For those of you unaware of where and what Nunavut (meaning ‘our land’ in Inuktitut) is, I’ve inserted a link to a handy map.
It is an Inuit governed territory of Canada. It’s a gigantic land of immense proportions, covering much of Canada’s eastern Arctic extending to the north pole. You may have heard of the history of the territory’s incredible formation.
I’ve been in this territory, well minute segments of it, during the onset of the Arctic’s summer. I spent time in the territory’s capital, Iqaluit. I went west across the Hudson Bay to Rankin Inlet in the Kivalliq region. I finished up heading to Clyde River toward the top of Baffin Island, set in amongst the fjords well above the 60th parallel.
The title of this blog is a word I was told by a person that gave me great insight into the lives of Inuit today. It means always look back. It was explained to me that your past isn’t just behind you, it is on your back, we’re always carrying it with us. It is like a polar bear cub, clawing into your back for life, but it could equally mean death. I was told, watch it, be wary of it and be full of respect for it. If you look back, it will teach you something about how to move forward.
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| mother looking back at her cub while one runs ahead |
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| And there are other wild things in Nunavut that people are desperate to see... |
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| Prince Charles! Another part of Nunavut's colonial history that persists in the present. I'm not sure what's more frightening, polar bears, or the monarchy |
The past is ever present and it breathes life into today. Breathing has been a theme of these blogs. Breathing when practised is a quick step to a little regulation in tense and anxiety inducing spaces.
In Nunavut the entire land breaths. There are few regions of this planet where we can get a sense that this diverse sphere inhales and exhales on a seismic scale, across grand geological times and space. The Arctic is one of them, the icy mouth of the earth, and it does a whole lot of good in resetting the body to align with earthly movements and to help us re-engage with fellow humans and to remember the ever present past.
As I traversed this grand territory, (pretty much exclusively from the air, there are only limited roads around the communities and none between or in and out of the territory), I watched the ice laden seas move up and down in the bays, crack and disperse with huge fractures in the sheets. Each tide, fierce wind, and startling sunlight caused the ice to recede a little further until eventually glassy waters were revealed and the ice disappeared, in some spots at least. Winds wiped across the tundra plans and cascaded from snowy mountain peaks. Mists hung in the air, descended into thick fog and then evaporated revealing sharp cliff faces and mountains climbing to the horizon. The sun circled, dipped gently into a long twilight, and swung high again. While I was there the land went from brown moss and rocky outcrops, shielding strips of snow to dappled yellows and deep greens, then purple, white and red flowers shot into life, blanketing a supposedly arid and hostile land. When the air fell still the zzz of mosquitoes sailed into heavy swarms.
The top of the world rotates to a different rhythm than Canada’s southern 9-5 and the global restless work-life balance carving out artificial time frames. If 24 hours of daylight, which gradually eclipses to 24 hours of darkness, does anything, it shoots to pieces that a day of work, production and relationships can be sandwiched between the rising and setting sun.
Why head northwards?
When I was discussing my impending journey northward, many people, not all, exclaimed, Nunavut? Why there? What’s up there?
My response was never detailed, I wasn’t entirely sure of what I would encounter either. What I have a sense of is when you do travel to the reaches of a nation that are situated far from its urban centres of Western power the bigger picture seems to gain a little more clarity. There, competing worldviews live on within the nation. There remains the notion that we could do things differently.
In this case, my interest in the bigger picture is to be able to comprehend the scope and effects of intergenerational trauma:
what it is?
how it is understood?
what generational change looks like?
what it is?
how it is understood?
what generational change looks like?
Canada’s north is home to many Inuit elders who have crossed the rupture that divided their world on the land with the current world of non-Inuit people southerners/westerners of today.
The Global Colonial Narrative
The often-violent history of colonisation and first contact with non-Inuit fur traders, missionaries and government are varied, complex and dynamic across the territory. It happened at different times and in different, mainly deeply disturbing and painful ways. I am no scholar on the subject so won’t go into the history at length, instead, I will reflect on what I heard.
