#Inuit literature

[gennsoup]

In this life, you will not know what the moon speaks Telling us of rain or snow and when to fish You are blind to the curled leaf, don't know what it seeks

Norma Dunning, The Young Fools

[uwmspeccoll]

The author, Angela Hovak Johnston.

Johnston and Marjorie Tungwenuk Tahbone, traditional tattoo artist.

Catherine Niptanatiak: "I designed my own, something that represents me and who I am, something that I would be proud to wear and show off, and something that would make me feel confident and beautiful. . . . I have daughters and I would like to teach them what I know. I would like for them to want to practice our traditions and keep our culture alive."

Cecile Nelvana Lyall: "On my hand tattoos, from the top down, the triangles represent the mountains. . . . The Ys are the tools used in seal hunting. . . . The dots are my ancestors. . . . I am so excited to be able to truly call myself and Inuk woman."

Colleen Nivingalok: "The tattoos on my face represent my family and me. The lines on my chin are my four children -- my two older boys on the outside protecting my daughters. The lines on my cheeks represent the two boys and the two girls on either side. The one on my forehead represents their father and me. Together, we live for our children."

Doreen Ayalikyoak Evyagotailak: "I have thought about getting traditional tattoos since I was a teenager. . . . When I asked the elders if I could have my own meaning for my tattoos, they said it wouldn't matter. My tattoos symbolize my kids."

Mary Angele Takletok: "I always wanted traditional tattoos like the women in the old days. I wanted them on my wrists and my fingers so I could show I'm Inuk."

Melissa MacDonald Hinanik: "As a part of celebrating my heritage and revitalizing important traditional customs that form my identity, I believe I have earned my tattoos. I am a beautiful, strong young woman. I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, a friend, and an active community member. I reclaim the traditional customs as mine, I re-own them as a part of who I am."

Star Westwood: "We still have some of our culture, but some things are slowly dying. Having tattoos helps us keep our culture alive. . . . . My tattoos represent my dad and my dad's dad. The ones closest to my wrists represent my sisters."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

National Tattoo Day

July 17 is National Tattoo Day. To celebrate, we present some images from Reawakening Our Ancestors' Lines: Revitalizing Inuit Traditional Tattooing, compiled by Angela Hovak Johnston, co-founder with Marjorie Tahbone of the Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project, with photographs by Inuit photographer Cora DeVos, and published in Iqaluit, Nunavut by Inhabit Media Inc. in 2017.

For thousands of years, Inuit have practiced the traditional art of tattooing. Created the ancient way, with bone needles and caribou sinew soaked in seal oil, sod, or soot, these tattoos were an important tradition for many Inuit women, symbols etched on their skin that connected them to their families and communities. But with the rise of missionaries and residential schools in the North, the tradition of tattooing was almost lost. In 2005, when Angela Hovak Johnston heard that the last Inuk woman tattooed in the old way had died, she set out to tattoo herself in tribute to this ancient custom and learn how to tattoo others. What was at first a personal quest became a project to bring the art of traditional tattooing back to Inuit women across Nunavut.

Collected in this book are photos and stories from more than two dozen women who participated in Johnston's project. Together, these women have united to bring to life an ancient tradition, reawakening their ancestors' lines and sharing this knowledge with future generations. Hovak Johnston writes: "Never again will these Inuit traditions be close to extinction, or only a part of history you read about in books. This is my mission."

Reawakening Our Ancestors' Lines forms part of our Indigenous America Literature Collection.

Angela Hovak Johnston (right) with her cousin Janelle Angulalik and her aunt Millie Navalik Angulalik.

View other posts from our Indigenous America Literature Collection.

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

[tomleask]

"Ich bin ein einsamer Wolf, doch manchmal jagt man im Rudel erfolgreicher!" (Zitat: Wolf-U. Cropp). Dazu der Bestseller "ALASKA-FIEBER"

[philosophenstreik]

qimmik

roman von michel jean

erschienen 2024

im wieser verlag

isbn: 978-3-99029-652-3

(von tobias bruns)

qimmik erzählt parallel zwei geschichten aus nunavik, dem land der inuit - eine spielt sich in den sechziger jahren ab, die andere in der gegenwart. alle protagonisten des romans gehören dem volk der inuit an. in den sechziger jahren reist der jäger ulaajuk in ein kleines dorf im süden québecs, um felle zu verkaufen. er fällt mit seinem aussehen und seinem verhalten direkt der jungen saullu ins auge. sie verlieben sich und ziehen gemeinsam mit ihren hunden in den hohen norden, wo sie jahrelang trotz der widrigen klimaverhältnisse in der region sehr glücklich von der jagd und im einklang mit der natur leben. als saullu schwanger ist, will sie in ihr dorf zurückkehren, damit das kind im kreise der familie zur welt kommt - doch das dorf in das sie zurückkehrt, hat nichts mehr mit dem zu tun, was sie vor ein paar jahren verlassen hat: hässliche neue häuser, neue straßen und die abwesenheit von hunden prägen das bild. wie sie erfährt haben beamte der sécurité du québec alle für ihre kultur so wichtigen tiere erschossen. das drama nimmt mit der ankunft im dorf erst so richtig seinen lauf... die parallele geschichte handelt von der erfolgreichen jungen anwältin ève, die es schafft jedem den freispruch einzubringen sie ist eine inuk, die von weissen adoptiert wurde und nicht weiss, wer ihre wahren eltern sind. von ihrer kanzlei wird sie in den norden geschickt, um den vermeintlichen mörder mehrerer polizisten in ruhestand zu verteidigen. der mann möchte partout nicht reden und für die verhandlungen sieht es nicht gut aus. mit hilfe einer assistentin versucht sie selbst zu ermitteln und kommt den gründen des verbrechens langsam auf die spur - eine spur, die sie nicht erwartet hätte.

