excerpt
While Ken wiped his forehead, the Emcee quieted the crowd and announced
that there would be a question and answer period. Ken made his
way back to the lectern, thinking how odd it was that these hundreds of
people who were watching him were sitting dry and comfortable in their
seats while he was as wet as though he had just come in out of a torrential
rainfall.
A young woman, who had been taking notes, rose and asked to hear
more about the grandmothers. Ken answered her query in detail. When
she was finished, she nodded to the young man beside her who stood,
pushed a mop of hair off his broad forehead, and said, “Sir, don’t you
think that it’s inappropriate to be telling other people’s stories? I find it
very strange that you would be telling these stories of Native people from
the North. What’s it to you?”
A chorus of boos reverberated in the hall. Ken hushed them to allow
the young man to speak. “These Inuk – um – Inukshuks…”
“Actually,” Ken said. “Inukshuk is one and Inuksuit is plural.”
“Well these things – don’t you think that using these things from other
people’s cultures is wrong-headed? Don’t you think that’s cultural appropriation?”
He continued, shouting through a hailstorm of catcalls. “Who’s paying
you to do this?”
“No one is paying me,” Ken said. “This is what I want to do.”
“Why?”
“I fell in love with these people in the Arctic called Inuit. They taught
me a million things. They gave me a grand education, and they have been
a blessing in my life. I fell in love with them and their land, and they asked
me to give the stories of them and their world to you.”
“Why don’t they do it?”
“If you knew the story, I don’t think you would ask that question.
You’re one of those ninety-nine percent of Canadians who don’t know
their own backyard, and you can’t be a nation unless you know your own
backyard. So, I’m trying to bring you stories in the old oral tradition –
stories from afar, so that you know.”
“Well, about these grandmothers – why are you so fascinated with them?”
“Who wouldn’t be? They are the carriers of the past. If you want to
know how things were, the grandmothers are going to tell you. It’s called
an oral tradition and we are cursed by not having one. We sit and watch
television or listen to the radio – that’s nothing. When you hear human
beings tell you a story, of their lives in antiquity, that has power. So, I do
two very old-fashioned things: I’m a cave painter, only I’m painting on
canvas – and I’m attempting to be a storyteller.”
“So, do you do everything the grandmothers tell you to do?”
“Absolutely,” Ken said. “Don’t you?”
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