Aknak Natinikhiyok

Description

There was a couple with two sons living on the coast. The woman was a shaman. They had no more food. Near dawn, she started calling for seals. The oldest son came running in from play to tell his mother that he heard something howl from the open water. “Don’t be scared”, she said, “it’s only a seal calling the other seals to come”. The man went out to see. He prepared his kayak and harpoon. He went and got a lot of seals and the wife cut them up with her ulu. The woman’s hands were burned and cut from the blood of the seals. She put some in a cache and some out to dry. While doing this, she thought of ways to kill her husband. That night she killed him while she slept. Two summers passed. The woman and her sons had no more food. Hers sons turned into wolverines and she, into a seal.