Modern Colonial Minds

Napatsi Folger

 

The topic of colonialism almost always casts an unspoken weight of discomfort in the room. Either because of a sense of guilt for what has happened in Canada or because of the feeling that individuals don’t believe it is still an issue that affects them or the people who are trying to discuss it, and find it embarrassing when someone is trying to engage them on an irrelevant issue. What people don’t understand is that colonialism is so engrained in Canadian society that many of us don’t even realize we are still living it every day. In Nunavut it is visible in everyone’s daily life. There is a divide between non-Inuit and Inuit, between Inuit and other Inuit, and it is the very reason that governments, Inuit organizations, and families are constantly struggling to succeed in the newest of Canada’s Territories. 

 

Colonization of the mind as framed from the psychoanalytical and historical rhetoric of Frantz Fanon, is a concept that applies not only to the colonized people (in Nunavut’s case, Inuit) but also the non-indigenous population of Canada, who often argue that they are not personally at fault for what happened hundreds of years ago. This attitude is prevalent even among the liberal and well educated people who are dedicated and passionate advocates of northern living. The colonized mindset is apparent when looking at so many Inuit leaders and organizations today. It’s a product of the acceptance that our fluid and broad societal value system can be encompassed within the rigid structure of bureaucracy, or that we can try to sustain the same kind of immovable cityscape infrastructures on the land that we travelled on as nomads for thousands of years before.  

 

The problem that sits at the root of the complete lack of colonial discourse in Canada’s arctic is what David Foster Wallace referred to as every human’s “natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.” This is something that everybody does – obviously. But the problem with this way of thinking is that people who are not from Nunavut automatically assume that it should be changed, or wish that it could be more like the home where they came from. That summer never came because it rained, or the winter is too cold, or we don’t have enough fresh produce and something should be done to make it better. More like the south. 

 

There is almost no bridging of the massive gap in the different ways that Euro-Canadians and Inuit perceive the world around them. The arctic has always been and continues to be a difficult landscape to survive in. Traditional life was not fun or romantic. Inuit communities were constantly on the move to avoid inclement weather and starvation. 

 

Now almost all Inuit are settled permanently in communities, in large part, because of federal coercion and access to modern supplies. This isn’t about a movement to a static, idealistic lifestyle that takes us back in time. It is about the one characteristic that has lasted for millennia among Inuit survivors – adaptability. But for Inuit to be able to fully adapt to our changing world non-Inuit have to show an equal amount of flexibility. The land does not conform to southern ideas of what the seasons should look and feel like, because we are not in Halifax, Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver. Everyone makes choices, and for most non-Inuit, living in Nunavut is a choice. Complaining about the environment that you chose to inhabit is a default-setting response to something unfamiliar. For most non-Inuit the tundra is one of the least familiar environments they will ever encounter. As for Inuit, we have to be equally open to accepting the changes that come with colonization. There is no “post-colonial period” there is just adjustment and adaptation to the changing world. If anybody wants to make real change happen in the arctic, people need to start pushing against their personal ideals of what the world is like and trying to imagine it through the eyes of others. When this happens Nunavut will be on its way to achieving more stability- socially and politically.