In the living memory of elders, today is a time when no qallunaat (white people) lived amongst them. A time when people travelled the land with dog teams, living in Igloos, Sod Houses and tents hunting whales and caribou amongst many other nutritious sources of food and resources that the Arctic has to offer. Elders remember when their world shifted dramatically through colonial occupation when the machinations to annihilate a people’s culture and worldview were put into effect, when processes of assimilation were enforced, until today when there remains an exertion to entrench policies asserting the authority of the Canadian nation state.
This is a living history, not solely because the colonial displacement and dislocations of people are remembered by elders alive today. This is history in the making. It is being experienced firsthand by those born today. Yes, it is experienced by the denial of people’s history, but it is also experienced in inadequate housing, inflated prices of food, a lack of mobility due to prohibitive costs of flights, an education system that doesn’t reflect the richness of Inuit knowledge but privileges western teachings, histories and English, incarceration without the level of rehabilitation required to reintegrate people into communities, a welfare system that leaves people vulnerable and trapped…the list goes on. This system manifests a range of harms which leads to further trauma.
For those reading in the Kimberley, this will sound strikingly like the colonial, and the ongoing making of Australia’s history. We think, given what we know about colonisation that this is not surprising. But it should always be surprising! We often speak of political process, policies and laws in despair and we resist from isolated movements. What we need to start being clear about is this is not a detached linear history and we are not dealing with isolated issues of infrastructural inequality, deprivation, issues of low employment and addictions. We are dealing with a global system of ongoing oppression and subjugation of Indigenous people and others living in vulnerable contexts within western nation states. We are living and, overall, working within systems which systematically disempower people.
The reason we see the same life outcomes in northern Australia as we do in northern Canada is not a quirk of the environments or the peoples. The reason is that we are enacting the same inadequate policies, processes and work programs across the globe and we are forcing people to live and survive within them.
This is intergenerational trauma. It is experienced, remembered and new traumas felt from one generation to the next. Intergenerational trauma is a reproduction of trauma that persists while we do not take the time to address the systemic causes of intergenerational trauma - our systems! Trauma here is not unusual, it is the norm, but that doesn’t make it any less severe. If we want proof of the damaging effects of trauma, and dare I write ‘its costs’- in chronic illness, treatment centres, incarceration and welfare, and the list of what I wrote above, we just have to turn to the areas of the world that we have ferociously colonised and continue to attempt to control.
Equally, if we want proof of people’s ability to confront and overcome trauma and transform, then we only need to turn to the exact same populations.
People are not victims, they are survivors
In amongst a breathing land was the faster movements of human-beings. The incessant hum of ATV’s (Honda four wheel scooters), the whip of fishing rods, the dust clouds kicked up by vehicles, laughter, so much laughter, the shot of rifles, the chatter of Inuktitut, the throng of families at airports welcoming mothers and babies home. It was busy in these community hubs.
I met some extraordinary people, and here comes another list: photographers, survivalists and expedition guides, managers, councillors, world class hunters, tailors, mechanics, writers, carvers, artists and actors, researchers, university professors, UN equivalent interpreters, film makers, ecologists, small business owners, textiles artists, tailors and commercial fishers. These people are all Inuit.
I make this point because, when we look to traumatised populations we often determine the resources and expertise that do not exist. We then look at what’s needed in relation to the gap and the current inability to provide it. Rarely do we look at the remarkable array of achievements, skills and strengths that belong to human beings on the ground and in place.
To change a system, we must recognise the relationships and care structures which network communities into vibrant societal frameworks full of strengths and talents.
The reality is that trauma, healing, and the production of an exciting life full of strength and creativity all exist at the same time. Often, we talk about trauma, healing and strength as three distinct phases. Most of the time we do not see the strengths as they happen beyond the overlay of service delivery. Furthermore, we rarely identify strengths but work to create them as if they do not exist.
