an Inuit story

KAKORTULIAK Was At A Reindeer-Hunt,When They Only Succeeded In Hitting One Large Deer, Which Made Its Escape By Jumping Into A Lake. Kakortuliak, However, Pursued It By Swimming, And Fastened A Line To Its Antlers, By Which It Was Hauled On Land. He Got A Large Piece Of The Tallow, And Leaving The Party, Went Off By Himself In Search Of Further Game. 

He Saw Two Ravens Pursuing One Another; But On Viewing Them More Closely They Had The Features Of Man. At The Same Moment A Reindeer Suddenly Bounded Forth, Apparently From His Own Bag; And He Found The Tallow At The Same Time Had Disappeared, A Little Morsel Only Remaining. He Then Felt Himself Lifted Off His Feet And Carried Away Through The Air; But By Rubbing His Skin With The Bit Of Tallow He Again Quickly Descended Towards The Earth; Yet Without Touching It He Gained His Home. 

On Arriving, However, He Had Lost The Use Of His Senses, And Lay Down Almost Lifeless, Though Unable To Die. Such Was As Has Been Told, The Condition Of The Heathen When The Ruler Of The Moon Had Taken The Souls Out Of Their Body. From This Time Kakortuliak Gave Up Hunting, And Turned A Clairvoyant. His Soul Used To Leave The Body And Roam About The Inland And Along The East Coast; And On Returning He Related What He Had Seen, And How He Had Lived With The Inlanders.

Tales And Traditions Of The Eskimo, By Henry Rink; London [1875] And Is Now In The Public Domain. [Greenland]

from Blue Panther's archives

INUIT story about Kajortoq

Kajortoq, the Red Fox – Inuit

One Summer day, Kajortoq, the red fox, left her brood of cubs in the den and went out in search of something to eat. On a vast plain she met Aklaq, the brown bear, and said: "Cousin, it has been a long time since I last saw you! What is the matter with you?"

"I am hungry," replied Aklaq.

"Me too. I really am," said Kajortoq. "Let’s hunt together. You go this way and I shall go that way."

"There is nothing this way but ptarmigan," complained Aklaq, "and they are afraid of me. Every time I get close to them they fly away."

"It is easy for me to catch them," remarked the fox. "But," she added, "I am afraid of men."

"I am not afraid of men," said Aklaq, "but I am unable to catch ptarmigan."

"In that case," declared Kajortoq, "wait for me here; I shall go and get you some ptarmigan. I shall not be long."

Aklaq waited and Kajortoq soon returned with a few ptarmigan. The brown bear was full of joy and thanked his companion again and again. He was very hungry and ate the ptarmigan at once. When he had finished he said, "You were very kind to bring me some ptarmigan. In return I shall now bring you a man. Wait for me here."

Kajortoq waited but the bear took a long time to return, and when he did arrive he had no man. Instead he staggered along; he was losing blood and behind him the ground was red. A man had shot an arrow at him and had wounded him in the side. The shaft of the arrow had broken and the point remained in the flesh.

Kajortoq sympathized: "Cousin, I feel sorry for you. Let me take care of you." Kajortoq built a stone fireplace, lit a fire, and heated some stones.

"Stretch out here," she told the bear. "Stretch your legs and even if I hurt you, do not move. If you stir, you will die because I shall not be ale to remove the arrow."

The bear stretched on the ground. The fox took a red hot stone from the fire and applied it to the wound pushing harder and harder on it. Aklaq moaned and howled with pain, but soon the howls stopped; he was dead.

Kajortoq stood on her hind legs and danced around the bear, laughing loudly: "I can brag to myself. No one could do this but I. I have enough to eat for a long time." The fox did not return to her lair but remained at this place for the duration of the summer, feeding herself on the meat of the bear.

When winter came she had run out of provisions. The bear had all been eaten; there was nothing left but the bones. She placed them in a pile and buried them under some boulders.

A while later she saw Amaroq, the wolf, coming toward her and went to meet him. "How are you, cousin?"

"Not too well," answered Amaroq, "I am very hungry."

"Have confidence in me," said Kajortoq. "I shall show you what you have to do to get some food. Do you see that river in front of us?" She pointed to a nearby river covered with a thin coating of ice. Here and there water could be seen through holes in the ice.

"Go over there," suggested Kajortoq. "Try to catch come trout. I am going to make you a fish hook. All you have to do is sit near the hole, tie the hook to your tail and let it sink to the bottom. Remain seated and do not move until the sun sets. At that time you will pull in your hook. There will be a trout caught on it. Believe me, that is how I caught mine."

The wolf sat beside the hole without moving. Meanwhile, the red fox set out along the shore saying that she was going to look for something to eat. Instead she hid behind a small hill to watch the wolf, but being careful that he not see her.