kurz gesagt: das buch ist genial! eine einzige lesefreude, wenn auch das ende ein wenig abrupt zu kommen scheint. die szenen in der rauen natur, der kalte im norden québecs, im leben des jungen pärchens dort, sind so lebendig beschrieben, dass man die kälte auf ihren jagden durch schnee und eis buchstäblich spüren kann (wunderbar erfrischend in diesen heissen sommertagen). das symbiotische leben, dass die inuit mit ihren tieren und der natur führen - oder geführt haben, ehe der kanadische staat so vieles zerstört hat - fasziniert und zeigt, wie weit sich der mensch im allgemeinen vom verständnis der natur abgewendet hat... michel jean verbindet in seinem roman mehrere katastrophen, die über die inuit im 20. jahrhundert hereingebrochen sind, wobei die zweite die für den roman namengebende ist - zum einen die massenweise staatliche entführung von inuit-kindern, die in heime kamen, um an weisse kanadier gegeben zu werden und zum anderen die vernichtung der für die inuit so wichtigen schlittenhunde, deren rasse dadurch sogar lange als ausgestorben galt - alles nur um eine funktionierende zivilisation zu zerstören, um ihr eine vermeintlich bessere zivilisation (die der "eroberer") ungefragt überzustülpen. wunderbar geschrieben verbindet michel jean historische ereignisse und tatsachen mit mitreißender fiktion und schafft es mit zwei strängen gestern und heute zu verbinden.

[glasratz]

A joyride to King William's Island

I started reading reading Heinrich Klutschak's "Als Eskimo unter den Eskimos. Eine Schilderung der Erlebnisse der Schwatka’schen Franklin-Aufsuchungs-Expedition in den Jahren 1878–1880" (As an eskimo among eskimo. An account on the experiences of Schwatka's Franklin search expedition in the years 1878-1880).

To my suprise, it's a rather light-hearted book up to now. The author shares a lot of anecdotes. For example there's the story about the adventurers trying to build their own igloo - resulting in them having to dress in frozen clothes in the morning while the walls are crumbling around them. From that point on they leave that task to the Inuit families they are traveling with.

Describing how the Inuit do things, how their clothes work, how igloos are build and how the dog sleds are maintained is Klutschak's main topic. You can really feel the fascination with this culture.

Well, I'll give a more detailed summary when I'm finished with it.

[pparacxosm]

stream of green

(stanfordera!tashi duncan x fem!nursingstudent!reader; tw injury; me taking my headcanon and furtive desire to be an english major and making it everyone’s problem; tw art donaldson typical guard dog behaviour; tw iced matcha dependency; anyway you get it; some of you have seen this before; everything is about wanting to kiss tashi duncan, except for wanting to kiss tashi duncan, which is about war and peace by leo tolstoy)

Tashi's Literature course is doing Tolstoy.

In the book, Natasha frolics in fields in a dandelion dress. She sings on her balcony at Otradnoe.

Natasha simply sits in an opera box, and she inspires white hot desire like dribbling crimson from a fresh wound. Raw and unequivocal.

Everyone could hate her. Hate this beautiful thing wrapped up in silk in lace and purity; Natasha has all the opportunity in the world. And there is something to ruining a beautiful thing.

Smouldering rose petals. Butchered sonatas.

Destroy it so nobody can enjoy it.

But they can't. They can't, right?

Because Natasha's vivacity persists like a man parched and desertborne. And Natasha's tremendous joy exists independent of any external condition. And Natasha is a courageous young woman who is willing to pay the price for giving her heart. And it pays off. Her kindness and tenacity and charm and dreams of flying to the moon will pay off. It all pays off. It has to.

And—okay—Tashi hasn't finished the book. She's bad at finishing books. Always has this lingering sense of dread that something's bound to give. So she'd like to think that Natasha's passion will pay off, in the end.

But her knee gives in the second set.

With a visceral pop that makes her gaze fizzle like static TV.

The poky infirmary is tucked away in a hushed, tepid corner of the school. Tashi stares at the smudged carcass of a smacked bug, a fingersized smear against a gleaming white brick on the wall across from where she sits and rots. She thinks of things once living and now dead, and her eyes, pinkrimmed and tender, begin to water again.

Art hangs his head beside her, wincing when she whimpers as her leg twitches. Tashi is glad to know that he feels so bad over what's happened.

Natasha is beautiful, young, ripe for the taking. She's engaged, sure, but not taken yet. Anatole doesn't let Natasha's commitment to Andrei get in the way of his wanting. Art chases Patrick off like a stray hopefully pawing at the door. Tashi is glad for that, too, as much as she can be. She gets the sense she won't be too glad at anything for a long while.

Your sneakers squeal against the linoleum floors as you walk in, clipboard held comically close to your face. You've only just gotten new glasses frames, but they pinch your nose bridge like a bitch, and you keep taking them off and forgetting where you've set them down.

“Okay...” you trail off, lowering the page, having gleaned fuck all from Nurse Roche's already hieroglyphic handwriting. “Uh, who's the patient here?”

One of them strikes you as more of a Natasha Zola Duncan (Deacon? You squint at Nurse Roche's scrawls. No, Duncan, definitely Duncan) than the other, but you're taught not to make assumptions, in your field.

Tashi is halfprone on the bed, stiff as sediment. Her knee is cloistered in thick layers of bandages, propped up upon a folded towel. Her face is pale with shock and steelsolid.

