Volume 22, Number 3, Fall 2005

A Culture of Uncontrol

Pauline Sameshima

Isomainaquiijutiit, the Inuit word for culture, means “things to make us realize when chores have been completed”. Culture refers to joyful, artful, and heartful living; experiencing deeply and diversely; and living "wholeness". Wholeness is belonging personally and publicly; and living, learning, teaching, and researching in, through, and around all the boxes, dichotomies, and compartmentalizations created in efforts to control.

Carl Leggo (2002) explains that the etymological root of "grammar" is gramarye which means magic and enchantment. Many think of grammar as rules of control. Leggo encourages a view of gramarye "which invites mystery and openness and poetry, the firm belief that what is known are flickering points of light lining a vast unknown without beginning or ending, always more to know, always more to be known" (p. 4). This is what writing is, not rules and regulations, but a reproducible iteration of the unknown, the beginning of believing the impossible, and the freedom to forget.

Isomainaqiijutiit: Beyond the Chores*

The papaya dawn sings crystal clear
running like Annainuk Brook in Nain, Labrador
through the tall Prairie grass like Hermes, messenger of the gods, trickster and beloved
The notes sing of untouched realms, planes we’ve felt but haven’t documented
for through the written word, we begin to believe

Through the resonating harmony of the
twinkling Deepawali lights, the flickering Hanukkah candles
and the shimmering Northern curtain
our minds somersault across the land
from the Pacific to the Atlantic
navigating to whispered promises we try to clutch
We hear the Ode to Newfoundland and trace the evergreen BC trails
smelling the dark rich earth, reaching for all
because we want to understand

Sadly,
we box, compartmentalize, define, reduce, conclude
and stifle the voices of the children
until the adults know no voice

Open a place, create a space
to speak, sing, write, record, share, connect and synchronize
the unlimited synergetic potential
undiluted and unassimilated, culturally pure and vivid
woven loosely into an intricately complex Canadian tapestry
of light

Build our voice by promoting
learning and teaching through the heart
writing stories and inventing new ways to tell stories
allowing energies across disciplines to merge
looking for questions high and low
giving voice to the unheard who have remained silent
across fertile mists and civilizations with histories etched in stones
We only believe what we’ve seen, only what we’ve seen
But

Here, hear what I feel,
The dragon on my silk robe is blowing
a great wind
through my sleeves
blurring my culture into Greensleeves through the bagpipes
puffing the gingham sleeves of Anne of Avonlea
swirling the Celtic Sea
eroding the Hopewell rocks in New Brunswick
bursting the sleeves of all precious mementos
The words and papers flutter
twirling and swirling, dancing to the unseen by currents evidenced
Smudging, obscuring and confusing
all the dichotomies we’ve built in our quest to delineated this amazing world
I feel the wind of trireme
the fastest vessel of the ancient Greeks
powered by 170 rowers
built with a wooden ram under the waterline to sink enemy ships

Row with me, open the boxes we cannot see
Row through the containers that define us, limit our culture
and free ourselves to ask about the unknown
flood through the gates
silvery fish
and feel the scintillation
on your cheeks

*The Inuit use three words to describe the English word “culture”
illiquusiq refers to survival skills, games, clothing, arts, weather, land, and sea
Isomainaqiijutiit means “things to make us realize when chores have been completed”
sviilaqujutiit is “making fun”
http://teacher.scholastic.com/researchtools/articlearchives/arctic/culture.htm Retrieved November 18, 2004.

Work cited

Leggo, C. (Spring, 2002). What is good writing? Grammar and my grandmother. Inkshed: Newsletter of the Canadian Association for the study of Language and Learning 19, p. 3.