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Atungakkuuk

Artist: Elisapee Inukpuk This is a story about Atungak and his wife. They walked around the whole world.

A very long time ago, there was a man named Atungak and his wife. The couple wanted to walk around the world.

The couple lived in a sealskin tent with their two children, a boy and a girl. When their son [irniq] was able to hunt ptarmigan and their daughter [panik] could sew and act independently, the two parents prepared to leave their children and walk around the world.

The daughter did not want her parents to leave. To try to make her daughter feel better, the mother said, ”Sapangaapinnik/ Piquttiapinnik pitaartilaarakkit!” [I will bring back some beautiful beads for you.]

The parents left their community on foot. Their plan was to walk around the world, hauling their belongings on a qamutiik [sled].

They traveled through many parts of the world. Sometimes they came across some very scary people and some very mean people. They arrived in one place where there were only men – no women. The men were bossy and mean. The travelers were very frightened.

One of these bossy, mean men kidnapped Atungak’s wife. Atungak was very unhappy about having his wife taken from him. He set out tofind his wife. Eventually Atungak found the tent in which his wife was hidden. He stretched tall in an effort to peer through the hole in the tent known as the qingaq [nose].

Atungak looked through the qingaq and saw that the man who had stolen his wife was inside. Atungak also saw his wife, who was busy butchering a seal.

Atungak began to spit at the seal in order to attract his wife’s attention. He really wanted to catch her eye, but she did not notice him.

Artist: Elisapee Inukpuk So Atungak destroyed the sleds belonging to the mean, bossy men, in the place where only men lived. He used his knife to cut the rawhide bindings [napuliutik] on the sled runners. Atungak destroyed all the sleds of those bossy and mean men.

Then, in the dark of the night, Atungak crept into the kidnapper’s tent and rescued his wife. Atungak and his wife ran as fast as they could to the shoreline. They ran until they found the aulaniq, the moving part of the pack ice, which is found near the shore. They hopped on to the ice floe.

After a while, the mean, bossy men discovered that their sleds were ruined. They saw that the napulitik had been cut to shreds. So the mean, bossy men took their bows and arrows to the shore and began to shoot at Atungaq and his wife, who were jumping across the moving ice.

The couple managed to escape from the place where only men lived, and continued their journey around the world.

Eventually, Atungaq and his wife returned to their community and their two children. When they reached home, the husband saw an old man and an old woman hauling a seal up a hill. They followed the old people’s footprints until at last they caught up with them. Atungak asked, “Who are your parents?” The daughter responded, “We are the children of Atungak.”

The daughter was now an old woman and she could not get about very well. The son and daughter had slept most of the time while their parents went around the world, and so they ended up looking older than their parents.

The mother had promised to bring her daughter beads as a souvenir of the great expedition. And so she had brought her daughter a gift of beads. But when she presented the beads to her, her daughter sang:

Sapangat sujunukua sujunukua (beads are for what?)
Sapangat sujunukua sujunukua (beads are for what?)
Sapangat sujunukua sujunukua (beads are for what?)
Nigiuraalujunga sapattusautjangittunga! (I’m too old for beads!)

The daughter was no longer able even to handle the beads. She was now a very old woman. The daughter sang the song because she had become too old for beads. She looked and acted older than her own mother. And the son looked and acted older than his father.

The two children had been left alone for a long, long time. So during that time, they used to sleep – for many hours a day. Eventually they grew to be very old.

Their parents did not get old because they walked and walked and never slept more than they needed to stay healthy and travel home.

Moral

If you sleep all the time, you’ll get old fast.

Excerpt from: Unikkaangualaurtaa (Let's Tell a Story)