Week 10 Reading Diary: Eskimo Stories

Eskimo Stories

Some of these stories actually reminded me of Biblical stories. Just goes to show that people are the same no matter where they are and people never really change.

I got an idea while reading some of the internet stories this week. These stories were originally verbal stories to teach children, and one of the people who's storybook I read took similar stories that taught lessons and turned them into a storytelling. What if I took a chief, or someone of importance in the village, and had them tell the children one of the stories while the parents were away since that was how the stories were originally told.

The story The Coming of Men, A Long, Long While Ago reminded me of the story of creation. It had a very strange take on death, because it seemed to me that there was a zombie for a minute there in the story. It had the similar Native theme of being one with nature, since it explained that after we die we are transformed into stars. So natural elements still very important even in the Arctic region.

I found some aspects of some of the stories to be a bit confusing because I could not tell if it was a name or a mythical creature. What I found interesting was because they live in the Arctic they could not burry the dead like they do in more tropical climates because the ground was too frozen to dig, so they placed stones over the dead body.

I greatly enjoyed the story The Woman Who Had a Bear as a Foster-Son because it reminded me of going off to college. In a way it is about growing up and having to let go of someone you love so that they may create a life for themselves. Gave me an idea of the foster-mother having a diary.

I had storytelling ideas both for Qalaganguase, Who Passed to the Land of Ghosts and Isigaligarssik. For the first I was thinking of doing a diary for the little boy since he is now an orphan and would be lonely. His story would get left behind once he turned into a ghost since he would no longer need material things really.  For the second story, I could make it an elder telling the story of how he defeated the wizard and how love conquers all, but he is telling the children and a researcher.