A Stranger at Home Read online

  FOR MY THREE LITTLE INSPIRATIONS—Qugyuk, Aklak, and Paniktuaq—and their loving father, my husband, Garth: without your patience yet again, this book would not have been possible. For Margaret: your courage continues to be an inspiration to all who know you. And for Keith, a keeper of the fire: thank you for sharing a flame of inspiration with me. Megwich.

  — Christy

  TO CHRISTY: I am so grateful for all the time and care you have put into these books. To my children, and everyone else who has stood behind me in this: thank you for all the support you have given me. And, as always, to my late husband, Lyle, whose love and never-ending support helped me to overcome. He was a great man.

  — Margaret

  FOR MY MOST WONDROUS CREATIONS, Alek and Max, and my loving and talented husband, Mark, all of whom are my wellspring of inspiration, strength, and encouragement. To Diana, now the brightest star among the Northern Lights. And to Christy, Margaret, and Annick Press, who paid me the highest compliment by allowing me illustrate these tender and important stories.

  — Liz

  Margaret with her sisters Mabel and Bessie and their mother, sitting in front of the smokehouse.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  After The Story

  The Schools

  Olemaun’s Scrapbook

  Acknowledgments

  Photo Credits

  Introduction

  MY NAME IS OLEMAUN Pokiak—that’s OO-lee-mawn. Such a name probably sounds strange to you. I can understand, because there was a time in my life when it sounded strange to me, too. Would you believe that at one point I could scarcely remember my own name or even speak the same language as my mother? Well, it’s true. The outsiders had locked my tongue with the spell of their “education.” But I was named for a stone that sharpens a knife, and I was strong. I could not be worn down.

  Chapter ONE

  THE BOAT CRUNCHED to a stop against the shore. My fingers gripped into the side of it as I propelled my body over the edge. “No,” I heard my friend Agnes call with a restrained cry. The shore was packed with people, though Tuktoyaktuk was very small. I pushed through the crowd, my canvas shoes rolling on the tiny pebbles as I searched for my family. It had been so long since I had seen them.

  I HEARD A VOICE I recognized—it was my mother’s. She was speaking to my siblings. I turned and followed it, making my way through the throng to where she stood, with my two-year-old brother Ernest tied to her back and my sisters Mabel and Elizabeth still looking up at the boat for me to disembark. I wondered why my father had not run to meet me the minute my feet hit the shore, but he was not with them. I stood proudly before my mother and siblings and waited for them to rush toward me.

  My mother gave me a strange look, as if to question why I was standing before her. I smiled, but she crossed her arms and shook her head. “Not my girl. Not my girl,” she shouted up to the dark-cloaked brothers in the only English I had ever heard her speak.

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  I turned around to look at them where they stood, perched like birds of prey at the rail of the Immaculata. Their beady eyes studied me. If my mother didn’t recognize me, I was certain that at any moment they would pounce on me and carry me back to their outsiders’ nest up the Mackenzie Delta.

  I could not understand how this could be happening. After days of being cramped aboard the small Roman Catholic boat, going ashore to stretch our legs only when we stopped to drop my classmates at their various Arctic settlements, this could not be my welcome. I had seen many mothers cry, and several fathers turn their heads to hide their own tears, as they welcomed back their children. After being gone for two years myself, I had all but lost hope that this day would come for me. But as each child left the boat on our way farther and farther north, my optimism grew. It grew until we reached the mouth of the Mackenzie River and then the hope inside of me erupted. The boat could barely contain the overwhelming anticipation I shared with my classmates. We had all waited for so long to be reunited with our parents in Tuktoyaktuk. Only my friend Agnes did not seem to be excited.