She parts her dry lips, a quiet ferocity in her tearweary gaze, but what comes out is a thin whistle.

“Maybe the one whose leg is wrapped up in enough gauze to clothe an inuit village.”

It's pretty stark imagery. It's sort of funny, but you think better than to laugh. She sounds harsh. She sounds rattled.

You have this sudden flash—a fragment of a memory of a large, sprawling poster on the cafeteria wall, the aptly emboldened text of DUNCANATOR!!! printed beneath a picture of a girl, clear and hot as freshblown glass, crowing like a gladiator with a racket in her hand.

You can't be certain it's even her. You're not good with faces, nor have you ever cared about tennis.

This girl, pensive and seething and lachrymose, her blonde acolyte seemingly too scared to dote on her properly, even as he clings to their proximity, bears little resemblance to the indomitable Duncanator who is said to glissade across campus with all the grace of Misty Copeland and the colonydecimating rage of Joan of Arc.

You only smile.

“Exactly. So why the friend?” you say as kindly as possible, gesturing vaguely toward him with your pen.

There's a pretty strict rule about nonfamilial tagalongs. One too many drunken partygoers convinced they're practically kissing the gates of death, ushered in by two dozen members of what they claim is their inner circle. The room is only so big.

“He's emotional support,” she says firmly.

You raise an eyebrow.

You hate to be anal. But you'd rather be a bit of a bitch to a peer who won't remember you than shoulder another warning from Roche and risk losing this shadowing gig.

“Boyfriends really aren't allowed in here,” you try again.

“What are you going to do, kick her out of the ER?”

It's the boy now. He's glaring at you with all the intensity of a water jet. You glance off to the side, halfawkward, halfjaded. You've seen your share of the white knight playlet.

Tashi pays him little mind. “I want the nurse.”

“Unfortunately, she's quite busy today,” you smile, “So it's me, or another hour wait.”

Her eyes narrow to serrated slits of amber. “Fine.”

You round the bed to stand to the right of her. The boy sits in direct obstruction. You gesture to a seat across the room with your pen.

“Could he sit over there? Might be a bit easier to see your...” you trail off, squinting at the clipboard again, “Right leg.”

She nods at him sharply, and you're a little tickled by his silent obedience, standing from his place at her side and jogging around the bed to sit at her... other side.

“Not quite where I pointed,” you note.

“Can you just order an X-ray or something?” Tashi's voice is frayed at its edges and clinging to its hardness. She feels like crying again, like letting loose those tears stuck at the corners of her eyes. But she doesn't. If she started now, she'd never finish. “I'm in pain and I have work to do.”

“Sounds important,” you say, reaching for the little first aid box latched to the wall beside her and unsheathing a disinfectant wipe.

She scans your profile, and you cannot tell if she wants you to notice her scrutiny. “Because it is.”

She doesn't seem to believe herself.

“If I had talent, I don't think l'd bother with coursework,” you muse aloud.

She seems, at once, pleased and disgusted by this sentiment.

“Well, people need skills beyond just hitting a ball with a racket.”

Beside her, the boy shifts at this choice of words. He runs a pale, feverish hand over and through his wheat field hair. He blows a thick and heavy breath out of lips bitten raw.

“Maybe,” you shrug at length, snapping on a pair of gloves. “Now, let's see what we're working with...”

Tashi, with a barely concealed wince, shifts her leg closer toward you, and you sweep gently over her skin with your hands. Her skin is very warm.

“Are you a nurse? Or, like, an intern?” she asks.

You smile, crouching down to be eye level with her knee. “Neither. Student.”

“So you're aspiring,” her boy supplies uselessly. You can't be sure if he's inquiring or stating. You hum an acknowledgment in any case, shrugging. To aspire seems such a daunting word.

Tashi levels you with a look laden with... something.

Then she hisses in pain when your thumb prods a little too hard through the bandaging.

“That's the most painful area,” you say, and it's more of a statement than a question.

“Obviously!” she groans, and the boy beside her fixes you with a territorial glower.

You think to try telling him to kick rocks again, but you only sigh, pursing your lips to the side pensively.

“On a scale from one to ten, ten being the worst, how bad is the pain?” You're still holding her leg, but you're no longer pressing.

“One hundred,” she replies.

“Is she always like this?” you smile, and cast her golden consort a wry glance.

He seems to have some choice words for you.

“Art, go,” she says.

Was it something I said? you want to say. But he's gone—hesitant, but dutiful nonetheless—before you can land. Probably for the best. Tough crowd, the two make.

“Just get me a brace and call it a day, please,” she huffs.

“I don't have that kind of authority,” you muse, which isn't totally true, but you need to follow the checklist of wound assessment protocol before you make any sort of call. Even though she will probably be needing a brace. “Can I ask you to rotate your leg for me, like this?”

She watches you straighten, and gather a bit of the fabric of your skirt, drawing the hem upwards and twisting your leg in demonstration. She shakes her head promptly and firmly.

“We need to be able to determine what we think is wrong, to specify what the techs are X-raying. If you could move your leg, l'll have a better idea,” you say, cringing sympathetically. And you mean it, the sympathy, but she's sort of not buying it.

“It's going to hurt. I don't want to do it,” she says.

“Are you crying because the pain is that severe?” you frown. “Or do you just want me to feel bad for you and stop asking to move your leg?”

“I'm not crying,” she grunts, wiping the tears on her cheeks. They quickly replace themselves. Like this perennial stream. Like she has just emerged from water, over and over.

“Right...” You give her a look. “So that's, what, spontaneous moisture on your face?”

You write something on the clipboard, and she makes an obvious effort to see what it is.

