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and once again recite the verses of the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen; the speaker reciting the reasons for being grateful and urging everyone to come to one mind, the men chorusing agreement.
    The Thanksgiving Address, which constitutes the first words and the last words spoken at all of our gatherings, is a beautiful and impressivereminder of the abiding and loving relationship we are to have with one another and with all the works of Creation, and it reminds us that our relationship with the earth and our obligations to the Creator are more important than the day-to-day affairs of human beings.
    â€œNyeah!”



R ACHEL A. Q ITSUALIK

Skraeling
    IMAGE CREDIT: CANADIAN MUSEUM OF CIVILIZATION

CONTRIBUTOR ’ S NOTE
    I ASSUMED, IN SETTING OUT to write this story, that I would require some psychological time travel. I should have known better. One forces nothing upon the Arctic, it seems—not even in fiction.
    It was an understandable error. After all, from 800 to 1200 AD, the world was warmer, drawing the dogsledding progenitors of Inuit (“Thule”) culture out of Alaska, overlapping the ancient habitations of their now-extinct cousins, the Tunit (“Dorset”). This story explores a possible meeting between these peoples, and one other, along Baffin Island’s eastern edge.
    When I step out in early summer, however, I still step onto the same land. I walk in the same hills that newly arrived Inuit walked in. I see the same orange lichens, the same spectacular purple of flowers in bloom, the same fat black spiders racing through the moss. The persistence of this land forbids true time travel. Instead, I can only drift, ghostlike, between the worlds of then and now, whose differences lie far more in people than in the land itself. For if the Arctic regarded itself, it would recognize no change, and the peoples that have settled or passed over time would be no more noteworthy than the spiders in the moss.
    This leaves only a familiar challenge, that of dealing with culture. You see, I’m already a bit of a time traveller, old enough to remember a crazy shaman who used to get stuck in trances (needing my dad to snap her out of it) and young enough to remain sore about my mother smashing my Rolling Stones records. I’ve never had trouble reconciling “then” and “now,” so I’ve been happy to explain my culture—whether through fiction or exposition—to others.
    Which is exactly why I’m
avoiding
doing so in this story.
    Some of the characters in this tale are bound to be doing and believing things that are puzzling to non-Inuit readers. Good. We live in a time when critical thinking is not “hip,” when we demand a thorough explanation of everything presented to us, preferably in easy-to-read, brochure form. While this facilitates speed, it is also the cognitive equivalent of living on marshmallows.
    I could go into great, galloping detail on how Inuit hold individual freedom to be sacred, about how open displays of violence are forbidden, or how confrontation is traditionally avoided. I could include an “inside” look at shamanism, making it accessible. But is this truly charitable? No, my feeling is that if the reader wants to understand a people, he or she has to live with those people for a while. And a story is the ultimate magic by which this may occur. Let the reader puzzle out those alien behaviours, as children might among adults. Let the reader feel the uncertainty of living in a little-understood land, as newly arrived Inuit might. Let the reader not feel comfortable with unseen powers seething in the very air, but instead feel the trepidation, uncertainty, and outright horror that early peoples knew.
    Welcome to the land before it was named.

Skraeling
    Kannujaq stood atop a ridge, while ravens wheeled and cursed from violet slopes.
    He was soaked with sweat, but a chill nevertheless ran through him. It was unusually cold for