Are we allowed to dream?
Are we allowed to exceed the parameters of a reality that Canada has no

interest in?
Are we allowed to be more and better and complete?

Aren’t we all supposed to stay in the time of long ago?
The time of standing at a seal breathing hole with a harpoon pointing toward

small shivers of ice water.
A time of long patience and short lives. A time of used-to-be.

Used-to-be that Inuit knew their place.
Used-to-be that Inuit only stayed north of sixty and not south.
Used-to-be that Inuit never spoke unless there was a camera in front of them. Used-to-be that Inuit kept their faces out of media unless they were dead

or dying.
Used-to-be that Inuit could go hungry and no one had to deal with it. Used-to-be that Inuit were used to being.

Used to being the people thought of as cute and cuddly.

Used to being the people who were savagely sexy. Fuck a skimo and white is not alright.

Used to being the White Ones’ doormat.
Used to being the place where all the excrement of whiteness laid their visceral

leftovers. Puddles of sperm.

Puddles of snot.

Used to being human spittoons.
Used to being a disk number and not a name.
Used to being moved around, Bedouins of the Hudson Bay shoreline. Used to being human flag poles.

Used to being Canada’s biggest afterthought.
An afterthought of every government riddled with Alzheimer’s. An afterthought named The Forgotten Ones.

The Forgotten Ones who can still go hungry in 2020.
The Forgotten Ones with twenty-two people crowded into one house. Do not move or you lose your sleeping spot.
The sleeping spot you marked with the stench of you.

The Forgotten Ones are made even more forgettable if they dare to move south of sixty.

The land claims made sure of one thing; the thing called Don’t You Dare. Don’t You Dare try to make a better life for yourself.
Don’t You Dare think that your kids deserve a chance.

A chance at a better education.
A chance at being someone. Someone with a university degree. Someone who

practises law or nursing or teaching outside of the invisible borders that confine us into a tight little cluster of long ago.

Don’t You Dare dream of a future.
Don’t You Dare dream that you have somewhere to go when there is nowhere

to go.
Don’t You Dare dream that once you are south people will look at you as one of

them. You’re a freak.

A freak on a city sidewalk, panhandling his life away.
A freak who cannot talk without that accent, anyways eh. A freak in the limbo of north and south.

South is purgatory.
South is where you get asked if all your kids have the same dad.
South is where you cannot apply for northern scholarships.
South is where you get asked if you are Spanish.
South is where you are not really Inuit if you are not eating raw meat. South is where speaking Inuktitut makes you real.
South is where you are asked if you can speak Cantonese.
South is where you get to disappoint people twice in under sixty seconds.

South is where your Inuk head glaringly sits on StatsCan charts. South is where StatsCan graphs show you finished high school. South is where StatsCan graphs will make you look like a success. South is where you get a job because you are Inuk.

South is where university degrees tucked inside your back pocket do not count. South is where you get hired because a boss has to fill her Indigenous quota.

South is where you get used for your community contacts.
South is where white people harvest your Inherent Knowledge. South is where exploitation of who and what you are happens.
South is where the northern Inuit look down their small noses at you. South is where you are neither home nor away.

South is where you become a non-Nunangat Inuk.

A new title.
A new you.
A new anyone else.

If we could live in a world without borders
We would not be different from one another
What if in the future we were not points on a compass What if the north pole de-magnetized

Allowing all Inuit to de-tox their thoughts De-liberately
De-ciding to

De-vote themselves To one another

What if Inuit stopped letting invisible lines De-Vide Us
Lines that we cannot see or touch or smell.

What if Future We In-U-Wee fell into each other,
What if Future We In-U-Wee were people without gravity

Nose-diving into love with one another Twisting and twirling and twitching
Flooding ourselves in the rapture of angelic care Toward one another

What if Inuit Nunangat, our homeland, was here and everywhere?

And Future We In-U-Wee recognized each other As the Family of The People
No matter where we stand
We are not the remnants of long ago

We are here
We are now
We are the shadows of each other Wrapped in the cocoon of Creator’s hand

A cocoon spun with the fondness of our future selves.

Future We In-U-Wee have food that make their bellies burst
Future We In-U-Wee have homes with bedrooms for everyone
Future We In-U-Wee have diplomas and degrees dangling from their walls Future We In-U-Wee do not court difference
Future We In-U-Wee
Is today not tomorrow
Future We In-U-Wee
Is the us we are supposed to be

Let us Inuit hold hands Let us Inuit skip together Into Future We In-U-Wee