“You shouldn't be a nurse. You're too annoying.”

You don't know, yet, if you're gonna let that hurt your feelings.

She hadn't meant it meanly, just honestly. She could be nice—she is nice—but you're, decidedly, not making her bad day much better.

You smile, sort of laughing. “Move your leg. Please? I can give you something if it's that serious, the pain you're in.”

“Of course the pain is serious! Why the hell else do people come here?” she snaps. She's snapping now. Gnashing teeth like a cornered dog. But, really, you think she reminds you more of a wounded bird.

Tashi feels something queasy in her stomach, the prelude to dryheaving. She feels a new set of tears well in her eyes. She feels betrayed by her body. And that stings. Of all the things that have happened to her, of all the bruises, scrapes, of all the disappointments, that probably stings the most.

“You'd be surprised,” you smile. “Let me go find a real nurse.”

Natashas are meant to repent. Or, at the very least, suffer a tragic, agonising loss of self. The world is their oyster, but they can never see any of it through. All they can do is accept their miserable lot in life. It's pure prose.

“Alright, here we are,” you walk back in with a backpack on your shoulder. You should be knocking off in a few minutes time.

You're holding a little paper cup with two pills inside.

“What is it?” Tashi holds it under her nose.

“They're pills, they don't smell,” you say. “And they're an extra strength ibuprofen. Might make you a bit woozy.”

“Sounds like a real trip,” she mutters. She swallows the pills on their own, and takes a courtesy sip of the water you offer after.

“Roche is gonna come soon to undress and clean your knee,” you say, slumping your bag on the edge of her bed, careful not to disturb her throbbing leg. “So I'm gonna try and move it now. Can you bear it?”

“Have I not been bearing it?” Her teeth are gritted like padlocked prison bars.

In the dim room, one small window casts a narrow shaft of light across her face. The whirring AC renders every breath of air glaciercool and clinical. But Tashi's skin seems clammy with fever, her face beaded like a tapestry with the sickly sweat of pain and shock. You don't quite like the look of her. Especially as your fingers ghost her wound.

“You take ELIT?” she asks, her voice thick with saliva and strained like tensed elastic. You think she's hoping to distract you as your fingers approach the painful spot again. You hope she's distracting herself, even if it's inadvertent and spiteful. “1048?”

“Uh,” you pause, holding her leg. You're a bit unnerved at the pointedness there. You can count on your two hands how many times you've attended your English Literature lectures this semester. “Yeah.”

You clear your throat.

“You're flunking,” she grits, eyes closed, and she's not really asking. You don't totally appreciate her tone, but you don't suppose you can hold it against her in her state.

“Uhm... no, actually,” you say.

“You're just, like, antisocial?” And that does sound like a question, at least. Or maybe an assessment.

“Maybe,” you say, at length. Then, “Yeah.”

She clicks her teeth. “Gotta come to the lectures,” she says, and you don't make the face you want to make out loud. “You don't get a pity degree for being antisocial.”

“I'll keep that in mind.”

“You read the book?”

She doesn't say it in any sort of way, and you try not to take it in any sort of way, but you are stricken with the sudden biting suspicion of her opinion on you. Does she think you aloof, or uncaring? Maybe you're a little uncommitted. You're no star athlete, that's for sure. Tashi's knee throbs like a beating heart in your hands.

“Um. I mean, I read it in high school,” you say. You cough.

Her eyes shoot open, but they are narrowed and pained and maybe growing fatigued.

“Did you just cough on me?” Tashi pulls back. “You're a nurse, you should know better.”

“Sorry, sorry,” you mutter, “Aspiring.”

“Oh, sure.”

A pause.

“You should read the book,” she says.

“Yeah,” you nod, reaching for your bag and slinging it back over your arm. You know better than not to wear it on both shoulders. Your first year portfolio for your Health Systems Sciences course was on scoliosis awareness. But still.

She is either subsumed by a sudden ache, or she is displeased with your dismissal of her advice, because she sort of grimaces. And are you being dismissive? Maybe. But she's talented and beautiful and probably clever. And you're not a nurse yet. So you think you get to be a bit shitty.

“I have to leave you,” you say. “Think of me while you get better.”

Tashi's eyes linger bitterly on you, like she's trying to calculate whether she'd feel better if you dropped dead before you made it out the door.

She settles that, in fact, she would not.

When her shoe's sole gave way like it was on ice, Tashi had been struck. Not by the pain—there hadn't been pain right away, though; in that moment, that wretched, fleeting moment, she had felt a strange sensation of nothing at all—but by the noise. A horrifying crack like a wet towel smacking a wall in a fetid locker room. Echoed and nauseating.

And she thought, in that moment, she heard Patrick's voice in her ear, whispering sort of feverishly, okay, I'm sorry, you psycho!

It had sounded like something worth clinging to.

But what she hears now doesn't sound like Patrick at all.

“Just breathe, young lady.”

She wishes you'd have told her, before you left, how Nurse Roche is a heavyhanded, unsympathetic, cigarettestenched shrew.

Tashi thinks she's fighting off the medicine. She can almost imagine her fists swinging wildly, even has they lay stiff beside her, gripping the sides of the bed with the absent ferocity of a corpse.

It's almost like she wants to punish herself. Scratch that, of course she wants to punish herself. She's a Natasha, after all.

Nurse Roche unwinds the wrappings around her knee.

They cling to her stubbornly with a putrid crust of brownred. She's been bleeding, and the thought makes her a little uneasy. Nurse Roche has to tear the cotton from her skin.

A fresh trail of tears cut a swath through Tashi's face.

She cries like a waterfall.

