My friend Claire was sitting on my porch when i got home from work - TopicsExpress

My friend Claire was sitting on my porch when i got home from work last night. She had just flown from Nunavik. Even though it is summer here. She was waiting in her winter coat. She had come from the vast north. From the snow and the northern lights. Claire told me stories of her trip. The traditional way of life for the Inuit had been nomadic. They had often traveled in family groups of maybe five families at a time traveling together. They chose their traveling comrades with care. Love and survival mattered. Each member had many dogs. The bond between the dogs and the humans ran deep into the idea of being. Five to ten dogs per traveler on average. Amongst cocktails and sushi and catching up she told me the story of when the Canadian government flew across the north scooping up and stealing all , all, all the children.the children. Who could have imagined what was coming when they stole their children. Who could ever imagine they would come to steal The Inuit all over the north, many different groups of families from all different directions...all of them. picked up their belongings, and on their dog sleds, they followed their children. The government did not release the children so the families and their dogs set up camp out side the northern residential schools and waited for their children. Many many families from all over the north. They refused to leave their children. They waited. Many who never would have chosen to camp together. Suddenly crowded together with their dogs. Each family had about five dogs for each family member or more. Imaging all those families. Imagine all those dogs. That meant five times more dogs than people. The dogs ran wild. The government declared the dogs a safety hazard. The people were told to leave but they stayed. they waited for their children who were never released. Rather than release the children so that each family and their dogs could disband and leave. The government kept the children and the families continued to wait. On three separate occasions the government cauled the dog members of the families from whom they had already stolen their children. The government shot all the dogs it could. And still the people waited for their children while all their bonds were being broken. Our government broke their relationship to this earth and how they moved on it by killing their dogs. It broke their bond to their animal selves and their idea of being too. They broke family and mothers and children by stealing their children and they broke their communities too. How do you ever forgive aft that? How do you ever heal? How do you ever know who you are or were or could be. These Inuit communities are still suffering. I am haunted by the feeling of waiting for the children, waiting outside a building i can see, a building that holds my child, my child i can no longer hold. And while I wait you come and without a word you kill my animal companions, and when you have killed them all and all of the companions of my friends and my past enemies too and I have watched them all dye by the thousands still you keep my child from me. still I cannot hold her. That it the feeling that nunavik was built on. That is the seed that grew nunavik; stolen children and murdered companions and an entire population of people who refused and refused and refused to leave their children. And waited. Oh Canada!