FEMINIST IVORY: CARVING NEW LIFE AND RAISING THE REINDEER POLE
..."THE GIRL SEAL HEARD THE SLED RUNNERS LEAVE THE ICE," Meeka told after erasing her floor plan of a two-level fishing shack she drew with her cherished storyknife then drew a picture of the main nether character, a special girl seal that was arriving on the scene. She let go of that scene, erased the seal and drew a picture of a woman...
..."ULA'S TIPSY BALANCE TURNED THE SLED OVER AND SENT HER FLAPPING WHITE-BREASTED ACROSS THE SEA ICE LIKE..." Then Meeka scratched out the stick figure of the woman and drew a bird..."A PUFFIN, A SEABIRD WHO SPENDS HER DAYS RIDING OUT WINTER STORMS TO HATCH AND RAISE HER PUFFIN CHICK," Meeka continued. She was quite skilled at narrating her first story and was quick about erasing the characters as soon as she brought another on the scene. She's got game! And the undivided attention of six young Eskimo girls sitting in the Storyknife circle...
..."BENEATH THE THICKEST SEA ICE (the bird is erased, now drawing the seal back. Meeka's careful about drawing them in the same spot each time so the girls stay focused and concentrated on the characters)...THE GIRL SEAL GNAWS A BREATHING HOLE TO SURFACE BECAUSE SEALS ARE DRAWN TO NOISES LIKE SCRATCHING AND POUNDING...
..."ULA'S HUSBAND (erasing the seal and drawing a stick figure of a woman and a man) GAVE HER A BLOODY NOSE. SHE WAS ON HER WAY TO THE FISHING PIER WHEN HER SLED SPILLED OVER BECAUSE SHE WAS CRYING SO HARD...(erasing the man now and drawing reindeer)...THE REINDEER WAITED FOR ULA TO GET THE SLED UPRIGHT AND HELPED GUIDE HER WITH THEIR HORN BRANCHES TO THE FISHING PIER WHERE MANY PEOPLE WERE MAD BECAUSE (erasing the woman and reindeer and drawing many stick people separating a space and drawing men with clubs) MEN WERE CLUBBING BABY SEALS...
..."A DEAD BLOODY SEAL LYING ON THE PIER PLANKS (erasing the stick people and men with clubs, drawing a woman and a seal)...MADE ULA SO MAD. IT WAS A SAD DAY. ULA SAID SHE WAS A BATTERED WOMAN AND FOR THE FIRST TIME, SHE FELT THE SOUL OF THE SEAL. ULA KNELT DOWN ON THE PIER AND RUBBED BLOODY NOSES WITH THE DEAD SEAL AND SCREAMED, 'I AM A CLUBBED WOMAN (adding a man with a club and a small stick figure little girl) WITH A YOUNG FEMALE CHILD. I AM LEAVING THIS VIOLENT SEA OF CRUELTY IN SEARCH OF CALMER WATERS TO RAISE MY DAUGHTER!'
..."AND EVERYONE HEARD. AND THEY CLAPPED THEIR HANDS TOGETHER LOW IN THEIR MIDDLES LIKE A SEAL CLAPS HER FLIPPERS..." Meeka laid down the knife and clapped her hands together like a seal, then picked the knife back up and shocked the young girls by poking her finger with the harpoon blade drawing blood and smeared it on the tip of her nose, then rubbed it on the tip of the seal nose on the ivory handle of the storyknife, then she erased the man with the club and the little girl and kept the woman and added a seal. She wasn't ready to cut the story loose yet.
..."'SHE WAS MY DAUGHTER, YOU KNOW---THE CLUBBED SILVERY-FURRED PUP ON THE PIER,' THE SEAL TOLD ULA. 'YOU'RE THE CLUBBED ONE I MET ON THE PIER DURING ANTLER HARVEST LAST SPRING WHEN I CAME FROM THE WINTER WATERS TO NAP IN THE SUN. I KNOW HOW YOU FELT BEING ABUSED. MY MOTHER AND MY DAUGHTER WERE CLUBBED TO THEIR VIOLENT DEATHS,' THE SEAL CRIED...
..."'THE HUMAN PREDATORS HAVE TRIED TO TRAP MY HEAD IN THEIR BALEEN MESH NETS, TRICKED ME BY INFLATING A SEAL SKIN TO LURE ME INTO THINKING IT WAS ONE OF MY OWN, AND THESE PREDATORS HAVE TRIED TO SING ME BACK TO SLEEP WITH THEIR SEAL SONGS SO THEY COULD CLUB ME. POLAR BEAR NANOOK HAS STALKED ME AND DISGUISED ITS BLACK NOSE WITH ITS WHITE PAW CAMOUFLAGING AS SNOW, WAITING FOR ME AT MY BREATHING HOLE,' THE WISE SURVIVOR GIRL SEAL CRIED...
