Split Tooth

The narrator is in Innuinaktun class, which she hates and in which she does badly. The teacher is an unpleasant man who experienced abuse in residential schools. Her mother does not speak to her in Inuktitut, having attended residential schools that forbade it. The narrator worries that much of her culture has been lost to Christianity and so-called progress.

The narrator has vivid nightmares in which the devil tortures her and other people while she is powerless to stop it. She believes that “people try to hide from themselves” and that this is disrespectful to the spirit (60). She can see past the pretending into people’s true spirits.

An untranslated Inuktitut passage follows. 

The narrator walks home from school but finds a raucous party underway. She continues walking to the sea, where she lies down on the ice and ceases to experience time in a linear fashion. Though she is cold, she sings to the Northern Lights, hoping to “coax [them] out of the sky” (64). As she sings, the Northern Lights come closer, and she feels them calling to her. In the Northern Lights, she sees the faces of her ancestors and children yet-to-be-born and feels immense gratitude. The Northern Lights disappear.