Nurse Roche is binning the gauze when Tashi sees it.

The swelling, a violent red and angry purple like spilt wine. The bruising, a deep blue and the blackest black. The joint itself, deformed and swollen. Swollen as it is, a few parts of the structure of her knee are still visible. Should she take a closer look, she wonders, through the miserable morass of her drugaddled brain.

Nurse Roche says she's seen a few swollen knees in her time. But nothing quite this bad.

Even in her suffering, Tashi Duncan is remarkable. She'd laugh if she had the strength.

“Fuck...” is all she manages, before her head falls back on the pillow and she closes her eyes.

When she opens them again, it's late afternoon and the room is empty. Vivid orange light pours in through the window and washes the walls in panels of warmth and sunheat. Tashi can hear birdsong. She thought she'd be happy to see the sun kissing the tops of the university buildings through yellowgreen leaves, but she's just okay about it. Coming back from what she was sure, for a moment, was the brink of death hasn't changed her outlook that much, it seems.

Tashi lifts a heavy hand to her bruised knee. They've rewrapped it now, tight and neat. Still, the bruises pulse angrily, making themselves known to her. She scratches a little under the top seam of the gauze, even though she knows she shouldn't.

“You shouldn't do that.”

Someone is standing in the doorway. Coming in, to be precise, and holding a cup of iced coffee? No, matcha. Tashi feels her dry mouth go slightly damp. It's you. You, with your backpack on both shoulders now. A sweater you weren't wearing before. You're smiling. Tashi feels so relieved she nearly falls back asleep.

“Hey, sleeping beauty. Your parents are here. They're gonna take you to the hospital to get your X-ray,” you inform her, coming close to the bed.

You rest your fingertips on her forehead briefly. Tashi turns her head to avoid your touch, but not in any earnest way, and your fingers move to her jaw, then under her jaw. It’s almost clinical, but, if it were, you’d be using the backs of your knuckles. This feels sort of tender, Tashi thinks.

“Your fever's down, at least,” you say, sitting down in the vacant chair beside her. “Roche's glad you got some sleep. She said you were basically speaking in tongues while she redressed you.”

Tashi wets her lips. She feels feverish anyway. She tries to speak. “Where'd you go?”

“Good question,” you reply, and she's sure you're being friendly, but she still bristles a bit in her fogginess.

She's so muzzy and paranoid, when you reach into your bag, she thinks she wouldn't even mind if you unsheathed a pistol and put her out of her misery. But you don't. You take out a dense paperback novel that has seen better days. You hold it in her field of vision like that's supposed to mean anything to her.

“Bought it just now, at the secondhand library,” you say. And then, feigning longsuffering, planting your elbow on the hard, thin mattress, just beside her head and resting your cheek in your palm, looming over her, “I thought you'd be pleased.”

Her eyes flutter closed, but she turns her face toward you, a sheet of copper sunlight catching her eyelash and gilding it. She is, actually, so beautiful. You were able to give her poster a proper look today, when you left, and you think it doesn't even do her justice. Even as she lays here, lifeless and forlorn. Her skin is absolutely smooth. Like tepid, gleaming, milky tea. Her lips look like fruit flesh in early summer. When she notices you admiring her, she makes this pout, like a reproachful duck.

Her eyes, three-quarters-lidded, are watching you, through her lashes, with the intensity of a wildcat. She is not in the mood to be admired, they say. But they're pretty all the same.

“And I ran into your boyfriend,” you smile, your finger idly tracing the clothed bend of her knee.

Tashi looks like she wants to kick your head off. But she remains as still as midnight in a prairie, a light clench of her jaw the only indication that she's heard you at all.

“Patrick?” she whispers after some time.

You make a face. “No,” you say, dragging out the syllable. You don't know what you're supposed to do about that. Well, you guess you don't need to do anything. It's not like you're her boyfriend. Instead, patting her knee and eliciting a tiny, shuddering whimper, you say, “He told me you don't drink coffee, only matcha. He asked if he can come see you.”

Tashi resents being asked after by fucking Art, of all people. But her curiosity takes precedence. “What did you tell him?”

You look down, embarrassed. “I said he can't come see you...”

“You...” she starts, but cannot repeat the whole sentence, as if the words are part of a madeup language.

“You didn't seem any more or less emotionally supported when he fucked off, is the thing. And Roche says it was like an exorcism, getting this stuff on you.” Your fingernail scratches almost imperceptibly over the coarse beige surface of the crepe bandage. “Said you were sweating and spitting and cussing her out like a flank eruption.”

Tashi's body twitches. Once. Twice. And it is with a guttural moan that she heaves her body, seeming at once leaden and weightless, to face you, curling in on herself with what strength and dexterity she is able, like a stilltailed foetus. Shuddery and nascent.

“I wouldn't want my boyfriend to see me like that,” you say.

Tashi feels something like nausea, even as her belly whines with hunger.

She reaches an aimless hand up, and it flails in feeble slowness until it lands on your shoulder.

Her face must show that she is absolutely pleased, because you laugh. And the motion of it makes her hand drop with a lifeless thunk against the mattress.

“Don't worry,” you say, turning to grab her matcha, and the rattle of the ice against the plastic cup makes her eyes, mucus laden, flutter fully open like an activated sleeper agent. “I don't expect a thank you,” you say, “If it makes you feel better, I didn't go to that much effort. He seemed a bit spooked about the whole thing anyway.”

It doesn't make her feel better. You stab the straw into the lid of the matcha. You carefully lower the mouth of it between her teeth. She sips in earnest, and a stream of green dribbles down the side of her face.

