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  • A Few Lines for Jordin Tootoo
  • Joan Naviyuk Kane (bio)

When I was drinking, I was selfish because of my addiction to popularity and being out in the public eye. I used that as a mechanism to create commotion with everyone. And if I got into trouble away from the rink, I made it up on the ice.

jordin tootoo

What do you see out there on the ice?Perhaps something dark, far off,louder than the bellowing headlinesin the otherwise technical silence.

In a lecture hall, once, in Barrow,I listened while the ice of the Beaufort Seasplit into blue leads three months early.What I heard was: if only we learned

the old ways, we’d learn where we fitin life, how critical we are to each other.That a hunt done right results in littlesuffering or loss. That the migrations

of fowl, fish, and mammals will continue.What I wanted to hear was a reassurance.Some kind of premonition or promise, likewhen words come back, so do the other things

or words come back when you have a chanceto learn them. Instead, what I hold within [End Page 17] is the felt absence of place. A land of greatfailure and uselessness, a commodious anger.

Another time up north, maybe by mistake,I was invited to watch the men butcheringbut I didn’t want to see where it wasthey found the heart, if they ever did.

Like you, in front of me is all I have.In the distance, mostly, another world. [End Page 18]

Joan Naviyuk Kane

Joan Naviyuk Kane is the author of The Straits, The Cormorant Hunter’s Wife and Hyperboreal. She’s a faculty mentor with the Low Residency mfa in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts and raises her sons in Anchorage, Alaska.

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