A Life of Respect - Aqqaluk Lynge

In the old days
when we still lived our own lives
in our own country
We could hear
a faraway thunder –
the caribou approaching
two or three days in advance

Then we did not count the animals, but knew
that when the caribou herd arrived
it would be seven days
before all the animals crossed the river
We did not count them
We had no quotas
We knew only
that a child’s weeping
or a seagull’s cry
could frighten the animals away

Then we knew
that there is a balance
between the animals and us,
lives of mutual respect

Now it is as if we are under arrest
the wardens are everywhere
We are interrogated constantly.
In Your hungering after more riches and land
You make us suspect,
force us to justify our existence

On maps of the country
We must draw points and lines
to show we have been here –
and are here today,
here where the foxes run
and birds nest
and the fish spawn

You circumscribe everything
demand that we prove
We exist,
that We use the land that was always ours,
that We have a right to our ancestral lands

And now it is We who ask:
By what right are You here?

---

Aqqaluk Lynge (born 1947) Kalaallit Greenland Inuit
Translated by Ken Norris and Marianne Stenbaek, with the poet
Source: Zócalo Poets