“Patrick?” she asks again wearily. You tug the hem of your sleeve over your hand and use your clothed knuckle to swipe at her cheek. She is so pallid that her skin blooms with a faint streak of red where you'd wiped. But it's hard to see. The room is getting dimmer.

“Patrick...” you repeat in thought.

You have a bit of a guess. There was a tall, dishevelled, dark haired guy, skulking out the room all shellshocked and marooned shortly after what sounded like a bit of commotion in here. You think you'd heard a yell, something that sounded like ‘Patrick’, but you can't be sure. Still,

“I wouldn't leave the light on for Patrick,” you say, bringing the straw to her parted lips again.

She suckles with the breathy listlessness of a newborn. She doesn't appreciate the commentary on her love life, but she knows she asked.

“Why are you here?” she says, teeth green and voice, despite the lingering slur, as fullbodied as it's sounded in a while.

You glower down at her in wry disapproval, using your damp sleeve to swipe her lips again. Little flecks of skin come off, clinging to the fabric of your jumper.

Tashi regards you. “You said you didn't expect a thank you,” she reminds you.

You two stare at each other in silence for a few uncomfortable moments.

At length, you speak. “I couldn't not come back. I felt bad. I feel guilty. I don't know.”

You have no reason to feel guilty, but Tashi nods as though you do, anyway.

“Oh, poor you,” she says.

You smile.

“How's the pain now?” you ask, “On a scale of one to ten?”

Her leg twitches again. Like a bug smeared against a wall. Halfway alive. You glance at the amorphous slope of it beneath the bandaging.

“Twelve. It's at twelve,” she hisses.

You look up at her face, a little taken aback.

“That's a lot better than a hundred,” you say encouragingly.

“Fuck you,” she returns.

“I'm sorry for hurting you,” you sigh.

“I'm sure you had a very hard time.”

You bring a palm, cool and wet with the condensation from the cup, and splay it upon her forehead. You drag it up, upwards, slicking her tousled hairline. On the poster, she has a slicked back ponytail, a thick, dark braid cascading down her back like a foetal tail.

“Duncanatorrrrr,” you whisper in a low growl, the corners of your lips twitching.

Tashi scowls. Her eyes trace your form as you stand, taking the book—War and Peace, she is now sound enough to discern—and stuffing it into your bag.

She nods, a curt, jerky, miserable motion. She can hear her parents' warbled voices from beyond the door. Her red eyes scream with the sting of going damp again.

“You have a boyfriend?” she asks.

You sling your bag over one shoulder. You're about to thread your other arm through, but you pause at that, humming in question.

“You said...” she trails off, blinking blearily.

“Oh!” you say.

You smile, shaking your head.

It takes the strength of a battalion, but she hoists her head just barely, and swivels her neck to trace your receding form. When you reach the door, you wave goodbye, your shadow turning bright and disappearing in the sunlight.

Natashas everywhere must suffer.

Tashi drops her head heavily back onto the bed as it if were the chopping block. She eyes the iced matcha, condensation creating a wet ring on the sidetable, the bitten straw. She lets herself feel the torment. It's survivable, as tortures go.

Clung to the side of the cup, gathering water, is a little sticky note. Tashi makes out the first few digits of a phone number. She closes her eyes and hears her parents bustle in. They sound relieved, and concerned.

“Oh, Natasha!” wails her mom.

[rotzaprachim]

some smaller bookstores, presses, and museum shops to browse and know about! Most support smaller presses, diverse authors and authors in translation, or fund museums and arts research)

(disclaimer: the only three I’ve personally used are the Yiddish book center, native books, and izzun books! Reccomend all three. Also roughly *U.S. centric & anglophone if people have others from around the world please feel free to add on

birchbark books - Louise Erdrich’s book shop, many indigenous and First Nations books of a wide variety of genres including children’s books, literature, nonfiction, sustainability and foodways, language revitalization, Great Lakes area focus (https://birchbarkbooks.com/)

American Swedish institute museum store - range of Scandinavian and Scandinavian-American/midwestern literature, including modern literature in translation, historical documents, knitters guides, cookbooks, children’s books https://shop.asimn.org/collections/books-1

Native books - Hawai’i based bookstore with a focus on native Hawaiian literature, scholarly works about Hawai’i, the pacific, and decolonial theory, ‘ōlelo Hawai’i, and children’s books Collections | Native Books (nativebookshawaii.org)

the Yiddish book center - sales arm of the national Yiddish book center, books on Yiddish learning, books translated from Yiddish, as well as broader selection of books on Jewish history, literature, culture, and coooking https://shop.yiddishbookcenter.org/

ayin press - independent press with a small but growing selection of modern judaica https://shop.ayinpress.org/collections/all?_gl=1kkj2oo_gaMTk4NDI3Mzc1Mi4xNzE1Mzk5ODk3_ga_VSERRBBT6X*MTcxNTM5OTg5Ny4xLjEuMTcxNTM5OTk0NC4wLjAuMA..

