Traditional Stories of the Arctic and Subarctic Nations
CHAPTER ONE 4
STORIES AS MEMORY The northern lights glow above the many stories So do the people who winter landscape The polar ice holds have survived on this land for centuries The storyteller’s voice rises and falls These words have been spoken over and over again The storyteller may recount a memory from his or her life A hunter may tell the story of a whale hunt Or a tale might feature strange creatures powerful beings or people with great strength or abilities The stories of the Arctic and Subarctic Nations carry with them the traditions and beliefs of these cultures A sketch from a European artist shows how an Inuit storyteller performed in the 1800s
TRUE NORTHERNERS The far north of North America can be both harsh and beautiful It has two regions the Arctic and the Subarctic The Arctic stretches across 5 5 million square miles 14 5 million sq km It includes the North Pole and parts of three oceans Earth’s tilt means that in some areas the sun sets for weeks at a time in winter In the summer it may remain in the sky for just as long The Subarctic region lies south of the Arctic Circle It includes Alaska and NORTHERN LIGHTS The northern lights or the aurora borealis appear in the sky throughout the Arctic and Subarctic regions These bands of colored light occur near Earth’s magnetic poles They happen when particles from the sun collide with Earth’s atmosphere There are many stories about the northern lights The Inuit call them arsaniit or the spirits of animals they’ve hunted They tell stories about sky people playing ball games In the Iñupiaq language they are sometimes known as kiguyait Cree and Iñupiat beliefs say the lights are the dancing spirits of the dead 6
In the far north the sun sometimes hangs in the sky for weeks at a time northern Canada This landscape features tundra and evergreen forests Some 20 Native Nations live in the Arctic and Subarctic Major Arctic Nations include the Inuit Iñupiat Yupik and Unangan Aleut Major Subarctic Nations 7
