Book-tasting, Day 2: Burying the tongue bone

"In the stories I grew up on there were no spelling-bee winners, no inventors or rich men. Those would have been pale unheroes. The stories were the old Eskimo ones of hardships and hunts, lost dogteams and snowed-in trails, told by travelers spending stormy nights around our stove.

"'Yep. Lotta barking and my dogs run away in the night. I had nuthin'. Not even rifle.' Old Stoney Williams would laugh as if it were the funniest thing that could have happened to him. I'd bend close to the kerosene lamp, waiting for more, picturing him on the wide dark tundra and wondering if I'd ever be old enough to have those stories to tell, dreaming of being tough and able to laugh into storms like the old-timers. Stoney called me by my Inupiaq name and talked slow as if it were important that I understand."

From Kantner, Seth (1995) 'Burying the Tongue Bone,' in Servid, C. (ed) From the Island's Edge: A Sitka reader. Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press.

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Cordillera Folktales and Story-telling

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Now/here no/where woman

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