"A Culture Almost Gone"

a little girl learns to dance one day, while her brother plays the drum. they sing the songs from yesterday, and they do it just for fun.

behind each dance and within each song lies the truth of our story “a culture almost gone”

we learn to live by the ilitqusiat, a list of seventeen cultural traits. but in that list we forgot to mention, dancing is an inupiaq invention.

at the tips of our tongues and the breath of our lungs comes the truth we ignore “we might sing these no more”

we build our youth through subsistence then dismiss the spiritual existence within the animals that we kill connected to our own heart’s will

our faith may change or vary and differ but values remain just like the big dipper or caribou in the sky and the moon in a rise our men will soon arrive with old drums in their hand and our songs by heart here, we sing and here, we stand our spirit is just a reflection of our land