it is like I am eating my own tonguecut precisely, a flesh trianglecool red bloodlessand placed in my mouthI cannot speakit tastes like my own tonguesalt and fleshI am eating my own tonguethe weight of it
English Language Assimilation as a Bite of Sashimi
Carrie Ayagaduk Ojanen
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“English Language Assimilation as a Bite of Sashimi” from CIRCUMPOLAR CONNECTIONS: CREATIVE INDIGENOUS GEOGRAPHIES OF THE ARCTIC: by Liisa-Rávná Finbog, Joan Naviyuk Kane, and Johannes Riquet.
Published by Wesleyan University Press on March 4, 2025.
Copyright © 2025 by Carrie Ayagaduk Ojanen.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Carrie Ayagaduk Ojanen is an Iñupiaq writer from the Ugiuvamiut tribe. She is the author of Roughly for the North. Her work has most recently appeared in Circumpolar Connections: Creative Indigenous Geographies of the Arctic and her poetry has appeared in various journals. Ojanen grounds her work in familial relationships, especially with her grandparents, members of the last generation of Ugiuvak, Alaska. She received her MFA from the University of Montana.
Grounded in the spatiality of Indigenous existence, Circumpolar Connections: Creative Indigenous Geographies of the Arctic is an innovatively foundational book about experiences and conceptions of geography in the circumpolar world.
"Circumpolar Connections conveys the richness, diversity, and power of Indigenous cultural expressions of the Arctic. As these works bespeak deep ties between Native peoples and their lands, they demonstrate the role of creative practices in place-making. Beautifully illustrated and designed, this remarkable book is itself a work of art."
—Shari M. Huhndorf, Professor of Native American Studies, University of California, Berkeley
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