Izzun books - printers of modern progressive AND masorti/trad-egal leaning siddurim including a gorgeous egalitarian Sephardic siddur with full Hebrew, English translation, and transliteration

tenement center museum -https://shop.tenement.org/product-category/books/page/11/ range of books on a dizzying range of subjects mostly united by New York City, including the history literature cookbooks and cultures of Black, Jewish, Italian, Puerto Rican, First Nations, and Irish communities

restless books - nonprofit, independent small press focused on books on translation, inter and multicultural exchange, and books by immigrant writers from around the world. Particularly excellent range of translated Latin American literature https://restlessbooks.org/

olniansky press - modern Yiddish language press based in Sweden, translators and publishers esp of modern Yiddish children’s literature https://www.etsy.com/shop/OlnianskyBooks

https://yiddishchildrensbooks.com/ - kinder lokshen, Yiddish children’s books (not so many at the moment but a very cute one about a puffin from faroese!)

inhabit books - Inuit-owned publishing company in Nunavut with an “aim to preserve and promote the stories, knowledge, and talent of Inuit and Northern Canada.” Particularly gorgeous range of children’s books, many available in Inuktitut, English, French, or bilingual editions https://inhabitbooks.com/collections/inhabit-media-books-1

rust belt books - for your Midwest and rust belt bookish needs! Leaning towards academic and progressive political tomes but there are some cookbooks devoted to the art of the Midwest cookie table as well https://beltpublishing.com/

[jeyneofpoole]

hello ro jeyneofpoole boatgirl. The fitzjames news has rocked my world and rotted my brain because I love a historical mystery solved. As a AMC terror and a real life terror fan, what texts would you recommend to someone who just watched amc terror and now wants to read the research on the real thing

i love love love when i get this question ok. if your first exposure to the franklin expedition was the terror i think your best jumping-off point is michael palin’s erebus: the story of a ship. yes he’s the guy from monty python, no he’s not a professional historian, but it’s entertaining and well-researched and a great way to familiarize yourself with the general concepts that other more elaborate texts will touch on. then you just GOTTA read dr. owen beattie’s frozen in time, it’s one of the most iconic pieces of franklin literature and the descriptions of the beechey exhumations are so near and dear to me. some of the lead stuff is on shaky legs now, but this book was revolutionary for the longest time. then there’s may we be spared to meet on earth edited by russell a. potter et. al., which is a collection of letters to and from members of the franklin expedition. after you’ve read the others listed here you’ll be crazy enough to cry over this one.

a more niche read that i just finished was david murphy’s arctic fox, which is a biography of leopold mcclintock and his arctic career. it’s super compelling and mcclintock lived a very interesting life and seemed like a pretty okay guy especially for the time; murphy does a really good job and i don’t see this one recommended at all but it’s actually good. there are some minor issues with some little details surrounding, like, the peglar papers, for example, but that’s what the other books are for. honorable mentions include (ie they’re on my shelf staring me down) ice ghosts by paul watson, unraveling the franklin mystery: inuit testimony by david c. woodman, the man who ate his boots by anthony brandt, james fitzjames: the mystery man of the franklin expedition by william battersby, and icebound in the arctic by michael smith. but do NOT and i mean do NOT under any circumstances read dan simmons’ absolute drivel that novel isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. just watch the show and read these. ok love you byeeeee

[phonaesthemes]

Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk was 22 years old in 1953 when Catholic missionaries in Nunavik, the Inuit homeland in what is now northern Quebec, came to her asking for help in learning her native language. Nappaaluk started by writing down sentences in Inuktitut syllabics, using as many words as she could find. She eventually let her mind wander and started inventing characters, imagining the life of an independent young woman named Sanaaq. Nappaaluk ended up working on the story for more than 20 years, while also raising seven children, working as a teacher and spending summers in the family’s hunting camp. The writing was interrupted by two trips south to receive treatment for tuberculosis — the first a five-year stint, the second for six months — during the TB epidemic of the 1950s and ‘60s. When Nappaaluk returned to Nunavik, it was rapidly changing, as southern business interests, agents for the federal government and missionaries reshaped life in the North. She worked her impressions of these changes into the story. The result was Sanaaq, the first novel written in Inuktitut syllabics in Canada. It was published in Inuktitut in 1984 and has since been translated into both French and English. It is considered a classic of Inuit literature.

[shoezuki]

is my obsession w other people living on jarilo based in how much i wanna see an indigenous/inuit inspired civilization in hsr that perseveres and thrives despite everything? ya. but im right

also i am 100% convince theres more people on jarilo like i know lore says belobog is the last bastion of humanity on the planet and everything else is cold wastelands but no it is NOT there is definitely some people out there. like whether theyre more nomadic smaller groups who survive by following animal migration patterns or communities that repurposed structures or dug underground. theres other ppl out there. where are they

[gennsoup]

I feel deficient in this class. My mother never speaks to me in Inuktitut anymore. Residential schools have beaten the Inuktitut out of this town in the name of progress, in the name of decency. Everyone wanted to move forward. Move forward with God, with money, with white skin and without the shaman's way. It made me wonder what I was not being taught. It made me wonder why the teachings I was receiving felt like sandpaper against my skin. It made me sad to have Inuktitut slip away. It lives under my subconscious just like the secrets of the teacher do.

Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth

[tsatsked]

Analysis of some details in Polar Town

Specifically locations 1, 3 and 5 of the UTTU part of Rayashki event. There are not a lot of screenshots - if you need some, I can DM them. Thanks to @vingler-mirror for the screenshots of Civic Square descriptions and the final Spotlight Chronicle

1 - Rayashki Elementary

Big-Eared Monkey and Mr. Crocodile - a reference to Cheburashka and Gena the Crocodile in form of August’s nicknames. The song Vila often sings might be based on The Blue Wagon from the 70s cartoon.

The collage shows not a bayan accordion but another accordion type called “гармонь” (garmon’) in Russian

2 - Hotel

Honestly, I believe Windsong enthusiasts will analyse the texts better than I could have

3 - New Mine

We’re getting more lore about the critters based on Inuit mythology. Kikituks are said to be evolved from shamanic statues into amphibious creatures and preferring mammal meat over fish nowadays. Ijiraks are said to be former people trapped into the boundary between life and death for wandering too far into the wild. Qiqirns are described as malevolent canines that wander aimlessly for eternity (it can be connected to their role in shamanism).

