Inhabit Media offers Inuit storytelling to the world

A page from Uumajut: volume 2, a children’s book Arctic wildlife. The new release from Inhabiit Media teaches young readers about Arctic animals and their traditional Inuit uses. Uumajut is written by Simon Awa, the late Seeglook Akeegok, Anna Zeigler and Stephanie McDonald and illustrated by Romi Caron. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

Inhabit Media offers a glossy and colourful selection of children’s literature this year, including a comprehensive collection of traditional Inuit legends and myths. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

The Inuit-owned publisher Inhabit Media offer a glossy and colourful array of stories highlighting Inuit legend and tradition as part of their 2011 releases.

The stories may be written for children, but their lively illustrations and modern-day adaption make them a pleasure to read for both young and old.

The English-language versions also serve as an excellent introduction to Inuit storytelling for those foreign to the Arctic.

Among the 2011 works is Unikkaaqtuat: An Introduction to Inuit Myths and Legends, a comprehensive, English-language collection of Inuit legends and myths.

The 288-page book contains animal fables, tales of hardships and famines and creation stories.

One of them, Atanaarjuat, is a story that originates in south Baffin region about a man who evades his killers by fleeing barefoot across the spring ice. The story formed the basis on the award-winning film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner.

Other fables explain how hunters came to perfect their craft. The Kivalliq version of The Muskox is a fable about two muskox singing together as they rub their skins, only to be drawn up a hill and killed by hunters.

Many of the stories were first recorded by ethnologists like Knud Rasmussen and Franz Boas.

The stories that make up Unikkaaqtuat were researched and compiled by Neil Christopher and edited by Noel McDermott and Louise Flaherty.

As evident in Unikkaaqtuaq, Inuit legend includes many stories of orphans.

An orphan discovers the strange beings that live in the ocean under the ice in Elisha Kilabuk’s new book The Qalupalik, the first in a series of children’s stories called Unikkaakuluit.

The qalupaliit are creatures who kidnap children by putting them in their amauti, illustrated through the drawings of Joy Ang.

But this book about a spooky creature from Inuit legends has a happy ending, when the young orphan discovers that the qalupaliit are easily tricked.

In the story The Orphan and the Polar Bear, a boy abandoned by a group of cruel hunters on the sea ice is adopted by a polar bear elder. The book is retold by elder Sakiaki Qaunaq and illustrated by Eva Widermann.

In the legend of Kaugjagjuk, a mistreated orphan learns to stand up for himself with help from the man in the moon, in a Inuit story adapted by Iqaluit native Marion Lewis.

Other 2011 releases combine story-telling and education; A Walk on the Tundra teaches readers about plant life through a fictive story, but includes a field guide with photographs and scientific information about Arctic plant life.

Written by Anna Ziegler and Rebecca Hainnu, the illustrated book tells the story of Innujaq, a little girl who learns from her grandmother about the many flowers, mosses, lichen and shrubs that cover the land.

Uumajut, Learn about Arctic Wildlife volume two — like its first volumes — introduces young readers to Arctic animals like the muskox, siksik, eider duck and the harp seal.

Uumajut, which also shows young readers the traditional use of these animals, was written by Simon Awa, Anna Ziegler, Stephanie McDonald and the late Seeglook Akeegok.

Most of Inhabit Media’s children are bilingual (English and Inuktitut) — either as separate editions or as part of the same book.

The books range in price from $9.95 to $24.95 each.

Inhabit Media’s books are available at Arctic Ventures in Iqaluit or online by visiting www.inhabitmedia.com.