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  When the shore came into view, its long, thin peninsula stretching out to meet us, I felt so happy I was sure I could walk on water like Jesus had in the nuns’ stories. Not even Agnes’s reluctance or the brothers’ glares were enough to suppress the loud cheers that rose from the rest of us. The banks swelled with people, perhaps double the hundred or so who lived in Tuk most of the time. Like mine, other families had come from afar to collect their children. The trapper’s daughter saw her father in the crowd and hugged her older brother, crying for joy. They had been gone just as long as I had been—two years. A short summer the year before had left many of us locked in by the ocean ice, with our parents unable to make it all the way to Aklavik to pick us up, or to arrange to get us from Tuk. The two older Gwich’in girls jumped up and down and waved to their family on the shore. The one named Katherine, who had always tried to bully me at school, was the happiest, because she was now thirteen and the outsiders could never make her go back to their school.

  I wasn’t going back either. I was going to tell my parents how awful the school was, so they would never make me leave the safety of our home on Banks Island ever again.

  Now, on the shore, I looked from my unwelcoming mother up to where Agnes still stood on the deck of the boat. She offered me a look of sympathy. Her own return had been painful the year before when she had gone home to Tuk for summer break.

  Gwich’in: A tribe of the Dene Nation who live in the far northwestern part of Canada. The Gwich’in and the Inuvialuit have been known to feud with each other over resources.

  I turned again to my mother. Our eyes were level; I was no longer the little girl who had always looked up at her. I was desperate to find a glint of recognition. There was none. Her face was still scrunched in protest, disbelieving that I was her child.

  “Not my girl. Not my girl,” she called again to the brothers. I looked again to the boat behind me where the brothers stood, and I tensed, ready to run if they made a move to come down and haul me away from my family. I was going to bolt. I’d run to the end of the peninsula and jump in the ocean if I had to. I was not returning to the school with them. I was never going to let them take me back.

  It was their fault that my mother did not know me. It was because of the brothers, the priests, and the nuns that she could no longer see who I was. They had cast an outsiders’ spell on me with their endless chores and poor meals; they had turned me from the plump, round-faced girl my mother knew into a skinny, gaunt creature. And they had cut my long black hair into a short, choppy bob. They had spent two years making all these changes. I was now ten, and several inches taller than I had been when my parents left me at that school up the river in Aklavik.

  I scanned the crowd for my father. He had to come and save me! One of the brothers stepped onto the gangplank, and I leaned forward to run, but I was saved. My father emerged from the crowd and caught me in a tight embrace, the smoky smell of his parka wrapping around me. His strong hunter’s hands stroked my hair.

  “Olemaun,” he said to me, the special name I had not heard for two years.

  I whispered it to myself, “Oo-lee-maun.”

  The Inuit name my grandfather had given me felt strange to my tongue. I could not remember the last time I had thought of the name, let alone heard it spoken lovingly in my ear. I no longer felt worthy of it. It was like a beautiful dress that was far too big for me t
o wear. At the school I was known only as Margaret. Margaret was like a tight, scratchy dress, too small, like my school uniform. Not wanting my father to see that I was no longer his Olemaun, I buried my head against his chest.

  Inuit: a general term for the Aboriginal peoples who inhabit the Arctic regions of Canada, Greenland, Russia, and the United States. The term “Inuit” has largely replaced “Eskimo.”

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  I felt a soft touch, lighter than my father’s, on my back. A familiar warm touch that worked its way into my heart with a tenderness I had not known for a long, long time. Only one person had ever touched me so sweetly—my mother. She slid her hand from my back and around my chest, reaching for my buried face. Her fingers were smooth against my chin. I shrank from them, filled with shame at having all but forgotten how affectionate a touch could be, and cried until my tears turned my father’s parka wet.

  My eight-year-old sister Elizabeth approached us first, while seven-year-old Mabel hung back. Then they joined us in a crushing hug, squeezing me in their embrace. Ernest reached out and touched my hair. All of those raven-eyed brothers together could not have pried me from my family. I was safe. By the time we separated, the brothers were pushing the Immaculata off the shore. They were moving on.

