In the poetry of d g nanouk okpik, I feel distance from Earth. I feel the distance my culture, its various conquerings and incarnations, has put between its method of survival and the planet it relies on for survival. There is no such distance for okpik. In the untitled prose poem on page 2, she reminds that her people share body with Earth, were formed so, and with Earth endure violence that forms in the space of separation. We are all connected, to each other and the planet; Earth shares our experiences and passes them around, though we may deny or neglect the experience of others. Even in a term like “globalization,” the global effect of human activity and corporate decision is ignored.

“A change in sea level throughout the globe is like my outer fold of skin…”

She describes herself, “the formation of inuk” (inuk = a member of the Inuit people), as a bud, “a gemma,” of “two mother plants,” a creation story certainly different from the multi-translated and heavily censored King James version of Genesis. She sees herself in and through the animals of the arctic, watching her “inua [spirit] fly out the sealskin porthole as smoke.”

Interesting for a few reasons, the poem closes with a quote by Buster Kailik, an outspoken Inuit tribesman, whose comments to Federal Environmental Assessment panels and University of Toronto research projects on the ecological contributions of Inuit knowledge suggest that he is a native biologist, though no paper I found honors the man with a title or “professional” description. The quote holds a heavy truth, inescapable rather than just inconvenient: “The greatest peril of life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls.” Yes vegetarians, this means you. Though okpik’s people are necessarily not vegetarians, celery won’t get a person through an Alaskan winter – I digress. The quote suggests a necessary violence to life, we must kill something to survive. This tenet gets perverted as we get farther from communal existence with Earth, justifies war, gluttony.

Her quoting of Kailik is also interesting for his translated words before the Federal Environmental Assessment panel, which portray the intersection of native life and encroaching commercial interests, the nearly-complete coating of global industry and the force of that economy. The panel, in 1996, reviewed the BHP Diamonds Inc. Northwest Territories Diamonds Project. (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=3&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.monitoringagency.net%2FLinkClick.aspx%3Ffileticket%3DecqgqM3ktrg%253D%26tabid%3D95%26mid%3D481&ei=W4TLSp-TG4b2sgPhm4CPAQ&usg=AFQjCNFSoCLFoGmG8VbeekjQNmErxiZbdw&sig2=vQGhKTpRSjHmbYuPlvGZtQ)

Kailik stood up to thank the panel for informing the public of jobs that would be made available. Just before the adjournment of the public meeting, Kailik says, through a translator, “Right now jobs are hard to come by. You can't get any skidoos if you don't have a job to make money. If people are willing to learn they can be taught by the mining industry. Many of our young people are wandering around wondering where they're going to get money from. I'm glad there are going to be jobs.” This sentiment seems to fly in the face of environmental concerns, and yet demonstrates the reality of the present-day native experience. Impossible choices. Kailik begins his comment talking about caribou and their patterns, he begins to make a comparison between the native people and white people, and the translation breaks down. The silencing is stark: “During winter and summer I was able to provide people with food. I’ve tried to teach them how to hunt and trap. I think the native people, the white people...(Translation ends) ... Right now we’d like to have anybody....”

The biographical notes on okpik list schooling and publication dates from 2002. I assume then, that she includes Kailik’s quote fully aware of his efforts, and his dilemma. Using the quote, the poem places ancient knowledge alongside present-day struggle for survival in a changing cultural and physical environment. The poem speaks of the connection and relationship of physical and spiritual presence, people and planet, and whispers of the pressure on native people to choose between soul and food.

There is a purposeful exclusion to the poetry, as if reading requires initiation, demonstrated respect. I come to her poetry as an outsider of language I speak. (We are countrywomen, yet I am so far removed from the knowledge in these poems, I am struck by the arbitrary nature of boundaries, the destructive nature of expansion.) Though written in English, the vivid words and mysterious combinations – “lighted / crawlspaces of knotted plumage.” (“Mask of Dance”) – are modern hieroglyphics, logo-syllabic indications of something beautiful, very powerful, and mostly unintelligible to the conqueror’s eye.

A blog called Mammoth Amulets (www.ancient-mammoth.blogspot.com) chronicles treasures found in the permafrost, ancient art and artifacts from bone and ivory. The blog author tells of the art of the Okvik (ancient pre-Inuit culture) being utilitarian as well as beautiful. Insofar as okpik’s poetry is protective, sustaining; lends mythic wisdom with a strong, awe-full, rarely broadcast voice; it upholds the ancient standard.

“Mask of Dance” is laden with insider references to ritual and art. “Gauze rings of dog moon” and “tilted soapstone heads” tell us we are inside a ritual, though doesn’t let us into its meaning in words. The title referring to ritual costume, but also the barrier of understanding for outsiders – this ritual is masked in dance. What is daily, physical movement, art, all are bound in ritual sustaining life and community. “I trace the day of charred white spruce, / rimmed in hands, with no thumbs.” The lines may refer to a piece (maybe a mask) of ritual art, how it is decorated, which also denotes the symbols and deities that it calls upon, demonstrating the connection of daily life, ritual, and art. But this is as far as I can peek in, without study of Inuit mythology. The images that the words make conjure a power that is identifiable even when the specific references are not.

The Okvik Madonna is a 2000+ year old carving uncovered in the tundra near St. Lawrence Island and now housed in the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. An article about the statue, originally published in the Anchorage Daily News in 2006, presents a theory on the power it holds over visitors to the museum. “It is impossible not to look into the elongated face without it calling up other such faces that have often appeared in the art of human history: the Cycladic goddesses produced in white marble on the Greek Island of Paros; the mammoth heads erected by the vanished people of Easter Island; the Sheila-na-gig figures found on ancient Irish churches … a gesture that a culture repeats, over and over, because she essentializes a profound truth of being.” I feel this universal truth in okpik’s poetry. Though I do not understand it, I feel it in volume, sorrow the depth of the arctic sea, wind and snow like skin.

Lots more to discuss: the Coke bottles that litter the poetry as if it were landscape; the different forms of violence present; the blend of then and now, its clashing; and the killer lines that are immediately accessible like, “Storyteller in the yellowed / mind of matter, halt and pivot.” I’ll save it for class.