Long ago, the Inuit people began to build inuksuit — large stone markers — to help them with their tasks. Where the land is unforgiving and the villages are few, they built stone guides to point the way to food, the hunt, or the next village. Over time, these guides became friends and companions.

cold stone /
molded by human hands /
becomes human //

Our minds are wired to see human faces and forms. We project our humanity onto pillars of rock, and then give these pillars names. These semi-humans guide the Inuit as they hunt for caribou and seal. Later, they point the way home so the meat can be shared by everyone.

at ocean’s edge /
inuksuk points the way /
over the icy shore //

In the warmth further south, humans live in a land of plenty and relative ease. We’ve forgotten how to cooperate. We don’t recognize the humanity in other humans, much less in nature. We avoid the eyes of the poor, sick, and homeless. We misinterpret our holy books — to convince ourselves that the poor deserve to be poor –or that some groups of people bring hardship upon themselves.

In this land of plenty ice isn’t our enemy. We are our own enemy. Where are our inuksuit? Where is the unmistakable marker pointing to cooperation — or even compassion?

homeless man shivers /
behind his cardboard sign — /
cold stone looks away //

For Līgo Haibun, our task was to write a haibun inspired by either the Australian Aboriginal flag or the Nunavuk flag. Nunavuk is a large territory in Northwest Canada. The Nunavuk flag features an inuksuk –a large stone landmark built and used by the Inuit people of the Arctic. They can be found from Alaska through Greenland.

Wikipedia tells us that the word inuksuk means (“something which acts for or performs the function of a person”). Inuksuit (plural for inuksuk) may have been used “for navigation, as a point of reference, a marker for travel routes, fishing places, camps, hunting grounds, places of veneration, drift fences used in hunting or to mark a food cache. The Inupiat in northern Alaska used inuksuit to assist in the herding of caribou into contained areas for slaughter.”

The most common form is a single stone placed upright, but human-like figures can sometimes be seen.

◊

This post will be available on my primary blog after 5/29/2014 at 9:30 EST.

←◊→