  Katherine and the other Gwich’in girl would soon be leaving too. The supply barge had been in Aklavik when we left and it would arrive here in Tuk any day. After that, Katherine would go with her people, far to the southwest of Tuk, and I would never have to see her again.

  The trapper’s daughter and her brother would also be going. As I watched their mother kiss them, I wondered how they felt about the school. Being outsiders like the nuns and the priests, they had not found the school so hard, but I could tell by the way they clung to their mother that they had missed her, just as I had missed my own family. I caught Agnes’s eye and she smiled at me, waving good-bye as she supported her mother as they walked up the bank and toward the tiny village of log cabins and tent homes. I hoped I would get another chance to see her before the barge arrived and I left with my family for our distant island.

  My mother assumed I would be hungry after my long journey down the Delta, so she had brought along a package of all my favorite things. I couldn’t wait to eat my mother’s food, but when we settled on the beach and she unwrapped the package, I nearly lost my stomach. I was sickened by the pungent smell of whale blubber—muktuk, I remembered—the salty smell of dried fish, and the musky, gamey smell of meat and whipped caribou fat, which the outsiders called Eskimo ice cream, but it was nothing at all like ice cream. I crinkled my nose shut. The food smelled even worse than the swampy cabbage and disgusting bland, mushy porridge and beans we had to eat at the school.

  Muktuk is made from the blubber and skin of a whale. It is enjoyed by the Inuit as a rich source of vitamin C.

  My mother scrunched her brow and frowned. I could see how hurt she was that I was not eager to eat the food she had prepared for me.

  At school we had been taught to pray before we ate, so I knew that God wanted me to drop to my knees to give thanks for the food I was about to receive, even though I was not so thankful for it. My family’s eyes were on me, though, and I could not find the courage to pray in front of all of them. I made a note to give thanks later when I was alone and took a cubed chunk of blubber, muktuk, between my fingers. It felt like the bottom of my canvas runners.

  Reluctantly, I put it in my mouth. It was rubbery and strange to chew and the taste made a gag come into my throat. I swallowed it down. The fish, which I reminded myself was called pipsi, was salty and the Eskimo ice cream was so rich that I wanted to stick my head in the bay to wash away the taste. It all sat in my guts, filling me with a heavy, greasy feeling. I was hungry and I wanted to please my mother, but it was too much.

  It was all too much: the way my little brother studied me as if I were a strange species of fish that had washed ashore, and the way my mother touched the ends of my hair and sobbed that her little girl had been turned into an outsider. I no longer belonged to my own family.

  I assured my mother that I wasn’t an outsider—that I was still her daughter—“No, no… It’s me, I’m still the same”—but my words came out in English, which she could not understand, instead of Inuvialuktun, our native tongue. She cried even harder.

  This was not the reunion I had dreamed of for two years, every long Arctic summer day without darkness and every longer sunless winter night. I just wanted to go home. I wanted us to load up the North Star right that minute and travel back across the Arctic Ocean to Banks Island, where my family always spent most of the year. Everything would be fine once we returned home, where I would be surrounded only by our small community of friends, far from all the outsiders, except for those who traveled with us and practiced our ways and not the ways of the nuns. Banks Island was a million miles from the school in Aklavik, far enough that the outsiders would be unlikely to come for me again. I needed the open ground beneath my feet. I needed to look out across the land, dotted only by our tents. I needed to climb the hill above the cemetery and see a world that was truly our own. In that world, the outsiders’ spell on me could be broken, and I could forget.

  “When do we leave for Banks Island?” I asked my father, as I scanned the boats down the shore for my beloved North Star.

  “Oh, Olemaun,” he said to me in English, which he had learned at an outsiders’ school many years ago, “we won’t be going back. We have decided to stay here. We are going to try hunting and trading here in Tuk, and I can pick up extra work as a special constable for the RCMP. Mr. Carpenter will be leaving on the North Star without us.”

