The Long Exile

The Long Exile by Melanie Mcgrath Page A

Book: The Long Exile by Melanie Mcgrath Read Free Book Online
Authors: Melanie Mcgrath
First World War, which had ended only shortly before Robert Flaherty had arrived in the settlement with his cameras, they knew nothing.
    For now though, losephie had more important concerns. A tiny, fresh-faced girl called Rynee had entered his life and become the woman he was to marry. The love he felt for Rynee was something new. The Inuktitut word for love means “to care for” or “to look after” and all losephie knew was that he wanted to care for Rynee, that he wanted to look after each delicate little part of her. Where had they met? All these years later Rynee finds it difficult to remember the exact moment, the one precise and telling detail. Perhaps itwas at a drum dance, or on a camp visit or at the trading post in Inukjuak, their mutual attraction revealed in stolen glances and open, toothy smiles. Perhaps there was some slow simmer, a layering of casual meetings over days or weeks or months, culminating in an accretion of feeling, a bubble suddenly bursting at the surface. However it came about, this miniature woman was everything Josephie wanted in a wife, beautiful and healthy, with seaweedy hair and berry lips that spoke to Josephie of quick and happy Arctic summers. It was easy to imagine her frying him bannock bread and sewing him a pair of
kamiks
, the bread soft and as fat as summer bees, the
kamiks
tough and more waterproof than ducks' wings. Before long, family alliances were hinted at, gifts promised. Until they married, the couple would live apart, and see each other when Josephie sledged past Rynee's camp or, in the summer, when he borrowed his stepfather's
kayak
and paddled up the coast.
    Out on the sea ice, one spring day, Josephie Flaherty and Paddy Aqiatusuk found themselves beside the Belchers, those islands whose bleeding cliffs Robert Flaherty had once explored and the largest of which now bears his name on maps, though the Inuit have long had their own name for the place. The hunters had been sledging out for the bearded seal which sometimes basked on the shore-fast ice and, finding none, decided to make for their usual landfall. Though there were fishing nets still littering the beach and other evidence of recent occupation the island seemed on this occasion emptied out, as though a great gust of wind had come down and swept away its heart. Usually someone would come down to greet them, but today no one appeared. The reason emerged later. A man called Charlie Oujerack had been given a Bible in Inuktitut and taught how to read it by the mission at Inukjuak. After shutting himself away to study the book further he had formulated the view that he was Jesus Christ come to save the world, and that he would start with the Belchers. His first apostle was his sister, Minnie, who succeeded in making a few other converts among the tiny population and in silencing everyone else. The fantasy was harmlessenough until Charlie Oujerack landed on the idea that true believers must prove their faith by walking out across the sea ice naked, as a result of which the lives of three adults and six children were lost and the remaining islanders plunged into despair.
    Among the Inuit, the event was seen as the sign of a bad spirit abroad, some malcontented ancestor or river soul out to trip up the unwary. Christianity had never wholly won them over. To the missionary and the RCMP constable at Inukjuak, it was just one further piece of evidence that Inuit were best treated not as the adults they thought they were, but as the children that they had, by this small piece of lunacy and in a million other ways, proved themselves to be.
    For a while, the incident became the chief topic of conversation enlivening the
qalunaat's
otherwise humdrum weekly bridge and poker parties. In Robert Flaherty's time the sole white occupant of Inukjuak had been the Révillon Fréres trader but by the mid-1940s, and partly as a result of the war, more and more
qalunaathzd
begun to arrive. In 1945, the
qalunaat
population consisted of

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