..."'I AM PROUD YOUR DAUGHTER (drawing a little girl seal and a little girl) HAS CHOSEN TO WEAR ONE OF MY OWN ON HER FEET. SEAL SLIPPERS ARE OKAY WITH ME, FOR I AM IN AGREEMENT WE SEALS WERE BORN TO MAKE HUMANS WARM, FEED THEM, AND MAKE LIGHT FOR THEM WITH OIL FROM OUR BLUBBERS, BUT SEAL HARVESTING SHOULD BE DONE IN A KINDER WAY. THE POLAR BEAR NANOOK IS FORGIVEN, FOR SEALS ARE ON THE LOWER END OF THE FOOD CHAIN,' THE SEAL WHISPERED OFF, FLOATING ON A CHUNK OF DRIFTING SEA ICE, WAVING HER FLIPPERS AND GOODBYE," Meeka waved. "ULA AND HER LITTLE DAUGHTER MOVED TO A NEW LAND." (erasing the story away.)
"GOODBYE GIRL SEAL," all the Eskimo girls said together. That was the only story told that day. Somehow those young Eskimo girls knew it was Meeka and her mother.
"It must have been her mother," one of the girls said later to another one of the girls on their way home to Brigade Twelve.
"Her mother's name is not Ula," said the other girl. "Her mother is so pretty. She has skin like ivory. Her nose isn't scarred, it's pretty," the girl said.
"Silly, it is all healed now. And Meeka changed her name for the story. Meeka even said once when she came out of her mother's womb, the first thing that touched her was a seal skin to protect her. That is why she is here today and she is our friend," the girl smiled.
"Yes, Meeka is our friend."
This was no made-up drama. The process of change was accelerated by this incident, for all three, Meeka and her mother and the seal.
Proposed is a nonlethal seal hunt which will be done by combing baby seals, not clubbing them to their violent deaths. Recommended is that baby seals be combed for their fur in the annual seal hunt in Canada.
New regulations allow the sealers, as the hunters are known, to brush the immature seal pups to gather their hair from their snow-white coat, which in the past has been illegal to disturb or gather a nursing seal pup's molting hair before 2 1/2 weeks old, but perfectly acceptable to club it to death a few weeks later, which is a cruel practice in serious need of revision. Also of note is that European companies that have an interest in importing the seal hair will not buy it unless a conservation group verifies the product is cruelty-free and was obtained in a nonlethal manner. Whether it is battered women or clubbed seals, we will not tolerate injury, trauma, or death.
Raising the reindeer pole is a tradition these women reindeer herders have started this season to carve new life in celebration born out of the calving reindeer. When reindeer stories are told, they are carved into a totem pole the women planted seven-feet deep under the permafrost and hoisted it with thick ropes and support poles made from larch trees.
Feminist time and distance is magnified in Brigade Twelve, where the two natural wonders of the Arctic, the Northern Lights shining at their highest point in the sky and the Reindeer calving on treeless tundra bring sewing thread, women, story, and spirituality all together. Using their teeth, the women separate a sinewy substance that comes from a reindeer's tendons, into strands, then roll it between their palms, turning it into sewing thread that ties it all together...in the mind and in the clothing and shelters that protects them from the bitter cold in the winters, their survival depending on reindeer for their daily lives, making use of every part, especially the natural gift of story that will be passed down through matrilineal generations.
Feminist ivory has carved a portable livelihood from ancient migration patterns that has reinstated a modern-day matriarchal clan. Many of the women are leaving the salmon canneries for Caribou Hills, to raise the reindeer pole and their children.
We can well understand the feminist world with our heads, but sometimes the heart is a true r field guide.
Based on feminist theory, the brigade system where a group of women are organized for a specific purpose is the ideology that centuries-old migratory routes just may be the answer for the next century's women.
{I wrote these two feminist folktales specifically to give story to one that clearly needs to be told...one that comes from so deep within a young girl's heart, so deep that in fact, she trades what she thinks to be a material possession for a carved ivory storyknife she needs to get into a game of Storyknife where she needs to tell this story to get closure. It is so wonderful that we have diverse cultures across the globe to derive these stories from by researching their indigenous plant, animal, nether, and human world.}
Copyright 2005 Sage Sweetwater,firebrand lesbian novelist
