Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past

by Tantoo Cardinal

  The pit was crammed with treasures.

  These were nothing like Siku’s rusted knife. Here was a polished blade as long as his leg, shining like a fish belly, handle decorated with yellow-hued kannujaq. Its home was a sheath of fine leather, wood, and wolf fur.

  Kannujaq was even more impressed with the other tools. The majority of them were great, curving crescents—like a woman’s ulu, but over a handspan in length—attached to the sturdiest wooden hafts that Kannujaq had ever felt.

  These, he thought, could hack through anything.

  There were other things as well, spearheads and knives, everything of enormous proportions. It took Kannujaq some time to figure out that some items were belts. Other things he recognized as the bowls worn on the heads of the giants. There was cloth made out of tiny, tiny rings. There were curved plates with no apparent function, and some items that were obviously jewellery.

  Kannujaq was excited, but saddened. This was further evidence that Angula had been mad. A sane man would have shared these with friends and family, making life easier for all.

  Mostly, he felt panic. He understood why the Shining One wanted all of this back. How had Angula managed to steal it?

  They replaced the items, and Siku took Kannujaq back to his dwelling. Siaq was already there, but as Kannujaq sat down, Siku departed, leaving the two of them alone.

  A planned meeting, Kannujaq thought.

  There was silence for a time. Finally, when Kannujaq could stand it no more, he asked Siaq why she lived among Tunit—especially as a slave.

  She sighed, as though having dreaded the possibility of discussing such things. Then she placed something in the fire. There was thick smoke, the acrid smell Kannujaq now recognized. He began to relax. He realized, then, that she was burning something that had a calming effect on people, made them want to talk, and that she also possessed some angakoq knowledge.

  “I had a husband once,” she said.

  It was so good to hear his own dialect again!

  “But a time came,” Siaq continued, “when he did not come home. I was alone, and I began to starve, eating my clothing in order to survive.

  “In this state was I found by the Tunit. The Tunit were led by Angula. He took me in as a slave, since I could do waterproof stitching. The Tunit cannot. The Tunit do not like slaves, but Angula always had his way through bullying. And a slave’s life among Tunit is better than death.”

  Barely, Kannujaq thought, but he did not speak. One must not interrupt a story.

  “Angula attracts strange beings,” Siaq sighed. “One spring, the Tunit discovered a great boat, wood instead of skin, lying gutted along the shore. There were beast-men there, Siaraili, covered in furs and hard shells. They had got wet. They lay frozen, dead, stuck to the ground. Only one among them had not quite died.”

  The Shining One?

  “Angula dragged him to camp,” Siaq said. “I was made to care for him. He was huge. Hair like a dogs. Pale, pale skin. He recovered quickly.

  “This one was the Shining One, the one who hates us now. But back then, he was grateful only to Angula. He repaid Angula by intimidating others in the camp for him. Angula enjoyed it. It was like having a bear as a pet. In time, Angula made me teach the Shining One some of the way Tunit speak.

  “More than anything else, Angulas pet wanted to get home, which he said was across the sea. What he could not know was that great boats were spotted now and again, probably searching for him. Cunning Angula always found ways to keep the Shining One out of sight of these boats, unaware of their presence. He kept him distracted with … games, and hunting. With me.

  “Eventually, I was given to the Shining One, like a gift, and the stranger accepted readily. The giving over of slaves, I later learned, was common where he came from, a place called Gronland. His kind called the worthless Tunit lands Heluland, or Place of Flat Stones.”

  She broke off to wipe at her eyes, which were tearing. Kannujaq remained respectfully silent.

  “But I was laughing at him inside, all the time,” Siaq said, “because I knew that he was just Angula’s slave, like me. Seasons went by, and I became sickened with it all. I started to tease Angula. I told him, sometimes, that I would tell the Shining One how Angula was keeping him from being rescued. Angula beat me terribly for this, threatened to kill me. He was scared. Not only was he keeping the Shining One captive, but he had also stripped the bodies of the Shining One’s dead companions. He had told the Shining One that they and their kannujaq implements had been lost to the sea. But he had actually kept the kannujaq tools, hiding them away safely.

