Amini-Holmes Liz - Fatty legs: a true story

FOR MY THREE LITTLE INSPIRATIONSQugyuk, Aklak, and Paniktuaqand their loving father, my husband, Garth. None of this would have been possible without your patience. For Penny Howe, my grade 7/8 teacher: thank you for sharing with a young girl that people as fantastic as you came from the same place as people like me. For Brad Hawranik, my first section commander: I still think of you as one of the finest role models I have ever known. And, for Margaret: you have given us a powerful gift. Thank you for being brave enough to share your story.

Christy

FOR MY LATE HUSBAND, LYLE, who helped me to work through the many fears I carried with me from residential school. Your love gave me courage. And, for our children, their husbands and wives, and our many grandchildren.

Margaret

Olemaun, who was later called Margaret, at home on Banks Island. Here she stands (on the right) with two of her younger sisters, Elizabeth and Mabel.

Contents

M Y NAME IS OLEMAUN POKIAKthats OO-lee-mawnbut some of my classmates used to call me Fatty Legs. They called me that because a wicked nun forced me to wear a pair of red stockings that made my legs look enormous. But I put an end to it. How? Well, I am going to let you in on a secret that I have kept for more than 60 years: the secret of how I made those stockings disappear.

W HEN I WAS A YOUNG GIRL, outsiders came flitting about the North. They plucked us from our homes on the scattered islands of the Arctic Ocean and carried us back to the nests they called schools, in Aklavik.

Three times I had made the five-day journey to Aklavik with my father, across the open ocean, past Tuktoyaktuk, and through the tangled Mackenzie River delta, to buy supplies. I was mesmerized on each trip by the spectacle of the strange dark-cloaked nuns, whose tongues flickered with French-Canadian accents, and the pale-skinned priests who had traveled across a different ocean from a far-off land called Belgium. They held the key to the greatest of the outsiders mysteriesreading.

My older half-sister, Ayouniq, had been plucked before I was born, but we called her Rosie after her return. She would tell me nothing about the school tucked away in the maze of the delta, where she had gone for four years, but when I was seven she did read to me from a collection of beautifully colored books my father had given her for Christmas. The stories were precious treasures to be enjoyed in the well-lit, toasty warmth of our smoke-scented tent, as the darkness of winter was constant, and the temperatures outside were cold enough to freeze bare skin in seconds. The books were written in English, so I understood very little of them. I was always left with many unanswered questions.

Whats a rabbit? I asked Rosie in our language, Inuvialuktun.

Its like a hare, she told me, lifting her eyes from Alices Adventures in Wonderland.

Oh. Well, why did Alice follow it down the hole? To hunt it?

Rosie gave me a funny look. No, Olemaun. She followed it because she was curious.

I tried to imagine being Alice, as the large cookstove crackled behind me. She was brave to go into that long, dark tunnel, all for curiosity.

What was it like?

Rosie looked up from the book again. What was what like?

The outsiders school.

I dont know. You ask too many questions, she said. Her face grew dark in the light of the coal oil lamp. She closed the book and looked away.

Inuvialuktun: the language of the Inuvialuit, who are Aboriginal people of the western Arctic.

It must have been exciting to live with the outsiders.

She shrugged her shoulders and dropped the book on the table.

But they taught you how to read...

Rosie was silent.

Please, I begged, tugging at her leg as she got up from the table and slipped on her Mother Hubbard parka.

They cut our hair because our mothers werent there to braid it for us.

I dont need my mother to braid my hair. I can do it myself.

Theyd cut it anyway. They always cut the little ones hair.

Im not that little.

They dont care. They dont have the patience to wait for you to braid your hair. They want all of your time for chores and for kneeling on your knees to ask forgiveness.

Oh, well. Its only hair.

It isnt just your hair, Olemaun. They take everything, she said, slipping her feet inside her kamik.

Mother Hubbard parka: the traditional parka wornby Inuvialuit women of the western Arctic.

Well, can you at least finish reading me the story?

Rosie gave me an icy look. You want to know about the school so much, you can go there and learn to read for yourself. She turned, pulled apart the flaps of the tent door, and disappeared through the tunnel in the snow that formed the entrance to our home. I ran after her down the dark corridor, but she was already gone into the pitch-black afternoon of the Arctic winter. She knew that our father would not let me go to school. He had told the outsiders No the past four summers they had come for me. Rosie was lucky that her aunt had allowed her to go.

ONE DAY AT THE end of February 1944, when the sun had just begun to return to the sky, my father took me hunting with him. We traveled by dogsled for several hours, until we came to a place where game was plentiful.

Father, I said when we finally stopped, can I go to the school this year?

kamik/kamak: a type of boot worn by the Inuit. Also called mukluks.

No, he said.

But you and Rosie both went, and I will be eight in June when the ice melts.

He raised his hand, silencing me, and motioned for me to return to the dogsled. Atop a distant hill stood a wolf, its silhouette stark in the afternoon twilight. My father had it in the sights of his rifle. A shot cracked through the air, killing my chance to convince him.

When he returned to the dogsled with the wolf carcass, his knit brow and hard eyes told me that he was finished discussing the matter. I cringed under the cold flash of defeat, but I was careful not to talk any further about my desire to go to school. Instead, I held it inside all through the long months that followed.

My father rarely spoke of the school and would never tell me of the wonderful things I could learn there. He was a smart man who loved to read, but he put little value in the outsiders learning compared to the things that our people knew.