Young Nunavik storyteller wins national writing award

The Qallupilluit Boy is the story of a young boy who skips school to play on the sea ice, a decision he lives to regret. Anauta said he wrote the story to encourage children to be careful around sea ice in the springtime. (IMAGE COURTESY OF HISTORICA CANADA)

David Anauta, 9, of Akulivik, won a national writing award for his illustrated story called the Qallupilluit Boy. (IMAGE COURTESY OF HISTORICA CANADA)

A budding young Nunavik storyteller has a strong message to send to other youth in the region: Stay in school — it could save your life.

David Anauta is a nine-year-old Grade 4 student at Tukisiniarvik school in Akulivik, on Nunavik’s Hudson Bay coast. He recently wrote his own English and Inuktitut version of the Qallupilluit, an Inuit legend about a child-snatching monster who lives under the sea ice.

Anauta’s illustrated story, “The Qallupilluit Boy,” recently won him Historica Canada’s Enbridge Emerging Writer Award in the 9 to 13-year-old age category of the Aboriginal Arts and Stories, a national contest geared toward recognizing Indigenous writing talent across the country.

Anauta’s story centres around nine-year-old Illutak, who skips school one late spring day to go play on the sea ice on Hudson Bay.

Little does the boy know that the Qallupalik is hiding beneath the sea ice. The monster quickly captures the boy and traps him in his amauti until Illutak himself morphs into the same sea monster.

For 50 years, Illutak lurks under the Hudson Bay ice — sad, lonely and envious of the life he never got to enjoy.

“That is why it’s important to go to school and not play on the sea ice,” Anauta wrote in the book’s epilogue.

“Every year many people die even in my village from falling in the water.”

The most recent was just weeks ago, when a young man fell off a local bridge and was presumed drowned. Local search and rescue crews have yet to locate the man.

“Two springs ago even my sister fell in one of the cracks while she was playing with her friends on the ice but her friend saved her,” Anauta wrote. “I think that is why my people made up the stories about monsters so the kids would be scared. I am not scared but I do not play on the ice because I do not want to die.”

Anauta said he wrote the book hoping that his own younger brother and other Nunavimmiut youth will be careful around the sea ice in their own communities.

The nine-year-old also explained in the epilogue that he was inspired to write by his favourite author, children’s writer Robert Munsch, who also adapted the Qallupilluit story in his children’s story A Promise Is A Promise.

“But I think mine is better,” Anauta added.

Winners of this year’s Aboriginal Arts and Stories awards were selected among 650 submissions.

The national contest is run by Historica Canada and sponsored by Indigenous Affairs and Northern Development Canada, TD Bank, Canada’s History, and Aboriginal Link.

You can read Anauta’s story “The Qallupilluit Boy” at Historica Canada’s website.