A Sranger at Home

Introduction

My name is Olemaun Pokiak–that’s OO-lee-mawn. Such a name probably sounds strange to you. I can understand, because there was a time in my life when it sounded strange to me, too. Would you believe that at one point I could scarcely remember my own name or even speak the same language as my mother? Well, it’s true. The outsiders had locked my tongue with the spell of their “education.” But I was named for a stone that sharpens a knife, and I was strong. I could not be worn down.

Chapter One

The boat crunched to a stop against the shore. My fingers gripped into the side of it as I propelled my body over the edge. “No,” I heard my friend Agnes call with a restrained cry. The shore was packed with people, though Tuktoyaktuk was very small. I pushed through the crowd, my canvas shoes rolling on the tiny pebbles as I searched for my family. It had been so long since I had seen them.

I heard a voice I recognized–it was my mother’s. She was speaking to my siblings. I turned and followed it, making my way through the throng to where she stood, with my two-year-old brother Earnest tied to her back and my sisters Mabel and Elizabeth still looking up at the boat for me to disembark. I wondered why my father had not run to meet me the minute my feet hit the shore, but he was not with them. I stood proudly before my mother and siblings and waited for them to rush toward me.

My mother gave me a strange look, as if to question why I was standing before her. I smiled, but she crossed her arms and shook her head. “Not my girl, not my girl,” she shouted up to the dark-cloaked brothers in the only English I had ever heard her speak.

I turned to look at them where they stood, perched like birds of prey at the rail of the Immaculata. Their beady eyes studied me. If my mother didn’t recognize me, I was certain that at any moment they would pounce on me and carry me back to their outsiders’ nest up the Mackenzie Delta.

I could not understand how this could be happening. After days of being cramped aboard the small Roman Catholic boat, going to shore to stretch our legs only when we stopped to drop my classmates at their various Arctic settlements, this could not be my welcome. I had seen many mothers cry, and several fathers turn their heads to hide their own tears, as they welcomed back their children. After being gone for two years myself, I had all but lost hope that this day would come for me. But as each child left the boat on our way farther and farther north, my optimism grew. It grew until we reached the mouth of the Mackenzie River and then the hope inside of me erupted. The boat could barely contain the overwhelming anticipation I shared with my classmates. We had all waited for so long to be reunited with our parent s in Tuktoyaktuk. Only my friend Agnes did not seem to be excited.