I Can’t Trust The Ice Anymore

By Ammu Ashok

All alone, I navigate along the frozen shoreline,

recollecting harrowing past memories of my family.

Abandoned, nomadic, discriminated, hunting life,

with people who ignore my Inuit culture.

No more ice to connect my community,

no trips to remote cabins, oops cutting me off from hunting lands.

Shorter winter, unreliable frozen lifelines open dangerous thaws

Disruption to my hundred years of traditional knowledge

None knows the horrific tales of Qallupilluk

No overnight igloos are built, no dogsled

Tupalik is no more an excitement

All turned an artefact in the history.

Traditions of ancestors grow harder for young

A real hunter, I passed generations of knowledge

I can’t cross the nearby lake, travel up-down the coast,

wind whipping, blinding snowstorms, losing my snowmobile trails.

No, I can’t trust the ice anymore,

no more sharing of arctic char with my seniors,

no Lamellar amour worn by me, seals disappear,

no butchering of walruses and vanishing polar bears.

Sun shining, stunting spruce trees with pine needles

Unbearable strange understanding of living like a refugee

I unzip my coat to struggle with the warming world

Ice didn’t freeze up yet, I feel stuck, in this wild season

Still, a cold wind whispers in ears the word “adapt.”

By Ammu Ashok