  “In time, the Shining One grew into the Tunit community. He even began to treat me kindly. But I was always tempted to tell him the truth about Angula.

  “Then a night came when the Shining One and I were quarrelling. All of my hate came out somehow, made my mouth move on its own. I told him the truth. I told him everything. Everything.”

  Siaq went silent for some time.

  “He never spoke after that,” she said. “He never looked at me. Not at Angula. Not at the Tunit. Angula became scared. But he was relieved when the Shining One slipped away one day. No one saw him go. Maybe he sighted one of the ships of his people.

  “It wasn’t long before Angula started showing his kannujaq treasures around, claiming that spirits had given them to him, that he had special powers. He had learned that wealth can buy people. He began to lend his treasures out, in return for loyalty. In this way did he enslave everyone.

  “But Angula had made a mistake, for the Shining One was no normal man. He was a leader among his own kind. Angula had only a few years to enjoy his power before the Shining One returned. And he brought the Siaraili. He sent out his giants to punish the Tunit shore encampments, laughing, killing, always searching for Angula and his stolen artifacts. Others died, but Angula escaped every time. Angula became mad, paranoid, trying to hold onto his waning power. He claimed that the sea raiders were punishing the community for disobeying him.

  “In time, every Tunik in that camp was killed or scattered. Angula survived, fleeing to a new Tunit community—this one. I and Siku, who was smaller then, came with him. Here, over the next few years, it was easy for Angula to buy himself authority with his stolen artifacts. And the whole thing started again.”

  Siaq was weeping openly by the time she finished her tale; what from, exactly, Kannujaq could not tell. But there was lots to weep about. He suddenly understood how little her son truly knew of his mother. She had told Siku bits and pieces of truth, but he had interpreted everything through the eye of an angakoq (as well as that of a boy). To Siku, as to the other Tunit here, this was a battle against sea monsters. The Siaraili were tuurngait—evil spirits. In Siku’s world, there were signs and portents all around him, but his mother’s burden was truth. Only she and Angula had known what the Siaraili really were.

  Kannujaq returned truth with truth.

  “If all of us do not leave this place,” he said, “we die.”

  Siaq sniffed and agreed.

  “I can’t leave the Tunit, though,” she said. “I’ve been with them too long. They are friends, family. Life has more meaning among them, now, than it does among your … I mean, our kind.”

  She has become a Tunik, Kannujaq thought.

  “And the Tunit are not like our people,” she said, “always travelling, always sledding. The Tunit like their homes. Their homes are part of them.”

  Kannujaq could not understand why anyone would be attached to a home, but he said, “No time for this, Siaq. No time. The Siaraili left last time only because they were worried about the storm. But once they feel safe again, they’ll finish this camp. If the Tunit do not move, because of love of their homes, then there is only one other thing they can do. They must fight.”

  He was surprised to find her laughing, a dry, mirthless, bitter sort of laughter.

  “I told you how I taught the Shining One our language,” she said. “But I learned some of his, too.
The Tunit call the giants Siaraili because that is what they shout as they attack. The Tunit think that this is what the giants call themselves. But shall I tell you what they are really shouting? They shout ‘Skraeling!’ because they are calling to the Tunit, in mockery. It is their word for ‘weakling.’ They call the Tunit Skraelings, because they never fight, but simply run, and run, and run. As well they should. For the Shining One’s people have spent generations at war. They have grown fond of it. How could a community of Tunit contend with even a few of those born of conflict, armed with materials harder than stone? This is why the giants run through the camp playfully, kicking walls in, slashing at everything blades can reach. This is fun for them. Afterward, they gorge themselves on whatever they find in camp, washing it down with a harsh tea they are fond of.”

  Kannujaq was silent. Siaq was right. There would be no standing against the giants, not even with their own artifacts. These were the men whose ship prow was carved like a beast, like a wolf. And that was how they attacked. The Tunit were like caribou. They were all caribou. And the sea raiders were wolves.

