Читать книгу An Intimate Wilderness - Norman Hallendy - Страница 20

LEGENDS AND REALITIES

As I gathered and recorded accounts from elders about their beliefs and experiences, I wondered how best to separate myths and legends from realities. Did I really need to know what was real or not real? After all, one person’s myth could be another’s reality. And why would I want to separate these perceptions in the first place? Was the monster that hid under my bed as a child as real as the elders’ belief in Qugalugaki, that wee imp that lives at the back of the sleeping platform?

The question of what is true and what is not true was posed to various elders. In response, they offered ten words and expressions that ranged from things known not to be true to things believed to be absolutely true. The expression I found most enlightening was ukpirijaujut, things which are believed.

The first of many storytelling sessions that I experienced occurred in a tent, lit by the warm glow of a Coleman lantern. It was at Sapujuaq, where entire families go to fish for Arctic char. Sapujuaq is an ancient site where you can see the signatures of many generations on the landscape: old tent rings, caches for storing food, the faint outlines of sleeping platforms, and nappariat, the little inuksuk-like figures that were used to dry filleted fish. Like all who came here before us, we gathered sometime toward dusk to eat and drink strong tea made fragrant by the smoke of an open fire.

Eventually, someone began by telling a story of some personal adventure on the land or of a folly and others soon followed, at times drawing gasps of wonder or gales of laughter. Stories told about life on the land were often brief and without embellishment. Some had no conclusion, which left the listener stranded as it were on the story’s edge.

Simeonie Quppapik shared one such account. “When I was still a boy, my father and his hunting companions came back to the camp with walrus meat. We were joyful. But no one in our family ate any meat; we were full. The next day, those who had eaten the meat were sick, dying, or dead. In a rage, my father took up his rifle and shot each lump of meat... and each piece began to move!”

The storyteller elders expected me to collect their tales and so they were written as told and retold without embellishment.