Amaroq stayed where he was for the entire day, confidently awaiting the results of his fishing. By the time the sun had reached the west he realized he had caught nothing. He growled in anger, "Kajortoq lied to me. I am going to run after her and eat her!"

He tried to get up but his tail was stuck to the ice. He pulled on it again and again until all of a sudden it came free; his tail had broken. Frothing with rage and bleeding profusely, the wolf searched the plain for traces of Kajortoq. The fox, however, had slipped away to hide in her hole.

The wolf soon discovered her den and cried, "Come out of your hole so that I can eat you!"

"What are you saying?" answered Kajortoq, sticking her head out of her den to look. As she did so she bent her head to one side and kept one of her eyes closed. "I have never seen you before. What do you want?"

"You deceived me today and I have lost my tail. Now I am going to eat you!"

"I know nothing about that," replied Kajortoq emerging from her hole. "Did you ask that red fox over there? It must be him. I heard someone pass my door a little while ago."

Impatiently, the wolf left Kajortoq to run after the other red fox. Kajortoq saw him go and kept watching until the wolf fell from his wound. By the next morning, having lost all of his blood, Amaroq was dead. Kajortoq stood up on her hind legs and started dancing in circles around him. "I can boast to myself. No one could do this but I."

She lived on the wolf all of that winter. When she had eaten all his flesh, she made a pile of the bones and went elsewhere in search of food.

One day she saw coming toward her a brown female bear who looked larger and more terrifying than any bear Kajortoq had ever seen.

The bear addressed the fox angrily. "Did you know my son? He left last spring to hunt but he did not come back. I have found his bones near this hill."

I know nothing about it," answered Kajortoq. "I did not see him. I shall follow you and you can show me where his bones are."

They left together. The fox recognized the place where she had killed Aklaq. Seeing that the female bear was crying Kajortoq pretended to be full of sorrow.

"Tears won’t help you," she told the mother bear. "I believe I know who killed your son. Wait here awhile for me."

Kajortoq climbed to the top of a hill. From this vantage point she looked in all directions and saw another brown bear. She returned in haste to the female bear and said, "The one who killed your son is over there. Go and attack him. He is big and strong but I shall help you."

While the bears fought Kajortoq jumped around pretending to help. In fact, she only spattered blood on her hair. At length the female bear killed the other bear. She turned to the fox and said gratefully, "You helped me, thank you. Take all this meat. I am tired and wounded and do not want any of it." The bear started homeward, but died of her wounds before she was out of sight.

Kajortoq once again danced for joy and was happy. The two bears would provide plenty of meat for a long time to come.

from archives of Blue Panther

SEDNA'S transmutation

Katherine Josten, founder of the Global Art Project, danced the role of Sedna in a ritual theatre event called RESTORING THE BALANCE in Tucson, Arizona, in 2004. Cast members were amazed to learn, during rehearsals, that a new planet beyond Pluto had just been discovered, and astronomers chose to name it Sedna. As Katherine prepared, she observed that the myth of Sedna is profoundly relevant to the transformation in human understanding that is occuring as we evolve into a global humanity:

"The integration of male and female must occur in order to bring balance to the earth and human consciousness. The two aren't apart. It is necessary for a dialogue to occur so the pain of both male and female may be brought to light and transmuted. Raven and Sedna’s father were acting out of fear, which means out of their own pain. Both their pain and Sedna’s pain must be brought to light for true transmutation to occur."

Transmutation is an alchemical word that concerns the process by which the old "dense matter", the "materia" is burned way, changed, dissolved, in order to create something new and more refined - lead into gold.

To the Inuit, like most indigenous people, the Earth is alive, and we are all interconnected with the Earth/Ocean Mother, each other, and with all of our non-human "relations". Their cosmology does not include dominion over nature - rather, we are, to them, in an intricate web of inmmanent relationships, and rites that renew the balance toward harmonious, and empathic, relationship must be continually renewed.

"We have heard this sacred story together", Grey Eagle wrote. "And now we can close with: That’s the way it was, and that’s the way it is."

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SEDNA

Sedna Mask
photo by
 Peter Hughes

Sedna, legend tells, was a beautiful girl who lived by the sea. Although many courted her, she would not leave her widowed father, and refused them all. But one day, a raven disguised as a handsome man came to her. He promised her a better life - and best of all, he promised he would also provide for her father. And so, full of hope, Sedna left with him.

But he took her instead to a desolate island, where she was cold and hungry. When her father came at last to visit, he grew very angry. Taking Sedna into his kayak, he paddled into the open sea, but Raven caused a terrible storm to arise. And Sedna's terrified father, in desperation, hoping to save his own life, cast his daughter from the boat.

Sedna clung to the side of the kayak, and would not let go, until her father cut off her hands with his knife. Then Sedna's hands and fingers fell into the sea, becoming the the fishes, the seals, and the whales. And handless Sedna sank to the bottom of the ocean, where she lives still in a house of bones.