  Wolves. Siaq was stuffing more heather into the fire when Kannujaq asked her, “How does a Tunik hunt a wolf?”

  “They don’t,” she said. “Wolf pelts, among the Tunit, are rare and valuable, because it is almost impossible to get near enough to a wolf to kill it.”

  But Kannujaq knew how his own people hunted them.

  You did not catch a wolf by running it down, nor by ambushing it. The creatures were too wily. They could sense humans, evading them every time. Instead, you used a wolf’s habits against it. The wolf was like a dog. If it found food lying about, it would stuff itself with as much as its gut could carry, eating faster than it could think. So what Kannujaq’s people did was this: Soften some sharpened antler. Bend and tie it. Freeze it into the centre of a piece of meat or fat. Invariably, the wolf would swallow it down. The meat and ties would melt and digest inside the wolf. The sharpened antler would spring open. Dead wolf.

  Siku walked in while Kannujaq was trying to explain this to Siaq. He seemed to grasp immediately what Kannujaq was implying and began to rummage through his bags. In a few moments, he had retrieved a handful of dried, ugly, greyish lumps.

  “Is that what you burn in the fire to make people sleepy?” Kannujaq asked.

  “That’s a mushroom,” Siaq said grimly, “that is very dangerous. It can make one permanently stupid—even kill, if used improperly. But an angakoq, like myself or Siku, can prepare small amounts of it properly.”

  “But if we made a solution of the stuff,” Siku grinned, “it would be very deadly, indeed.”

  “Is there enough to saturate some meat with?” Kannujaq asked.

  “I have three bags here,” said Siku.

  Siaq ran off to retrieve her own stores.

  It took a little over a day to ready everything, and the Tunit needed a great deal of convincing. Kannujaq was adamant about securing their promise that they would help out. Everyone’s movements were orchestrated and rehearsed. The homes nearest the beach were left abandoned, storage areas full of meat. As many Tunit as possible would share homes nearest the hills, allowing them a head start if the raiders were sighted. They were not to move far, but only to take cover near the base of the hills.

  Kannujaq alone would creep back to the camp to see if the Shining One’s men took the bait. If so, he would signal.

  There was no back-up plan.

  The days were long now, so it was late evening when the Shining One returned in creeping dusk.

  One by one, the great boat’s torches sprang to life as it reached the shore, to harsh cries of, “Skraeling!”

  The camp, and especially Kannujaq himself, had been nervous and watchful. All was set, and cries of alarm spread faster than flame among the Tunit, who were soon running. Kannujaq ran alongside them, desperately hoping that the Tunit would be able to summon their courage when the time came.

  His greatest fear was that the raiders would not behave as planned. Siku and Siaq had prepared a kind of rancid-smelling tea out of their mushrooms, assuring Kannujaq that it would be undetectable on meat saturated with it. They were wrong. Kannujaq himself had sampled some of it. No peculiar scent, but its flavour was off. His stomach had begun to lurch soon afterward.

  Maybe the raiders are less observant, he hoped.

  They reached the hills, and could see commotion down by the beach, most likely the raiders kicking in the short Tunit walls, ripping tops off homes, stamping through cook-fires. Kannujaq gave them time, letting the reddish grey of evening come on. After the amount of time it might have taken for someone to boil up soup, he began to creep back down.

  Lucky my clothes have become sooty, like the Tunit.

  It seemed to take forever to get down there, but at last he was at the edge of the community. Fortunately, there were large rocks about, enough for him to move among cover.

  The Shining One was easy to spot. There was that gleaming face by torchlight, the man who never seemed to stray far from his boat. As before, he was arguing with one of his own. He was frustrated by something. At last, he tore off the gleaming shell upon his head and face and cast it upon the stones of the beach.

  His giant servant watched him climb back into the boat, retrieving something near its stern. Then the Shining One stretched himself out, drinking something in hand.

  The servant shook his head and left his leader there, joining the other raiders at a fire they had constructed. For fuel, they were burning what precious few tools the Tunit had made, from driftwood, over generations.

