Storytelling preview: Inuit author passes down classic tales from the Arctic

Michael Kusugak, who is finishing his 10th book, tells Inuit stories that have been passed down for generations.


Michael Kusugak

What: Ottawa International Storytelling Festival

When & where: Sunday Nov. 18 at 7 p.m., Saint Brigid’s Centre, 302 Saint Patrick St.

Tickets: $25 at ottawastorytellers.ca/festival, also available at the Ottawa Festivals office, 47 William St.

The festival: There are other festival performances and workshops this weekend. For a schedule see the website.

When Michael Kusugak was a young boy in Repulse Bay he lived what could be considered the classic Inuit life.

He travelled by dog sled. He hunted and he fished. And at night he would retire for bed in an igloo in winter and a tent in summer.

The nights can be long (or very short) north of 60, and to fill the time his grandmother would tell him tales of the Arctic. Those stories filled his mind and they would eventually become his own life story.

But first he tried other careers. He was a pilot, a potter, a photographer and even a public servant. But still something was missing, until one day he realized the enjoyment he got in telling his own four sons the stories his grandmother would tell him. There were no stories available, he realized, that had any relevance to the world his sons lived in the Arctic.

Kusugak wrote down one of those stories, with children’s book author Robert Munsch. It was about creatures called the qallupilluit who lived under the sea ice and would lure unsuspecting people to their deaths. That book was published in 1988. He was invited to read his book in public appearances and realized that he needed to engage his audience, so “I just decided to tell stories.” He credits his grandmother as an important mentor and also a male relative that he calls Uncle Kreelak. He named his oldest son after this uncle, hoping he would follow in the story telling tradition. Hasn’t happened, but he says Kreelak, his son, reads his stories to Michael’s grandchildren.

Today, at age 64, Kusugak is finishing up book No. 10, an alphabet book called T is for Territories about Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. It should be out next spring and is the last in a series on the regions of the country. He lives in Qualicum Beach, B.C. “simply because it’s too expensive to fly in and out of Rankin Inlet.”

That matters because Kusugak spends a lot of his time travelling to schools across the North and the rest of Canada, where he tells his stories to young people and introduces them to the culture of the Inuit. He will be doing that next week in Ottawa after his appearance at the Ottawa International Storytelling Festival on the weekend.

There is a broader cultural significance to the stories Kusugak tells.

“What is really really important is that these stories have been passed down generation to generation for hundreds, even thousands of years. These stories that I tell are told by Inuit all across the North, Siberia, Alaska, the Canadian North and Greenland.”

He relates these to Bible stories, which are “real stories transformed into this religious document.”

There is an Inuit story which parallels the story of Noah. This is the story of Keeliuq, who was forced to travel across an ocean alone, with the help of a little white bird, when his friends were all killed by a vengeful person.

The North is the current flavour of the month in Canada. Michael says he doesn’t play politics, “I have brothers who do that.” His brother Josey, for example, who died two years ago, was the respected president of the Inuit Tapirisat.

Despite his reluctance, he does speak his mind. He hopes that the exploitation of the North will reveal to the world the strength of Inuit culture and allow it to stand on its own. Too often southerners have tried to take away the culture.

“I even had a publisher who asked me if I couldn’t make the book a little more western. I said ‘I’m not western. If you want a western writer, hire a western writer’.”

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