"Sedna is cold and naked,"Grey Eagle, a Native American ceremonial storyteller and world-wide scholar of indigenious mythologies, wrote in 2004, "She is covered with a tangle of hair she can't comb out. And all the broken taboos and sins against nature of the people fall through the water, to collect on Sedna's body. When the accumulation is too great, Sedna sobs in pain. And all the sea creatures leave the shore, to gather by her door to comfort her.The people know then it's time to gather and publicly confess their broken taboos.

This is how they do it: The men, remembering Sedna’s father, do a dance of contrition. Slowly dancing, they sing of their remorse for sins done by man to women, to earth, and to her children. And all the people send Sedna their prayers. Their shaman purifies herself to take the dangerous journey to the underwater world where Sedna lives.

When she finds Sedna, she gathers fine sand to cleanse the filth from Sedna’s body. She sings while tenderly picking the crabs from Sedna’s hair. And she offers Sedna the confessions and prayers of the people, their promises to change their life stories. So Sedna is comforted, and asks Creator to forgive them for the ways they have become out of balance.

Her sobbing is no longer heard in the waves, and the animals end their vigil, returning to offer themselves again as food. She is generous, and forgiving. Knowing this of Sedna, the Inuit are inspired to return Her gift by making better life stories, and treating their relations with love and respect."1

For the Inuit there must be rites of reciprocity with the Great Mother when they become out of balance. As She suffers, so must they. And so they dance, purify and pray, to restore the balance between the above world and the below world, between men and women, between themselves and Creator.

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EYE STORY ANCIENT OF DAYS

Inuit Woman

Inuit Woman's eyes show us something of her landscape and the prayers of her Ancients dancing in her Soul.

http://www.theancientweb.com/images/explore/Canada_Inuit_Woman.jpg

This Inuit Woman in ritual costume shows us other eyes within the same diaspora so that the dimensionalism of eyes as Gateways of the Soul essence travels with its own YOUniqueness into our own.

http://www.teojasmin.com/media/produit/img/101-Inuit1_300x430.jpg

This Inuit Child has immaculate perceptivity which shines out of his eyes. There is something deep and wise immediately recognisable for me that is reflecting through this Childs inner Light. Eyes are also a visual exchange not only of the observed. Our own Subjectivity is at play in this imaginista of potential meanings and their ascribability without truly walking amongst our Sacred Kin and all of the Life textures which gives meaning to life according to their living realities.

I have Chosen the Inuit as their World is closer to their original lifeways and our own are more readily re understood upon a continuum of possibilities through which to re imagine ourselves.

Ocean Sister ...Smiling into the majik of Sacred Kinship - Mereana Taki's story (may 17, 2010)

Rima Fakih now Miss USA 2010

RAPE

Inuit child

Iraqi beauty of Samina

"On Father's Day the contradictions still loom larger upon the face of the Earth within the chuckles a lot of men stifle watching their 'boys' run a train on a woman an hour or so before they visit their son's at their baby's mother's house. The gross contradictions of church folk mumbling against the women's rights movement as a young girl slips out of a pew stifling a cry for a hurt she cannot articulate in the face of a young cat from her school, who raped her, enters the church to the praise of the Church mothers who wish they were young enough to fuck him blind.

All men are responsible for what happened and what didn't happen to our women. As long as a regime of terror dominates the spiritual landscape of religious doctrine, and the masculine principal over the feminine cannot comprehend the sacredness of pussy, or understand the poetry of the punany rapes and murders will pause during Father's Day celebrations and resume after church, or they will spike during the Father's Day sermons across the land." - Gregory E. Woods, husband & father

ideal beauty of a white woman 6

Origin of Light - Inuit

In early times, there was only darkness; there was not light at all. At the edge of the sea a woman lived with her father. One time she went out to get some water. As she was scraping the snow, she saw a feather floating toward her. She opened her mouth and the feather floated in and she swallowed it. From that time she was pregnant.

Then she had a baby. It's mouth was a raven's bill. The woman tried hard to find toys for her child. In her father's house was hanging a bladder that was blown up. This belonged to the woman's father. Now the baby, whose name was tulugaak (raven), pointed at it and cried for it. The woman did not wish to give it to him but he cried and cried. At last she gave in and took the bladder down from the wall and let the baby play with it. But in playing with it, he broke it. Immediately, it began to get light. Now there was light in the world, and darkness, too.

When the woman's father came home, he scolded his daughter for taking he bladder down from the wall and giving it to the child. And when it was light, tulugaak disappeared.

This isn't a creation story in its purest form, but it is somewhat of an origin myth. It reflects the geography of the Inuit, who would have no sunlight for months, and the patriarchal nature of their society.