‘Dark Traffic’ mourns the disruption and erasure of the Indigenous people and culture of the North

By Joan Naviyuk Kane. University of Pittsburgh Press. 2021. 88 pages. $18As Americans, we don’t like to think of ourselves as colonizers. That was the dirty work of Europeans in Africa and Asia, but certainly not here. This is our land. Not stolen, but given to us by our God. That’s not colonization. Or so we quietly reassure ourselves. And certainly the Arctic was not colonized. There were no wars for it. Europeans simply trickled in and took possession.

Sixteen times in the first stanza of one of the poems directly addressing White Alice, Kane repeats the Inupiaq word “sassaq,” which translates as clock, or an instrument to measure time. In the second stanza the word is again repeated sixteen times, but in this case a line is drawn through each of them. It’s an analogy, perhaps, for the erasure of history.

“How many Eskimo words are there for for white people,” Kane asks elsewhere pondering those who came and took over their lands. In “Counterpane” she tallies the return that Indigenous residents received for their lands. A dependence on outside resources; orphanages; planes that sometimes crash, decimating villages; food airdropped from the sky in the form of Western staples rather than drawn from subsistence; “the flu pandemic of 1918.

The wish to reclaim her home persists nonetheless. “Let us lose our grief / in great rafts as we translate the renamed straits” she writes in “Darker Passage.” And in the following poem she adds, “I no longer circle / the graves of the dead, the ones who exact / so much from the living.” And elsewhere, “at worst, radical emptiness reminds us / of our humanity.”

United States Latest News, United States Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

‘Dark Winds’ cast hopes to inspire more Indigenous showsThe noir thriller opened the ATX TV Festival in Austin, Texas, Thursday night with cast members including Zahn McClarnon, Jessica Matten and Kiowa Gordon.
Source: PageSix - 🏆 320. / 59 Read more »

At What Age Do “Dark” Personality Features Peak?Here's when traits from 'dark' personality types—including narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism—are most likely to appear in our lifetime to be honest,there are a lot of nice & really well behaved young people these days & wise over here,nothing like young people in the 80’s or 90’s 😉 Can you do a article explaining the abuser / abused relation. Many say both JD and AH were abuser because he swore. Was this a reaction? How does a victim sink so deep in partner’s manipulation? Anyone who believes in psychology is a psychopath. Is what a psychopath would say... Not my words...
Source: PsychToday - 🏆 714. / 51 Read more »

18-year-olds can buy an AR-15-style rifle in Texas. Now some Uvalde residents want the legal age raisedThe community continues to mourn the 21 people killed during last week’s elementary school shooting. Some are turning their attention to Texas’ gun laws.
Source: KUT - 🏆 77. / 68 Read more »

See how far scientists are going to uncover the secrets of dark matterEngineer Derek Muller goes on a tour of the southern hemisphere's first dark matter underground physics laboratory to learn more about dark matter.
Source: IntEngineering - 🏆 287. / 63 Read more »

Three in custody, fourth on the run after vehicle burglary in Bulverde, police sayThree people are in custody, and police are still looking for a fourth person after a vehicle burglary turned into a police shooting in far north Bexar County.
Source: ksatnews - 🏆 442. / 53 Read more »

Why these invasive ‘demon trees’ are a problem, and what to plant insteadLike so many pretty things, there’s a dark side to these trees.
Source: mercnews - 🏆 88. / 68 Read more »