A snow-blind young man, cruelly neglected by his mother, survives thanks to his sister’s secret help. Tricked into believing he missed killing a bear, he discovers his mother’s deceit and plots revenge. When his sight returns, he hunts a whale and ties the line to his mother, dragging her into the sea. Her cries echo among the whales, believed to linger eternally.
Source:
The Labrador Eskimo
by E.W. Hawkes
[Canada, Department of Mines]
Geological Survey, Memoir 91
Anthropological Series no. 14
Ottawa, 1916
► Themes of the story
Family Dynamics: The narrative delves into complex familial relationships, highlighting the mother’s cruelty towards her son and the sister’s secretive support, showcasing both betrayal and loyalty within a family unit.
Revenge and Justice: The son’s calculated retribution against his mother for her deceit and mistreatment underscores the pursuit of justice and the consequences of betrayal.
Supernatural Beings: The transformation of the mother into a being whose cries are eternally echoed among the whales introduces an element of the supernatural, blending human actions with mystical outcomes.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about Inuit peoples
There was once a young man who lived with his mother and sister. He was snow-blind, and for some reason his mother wished to get rid of him. She tried to starve him. But his sister on the sly, used to bring him bits of meat. He could not hunt because he was snow-blind. But one day a bear came to the snow-house, and his mother guided his bow so that he could shoot the bear through the window. He shot the bear, and killed him. But his mother did not want him to know that he had killed the bear, so she told him that he had missed it, and that his arrow had stuck into the hard ice on the side of the snow-house. So she was living on the meat of the bear, she and her daughter, while her son was starving.
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But his sister managed to feed him something on the sly. At first she would not tell him where the meat came from, but he kept questioning her, and at last she told him that he had killed the bear. Then he knew that his mother was trying to starve him, and he planned to be revenged on her. So in the spring, after the ice had broken up, when he had got his sight back, he used to hunt for white whales along the shore.
One day he and his mother and sister were all standing on the beach, and he was waiting with his harpoon to strike a whale.
He struck one with his whale harpoon, which had a long line attached. He tied the end around his mother’s waist; as the whale swam out to sea, it dragged her down the beach and into the water. As she went, she kept crying, innialuma, “My son did it.” When the whale went down, she would go down too, and when it came up, she would come up too, crying, innialuma, “My son did it,” over and over again. Finally she disappeared.
She still lives with the white whales, and in the spring, when they are going along the shore, the people can hear her crying, luma, luma, innialuma, and say that she is still alive among them.
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