Information about the background character because I've got attached to him: the Rayashki guest arrived here following an Irish merchant ship. He’s a miner from Greenland expedition team with a bushy red beard and bear belly. He has a crude front but is a symphony enthusiast and likes literature - the temporary library helped him to bond with his teammates over literature without feeling weird. Also he has a little daughter. Pushkin’s Ode to Liberty that he read is a historically interesting piece where the author supports a political activist exiled to Siberia (the ode gets Pushkin exiled too but to a more gentle place)

4 - Swimming Pool

The descriptions go in chronological order of mermaid history.

@sleeplesssmol have copied Rusalka Spotlight Chronicle in their post here!

5 - Port

Among the stage descriptions, there are two interesting objects described:

A preserved seabird, seemenly for the migrated critters.

Rayashki Cheese - is said to be made out of milk from northern tundra. The cheese’s wrap design is based on Friendship cheese made by KARAT. The peculiar detail about it is that the only KARAT factory is in Moscow

Rayashki seemly participates in barter with the ships.

Cultural Palace - is a common name for major club-houses

6 - Civic Square

The polar bear statue was made after one of the meetings and now is taken care of as a symbol of the community

[eelhound]

"The best response to anyone who wants to take seriously Nietzsche's fantasies about savage hunters chopping pieces off each other's bodies for failure to remit are the words of an actual hunter-gatherer — an Inuit from Greenland made famous in the Danish writer Peter Freuchen's Book of the Eskimo. Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting expedition, he found one of the successful hunters dropping off several hundred pounds of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man objected indignantly:

'Up in our country we are human!' said the hunter. 'And since we are human we help each other. We don't like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.'

The last line is something of an anthropological classic, and similar statements about the refusal to calculate credits and debits can be found through the anthropological literature on egalitarian hunting societies. Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began 'comparing power with power, measuring, calculating' and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt.

It's not that he, like untold millions of similar egalitarian spirits throughout history, was unaware that humans have a propensity to calculate. If he wasn't aware of it, he could not have said what he did. Of course we have a propensity to calculate. We have all sorts of propensities. In any real-life situation, we have propensities that drive us in several different contradictory directions simultaneously. No one is more real than any other. The real question is which we take as the foundation of our humanity, and therefore, make the basis of our civilization. If Nietzsche's analysis of debt is helpful to us, then, it is because it reveals that when we start from the assumption that human thought is essentially a matter of commercial calculation, that buying and selling are the basis of human society — then, yes, once we begin to think about our relationship with the cosmos, we will necessarily conceive of it in terms of debt."

- David Graeber, from Debt: The First 5,000 Years, 2011.

[tomleask]

In Kürze erscheint die Fortsetzung meines Bestsellers "Alaska-Fieber".

[stephensmithuk]

The Hound of the Baskervilles: Sir Henry Baskerville

@myemuisemo and @thefisherqueen have already provided their own useful historical context posts, which I've reblogged and will add some more of my own.

Tweed had been handwoven in the Outer Hebrides by crofters (small-scale farmers) from the 18th century and was introduced by Lady Dunmore to the British aristocracy in the 1840s. The warm waterproof fabric became rapidly popular for outdoor activities, like walking, climbing, golf and carriage driving. It eventually sped to the middle classes.

The Times has been around since 1785, originally as The Daily Universal Register before changing name in 1788. It is considered a centre-right paper editorially and very much the paper of the British Establishment, although its founder John Walter actually spent time in prison for criminal libel against the then Duke of York. That's the traditional title for a monarch's second son, currently held by Prince Andrew of particular infamy.

Free trade vs. protective tariffs were a big political issue at the time.

Holmes is using the the-polite term for an African-American and the French version of the now considered derogatory one for the Inuit - it is generally believed to mean "eaters of raw meat" or similar in the Algonquian languages family i.e. languages used by First Nation and Native American tribes. Basically, Europeans adopted a racial slur from a people they applied racial slurs to.

You can identify whether a person is of European, Asian or African descent, broadly speaking, by their skull shape, but in not much further detail below that level.

Gums tend to come from tree resins, paste from wheat flour.

Fountain pens were being mass-produced by 1889, but remained expensive until the 1950s and 1960s, so dip-pens were wildly used as @myemuisemo discusses; the hotel could worry less about them being stolen.

School desks would have indentations specifically to hold an ink-well and some kid would end up having to fill them each morning.

"Dime novel" was an American term for cheap popular literature at the time in a variety of forms and indeed costs, sometimes used perjoratively as they were seen as sensational and low quality. Insert your own jokes about modern fiction here.

"Why in thunder" was one of the many "minced oaths" used then and today to allude to a stronger curse without actually saying it. Sir Henry is hardly going to drop an F-bomb and Watson wouldn't be able to print it if he did.

In September 1888, six dollars would have been roughly £1 4s, or about £130 in today's money. Some fairly expensive boots then, but you can get similar stuff at that price today:

Shoe shiners would have been widespread in London, typically children sent out to earn money for their families.

2pm would have been a reasonable time for a Victorian lunch - it would have typically been a light meal, supper being the main one. Afternoon tea became a thing as supper could be very late indeed:

Victorian cabs had their number on the rear clearly visible:

Bond Street (actually split into Old Bond Street and New Bond Street) has a number of art galleries even today, including Sotheby's (also known as an auction house), which moved there in 1917. Others are nearby, like the Royal Academy of Arts on Piccadilly, right next door to Albany of Raffles fame. The art even extends into the new Elizabeth line part of Bond Street station.