One person, I met with put it like this (this is not verbatim. It is a synthesis of what I heard):
They tell us to heal and we have no life opportunities, nothing to engage us, no jobs. They give us employment and no healing. We lose our jobs because we’re traumatised and they say, well that didn’t work then, but they gave us no opportunity to heal. Men see councillors in jail, or the court mandates an anti-violence program and they return to the exact same overcrowding housing situation.
It doesn’t add up. The sum of the disjointed parts does not equal the whole.
In the case of the communities I visited and the people I met with their frustrations are motivating an extraordinary amount of action. The list of professions and interests above gives an indication of the sheer breadth of what is being done. Just imagine if our social systems were designed around enhancing that work, breaking down the barriers inhibiting that work and watering the seeds which have already been planted and are growing.
In Clyde River, I spent time attending the last few days of an Inuit to Inuit counselling course. The course has five modules and has been both in development and been running for just over 10 years. It is important to recognise that development and running happen simultaneously. This is a learning by doing course and it’s based on practice to action. There are separate modules each with different themes from trauma and addictions to traditional Inuit therapeutic practices. It immediately gives ownership of the practices and topics over to the group being trained so they get to own the discussion and exploration of the topics.
I witnessed and heard this taking place with the aid of a headset. Three interpreters spoke softly into their microphones translating directly into English or Inuktitut, depending on what language was being used. Overall, it was Inuktituk.
This was privileging Inuit language, Inuit voices and worldview. The interpretation was excellent, the discussion, enthralling, vibrant and complex. The participants, facilitators and interpreters, who all held an equal place in the circle that had been constructed for the training, talked about their trauma and the trauma of others, their healing, and their strengths in nuanced and layered ways.
As they were preparing to be councillors they all explained to me that they had been on significant healing journeys. They brought their ability to self-regulate and reflect on their triggers, in honest and courageous ways, to their training as councillors.
I was transported into the world, of elders, young people, men and women in a way I’ve never experienced. It dawned on me how much we have simplified complex existences, imaginations, hopes and beliefs by constructing systems in English.
Regaining Power
Lost in translation is complexity. Quite literally what is lost for monolingual English speakers is our ability to hear life in its entirety. We lose the whole and instead we hear fragments. The more we simplify ideas the less capable we are of hearing what needs to be done.
When we hand the discussion over and stop insisting that it needs to be in English or heard through a predetermined lens the outcomes are fascinating and completely unpredictable. In many ways, I was told that this was more than counselling, it is a process of empowerment.
As people find their voice, ‘we regain our power’. When people regain their power what they determine as the best ways of working and the type of society they want is beyond our current imagination. As people spoke through their pain and grief, they all spoke of the need to take responsibility. To confront their trauma and rectify it so it is not passed to the next generation.
I sat there knowing that I also had to take responsibility for belonging to a heritage and culture that reproduces a traumatic system. It is as much my responsibility to dismantle this system as it is anyone else’s to live the healthy and productive life they deserve against all the odds.
Carrying our histories on our shoulders – the good, the bad and the ugly
We are not looking back at a distant past. The past is on our shoulder right now and if we don’t carry it effectively and recognise the weight of responsibility then we will reflect on this generation and talk of the mistakes we made, the policies we designed that caused ongoing trauma. We can’t afford to wait for hindsight.
We all have a responsibility to do better. Listening doesn’t take time, it is the healing work required. Real listening gives us the solutions we crave to remove systemic barriers and design better systems.
When we all look back, when we all carry our past with dignity and respect, we will move forward without fear. It will take us doing this together Inuit and non-Inuit, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, all of us believing that we have an equal responsibility to take ownership of our histories. This is certainly not the sole responsibility of those our western histories have traumatised.
The Arctic is a remarkable land. I learnt that if you take the time to understand these environments and appreciate where complex knowledge exists then life can be sustained across this grand icy terrain and people survive. If we don’t take the time to learn and all we see is the tundra’s desert, people perish and sometimes are attacked by polar bears! Keeping the cub clutched onto our back reminds us that there is a deep knowledge that enables a complex mix of looking back and looking forward that keeps us all alive.
Let’s be nourished by our histories, so we all survive and thrive.
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