Monday, March 17, 2008

HOW MANYOFUT KNEW THAT THIS WAS EVEN A THING: Via Wikipedia: Nunavut became a territory of Canada in 1999, at the exact moment that the 24-hour darkness lifted for a moment and Canadians realized that there was a gigantic land mass where there had not been one a few moments before. Nunavut's population is approximately the same as the lunchtime population of the food court across the street from me, spread over about 780,000 square miles.

After an extended adolescent romp known as Rumspringa, Nunavutians usually elect to join a shadowy cabal of ascetic lyric-shunners, which is what accounts for Nunavut's lack of wistful folk content. Nunavutians have a unique system of communal and private ownership of land in which each person has sole, but effectively temporary, ownership of an exactly equal-sized octagonal plot of land (currently one person for approximately 24 square miles), with the interstitial squares belonging to the territorial government. The call "kamiak siskiyou'aleuk'[___] (literally, "hey, a little to the [left/right/north/south]," which signals the requirement that each person adjust the margins of his or her personal property, is passed orally from person to person upon the birth or death of each Nunavutian. This tradition leads to an intricate system of fierce competition in which people attempt to steer their plots of land, through years of multiple births and deaths, to encompass valuable shoreline, natural resources, and Banana Republic outlets.

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