt comfortable knowing my dad, and by extension, myself, were rooted in our culture. I hope everyone had a good summer. I was just talking to Floyd Sidney, who was working in Inuvik for the summer, and he says there are hardly any boats on the river. I remember when the river was like a highway and how many boats were always coming and going. In June, everyone would be hauling stuff down to the coast for whaling. I know I haven’t been home in a while but I still get lonesome when I think of getting ready to go to the coast. I haven’t written for a while but in my last writing I was talking about the problems we still face as Inuvialuit. Like I said, we’ve come a long way from Frobisher Bay.
People, don’t you know what I mean? She had the boys all crying on the distant early warning line; Muktuk Annie could really make the scene. Sorry, I got carried away with that Bob Ruzicka song. Anybody remember Bob Ruzika playing in Semmler’s Store? Anyway, like I was saying, though we’ve come a long way in terms of education and self-government, we’ve still got a long way to go. The reason I say that is because I work in a federal prison here in Alberta and I’m still seeing our young men coming down here. They actually are coming from all over the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. I do programming with them and we work together to try and figure out why they commit their crimes. And what we are finding out is that we carry a lot of shame, and shame is a big ingredient to destructive lifestyles. What we found out when we really dug deep was our shame began long before we were born. Our shame began when the first whalers and traders started coming around. At first, it was a good relationship. We showed them how to live in our country. Our women sewed for them and the men taught them how to hunt and survive on the land. But it slowly turned on us. Over time, we became dependent on them for rifles, shells, rope, matches, canvas, tea, sugar, coffee, flour, etc. We couldn’t live without them. Soon, the traders and their way of life began to erode the true Inuvialuit way of life and we began to lose our identity and independence. I must say, however, that Slim Semmler was the exception. He stayed and lived with us and married into our people. Slim saved a lot of lives by extending credit. I’m sure there are a few others, but there were many who came and went.
