Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past by Tantoo Cardinal

There, in the water, the great loon-thing rocked, and Kannujaq knew that the Shining One could not man it by himself.
    The Tunit had finished the giants, and many were standing along the beach now, watching the helpless leader of the raiders drift ever further outward. Kannujaq opened his mouth to tell the Tunit to fetch bows, but one glance told him that they were already sickened with murder.
    As was he.
    So they all watched, stared as a current tugged at the vessel, lazily turning it away from the coast. There stood the Shining One, no longershining, but staring back at Kannujaq. It was a strange thing that there was no hatred in those ice-blue eyes, but only despair, and resignation.
    In that moment, Kannujaq recognized the colour of those eyes and knew. The Shining One had never come here for plunder. Siaq had kept a secret from all.
    The sea raiders had always had enough weapons and tools to spare. The objects Angula had stolen meant nothing to them. As with Kannujaq, what most mattered was kin. Kannujaq was looking at a fellow stranger in these lands, a newcomer, one who has known that dread of the unknown against him. Perhaps his people were not faring well here.
    This was a man with nothing left, whose greatest fear—as with all men—was that he would fade away, leaving no trace of his passing. And it was such desperation that had driven his attempts to retrieve his only lasting legacy.
    His son.
    It was telling that there was no real celebrating over the defeat of the raiders. The Tunit simply wanted to put it all behind them, returning to their shy Tunit ways.
    Kannujaq never spoke about what he knew of Siaq, that she had once had a husband from beyond the sea. Nor did he ever speak of what he knew of Siku, whose
angakoq
eyes had come from his father.
    Kannujaq offered to bring Siaq and Siku away with him. Yet, just as he knew he could never live like a Tunik, so Siaq said that she was no longer comfortable among her own.
    Siku, however, took up Kannujaq’s offer eagerly. The blue-eyed
angakoq
, it seemed, had never felt comfortable among the Tunit. And he seemed to like the idea of sledding.
    So it was that, in the early evening, when the scant remaining snow was cooling, Kannujaq and Siku made ready to depart. And as Siku watched Kannujaq tighten the lashings on his sled, the boy asked him, somewhat haltingly, “What … am I to say my mother is, if not a Tunik? What are we?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Kannujaq replied. But he thought about a word his grandfather had used. “Perhaps we are
Inuit.”
    Siku’s look was blank. He had grown up with the Tunit dialect, and the word was a foreign one.
    â€œIt means something like ‘those living here now,’” Kannujaq said with a grin.
    But Kannujaq was troubled by his last memory of the Shining One, his boat swept away on odd currents. Was this the destiny of all strangers in this land? Was it the destiny of his kind?
    Perhaps the Tunit would eventually speak of his people only in legend.
    Kannujaq had no way of knowing that, while the Viking colony in Greenland would fade from existence, his own descendants would travel freely over the next three centuries, settling not only in Greenland but over all the old Tunit lands. The world would grow much colder, as in the time of his ancestors, and his kind would be the only survivors here. And they would speak of Tunit only in their own legends.
    But Kannujaq’s mind never strayed far from the present. His musings were eclipsed by annoyance that Siku had disposed of the raider artifacts. The
angakoq
had felt they were evil and was convinced that the sea should have them.
    Kannujaq wondered how long they could travel before Siku noticed everything lashed to the sled. The boy had forgotten about Angula’s knife, which Kannujaq had snuck back and retrieved. It would be ideal for
iglu
building in the winter.
    Like his people, Kannujaq remained, above all else,