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                   ARCTIC PEOPLES AND NATIVE AMERICANS

 

Now, from the start they did hunt and did gather their food,

And Ôtwas catch-as-catch-can in the primeval wood,

So these earliest Americans, our Indian tribes,

Began fishing and farming and living their libes,Éer, lives.

 

Keeping close kin with nature, its rhythm, its reason,

These cultures did flourish from season to season.

As setting foot in new climes, they adapted their ways

To meet with the rigors of their nights and their days.

 

Now some stayed in the North to fish in the seas,

And eat all the seal and whale and walrus you please.

They bed down on the tundra in homes built from the snow,

And sighed, ÒIgloo, sweet igloo,Ó did these Eskimo.

 

Who made dresses and coats from thick animal skins

To keep warm when the chills rolled in on the winds.

Husky dogs pulled their sleds along the snow drifts,

While in kayaks they paddled to hunt and to fish.

 

And thanks were then given for the food that they found,

As gameÕs often scarce where snow and ice abound.

So they would offer fine gifts and sing songs of praise

To the souls of the creatures who graced their meal trays.

 

Indeed, where polar bears play and surf the ice floes,

Where a reindeer does rummage and a caribou goes,

Is the spot you might meet (with a B-R-RRR in your bones)

The people who dwell in such Arctic zones.

 

So if your heat goes out and cold gales do sweep,

Imagine an igloo as you drift to sleep.

And then maybe youÕll wake and then maybe youÕll find

A blast from the north has left a snow white behind.

 

But if ever youÕre lost in those far frigid sections,

DonÕt call for an Eskimo to give you directions.

Since thatÕs a name they got before they knew it,

Eskimo theyÕre not, and so please say, ÒInuitÓ.