  Yet they are eating, Kannujaq noted. They had found the meat, but the poison would take some time to work. He needed patience, as in hunting a seal.

  It was a sudden thing when it happened. They were still laughing, but their movements were becoming syrupy, disjointed. Whenever one arose, he teetered dangerously.

  Then one of them vomited. The others laughed at this, crazily, before they did the same. The mad pitch of their laughter increased, until they fell—first to knees, then fully upon the ground. Many began gesturing, calling out at empty air.

  Soon the dozen of them were down, some convulsing. One lay still. Others were laughing or weeping uncontrollably.

  Kannujaq unravelled the bull-roarer in his hand. He whirled the noise-maker round and round, calling the Tunit.

  Where are they, Kannujaq thought. Now! Now! I can’t do it alone!

  Finally, Tunit men appeared next to him, long bear spears in hand. They stood stunned by what they saw, and Kannujaq roared at them to get moving.

  He did not watch as they stabbed the giants. His objective was the boat. He ordered several Tunit men to join him and do as he did.

  Kannujaq threw himself against the bow of the boat, and the Tunit men did likewise. Together they began to shove it backward, away from the shore, trying to get it out into the water.

  Kannujaq’s one concern was the Shining One himself. He had assumed that the man would join his fellows in feasting, but he had been wrong. Instead, the man seemed to have gone to sleep in the stern, after guzzling tea all evening.

  They didn’t get the boat out in time.

  There was a dry, rasping sound—that of a weapon being drawn—and the Shining One appeared with a bellow. Kannujaq barely fell away from the boat as a great blade bit into the gunwale nearest his face.

  But the Tunit had managed to push the vessel out. There, in the water, the great loon-thing rocked, and Kannujaq knew that the Shining One could not man it by himself.

  The Tunit had finished the giants, and many were standing along the beach now, watching the helpless leader of the raiders drift ever further outward. Kannujaq opened his mouth to tell the Tunit to fetch bows, but one glance told him that they were already sickened with murder.

  As was he.

  So they all watched, stared as a current tugged at the vessel, lazily turning it away from the coast. There stood the Shining One, no longer shining, but starin
g back at Kannujaq. It was a strange thing that there was no hatred in those ice-blue eyes, but only despair, and resignation.

  In that moment, Kannujaq recognized the colour of those eyes and knew. The Shining One had never come here for plunder. Siaq had kept a secret from all.

  The sea raiders had always had enough weapons and tools to spare. The objects Angula had stolen meant nothing to them. As with Kannujaq, what most mattered was kin. Kannujaq was looking at a fellow stranger in these lands, a newcomer, one who has known that dread of the unknown against him. Perhaps his people were not faring well here.

  This was a man with nothing left, whose greatest fear—as with all men—was that he would fade away, leaving no trace of his passing. And it was such desperation that had driven his attempts to retrieve his only lasting legacy.

  His son.

  It was telling that there was no real celebrating over the defeat of the raiders. The Tunit simply wanted to put it all behind them, returning to their shy Tunit ways.

  Kannujaq never spoke about what he knew of Siaq, that she had once had a husband from beyond the sea. Nor did he ever speak of what he knew of Siku, whose angakoq eyes had come from his father.

  Kannujaq offered to bring Siaq and Siku away with him. Yet, just as he knew he could never live like a Tunik, so Siaq said that she was no longer comfortable among her own.

  Siku, however, took up Kannujaq’s offer eagerly. The blue-eyed angakoq, it seemed, had never felt comfortable among the Tunit. And he seemed to like the idea of sledding.

  So it was that, in the early evening, when the scant remaining snow was cooling, Kannujaq and Siku made ready to depart. And as Siku watched Kannujaq tighten the lashings on his sled, the boy asked him, somewhat haltingly, “What … am I to say my mother is, if not a Tunik? What are we?”

  “I don’t know,” Kannujaq replied. But he thought about a word his grandfather had used. “Perhaps we are Inuit.”

  Siku’s look was blank. He had grown up with the Tunit dialect, and the word was a foreign one.