  I felt like a fish pulled up and flopped onto the ice—helpless and unable to find my way back to where I could breathe.

  Instead of walking down the shoreline to our people’s camp, next to the place where they had moored their schooners, we headed to the village. Over and over, I looked back at the bay. I was glad to be free of the brothers, but I had not left the outsiders’ world. I still was not home, and now I knew that I would not even be going there.

  RCMP: Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Canada’s national police force.

  schooner: a type of sailing vessel with masts.

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  When we passed the Hudson’s Bay Company store, my mother asked my father to stop and buy me some of the outsiders’ food. He laughed for a good while and told her that I was still Inuvialuit: when I got hungry enough, I would eat. My mother and I looked at each other. Neither of us was sure.

  My spirits lifted when we made it to our canvas tent, which was set up on a wooden frame near a small lake a short way past the village. My father’s dogs greeted me with yelps and barks. We had no animals at the school and I had missed them so much. I reached out to pet one of the nine sled dogs, but it nearly took my hand off.

  “Wait until you wear our scent again,” my father said, drawing back the canvas door.

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  I followed him into the darkness, and stood blinking as my eyes adjusted. Then I smiled a slow smile. It was exactly as I remembered it, just as it had been on Banks Island. The cookstove stood near the center, the table close to it, and my mother and father’s bed was against the south wall. I leaned forward, ready to race for the spot under their bed where I had always slept, but stopped myself. It probably belonged to one of my siblings now. I looked to my mother and she nodded with a smile. It was still mine! I dove under the big bed and onto the quilt that covered my small mattress. As I rolled to face the far side, I saw a small stack of my half-sister Rosie’s books, which she must have left behind after her last visit. I was so excited to have something to read, but I was sorry I had missed seeing her. I wanted to tell her how bad I felt for not believing her when she warned me how awful the school was.

  Hudson’s Bay Company: the oldest surviving company in North America, incorporated by a royal charter in 1670. Hunters and trappers traded their pelts there
for goods and supplies.

  So many things had happened already and it was barely past lunch. I really needed to talk to someone like my big sister, who understood what I was going through, but I would have to settle for her books. I just wanted to curl up in my bed with them and drift off to sleep while the warm red glow of my father’s pipe illuminated the dark tent.

  Inuvialuit: the Aboriginal people of the western Arctic.

  My father peeked his head under the bed to see what I thought of the books. I hugged one to my chest. It was such a gift. My father had a kettle in his hand, and as he rose to put it on the stove I crawled out from my sleeping place, still hugging the book. My mother was at the foot of their bed, searching through the large wooden chest that held her things. At last, she pulled out one of her old parkas, a rich burgundy one embroidered with cream flowers. A detailed Delta braid ran around the hem. Lace decorated the shoulders and the wrists, and a stunning burst of wolf fur stood up around the hood. I remembered how beautiful she had looked in it long ago when we had come to a wedding here in Tuk. It was my favorite of her parkas. She looked at it a moment, then set it in my lap.

  Delta braid, made by cutting pieces from long strips of fabric and layering them in a pattern, was used to decorate Mother Hubbard parkas.

  “For me?” I asked, pressing the fur to my face.

  She smiled and nodded, understanding my gesture if not my words.

  My sisters came through the door of the tent with my brother just as I pulled it over my head. I was now as big as my mother, and I felt very grown-up in her parka as I strutted around the tent for all my family to see. Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. I could tell she was envious, but I felt no pity. My mother’s parka could not take away two years of shivering in my thin, ill-fitting uniform and canvas bloomers, nor could it make me forget the shame of being forced by a cruel nun to wear the school’s only pair of bright red stockings. Being teased about how fat my legs looked in them had been the most humiliating experience of my life. But the fur of the parka’s hood against my face helped me to feel like I was no longer that powerless girl. I needed my mother’s parka in a way my sisters could never understand.