Lela Kiana Oman's The Epic of Qayaq: The Longest Story Ever Told by My People PDF

By Lela Kiana Oman

It is a best presentation of an historic northern tale cycle, dropped at lifestyles by way of Lela Kiana Oman, who has been retelling and writing the legends of the Inupiat of the Kobuk Valley, Alaska, approximately all her grownup existence. within the mid-1940s, she heard those stories from storytellers passing during the mining city of Candle, and translated them from Inupiaq into English. Now, after fifty years, they remove darkness from one of many world's such a lot vivid mythologies. The hero is Qayaq, and the cycle lines his wanderings by way of kayak and walking alongside 4 rivers - the Selawik, the Kobuk, the Noatak and the Yukon - up alongside the Arctic Ocean to Barrow, over to Herschel Island in Canada, and south to a Tlingit Indian village. alongside the way in which he battles with jealous fathers-in-law and different strong adversaries; discovers cultural implements (the copper-headed spear and the birchbark canoe); transforms himself into animals, birds and fish, and meets animals who seem to be human.

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Extra resources for The Epic of Qayaq: The Longest Story Ever Told by My People

Sample text

Now is the time. You can be strong, fast and proud. Here is the time you can do something. liyayayayjiyayayay Tulugaq paddled away in his kayak. The surface of the water was glassy and golden as the sun shone down with not a slightest bit of shade after many days of rain. Tulugaq could hear his two wives. He knew that they were putting all they had behind him. He must do his very best. He did not have to wait very long. He saw it in the water, a round object coming up fast. He measured its speed in his mind and, heading it off, he gave a few big strokes with his paddle and closing his eyes he sent his spear with all the power he had.

If you run, that is two days travelling. I am sure you will not have any trouble killing the one-footed bird," said Umialik convincingly. The next morning when Qayaq went out of the house it was still dark. Toward the east he noticed the dawn giving its first yawn, the beginning of a new day. Qayaq walked and walked. The early morning was frosty, the sky very blue and he could hear the crunchy sound his feet made in the dry snow. Qayaq took a taste of the akutuq his mother made, and he felt on his right side the caressing of the soft east wind.

He wondered how they were getting along. How very easy it would be for him to turn around and be on the run straight for home. He longed to see his parents and he vowed to himself that some day... some day he was going home to see them. But now he had something else to do. All that day he ran, stopping just long enough to rest and to eat. When the night came he was still on the run over many hills, stretches of tundra and high mountains. The afternoon of the second day, he saw from the top of a mountain a big flat space ahead of him.

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