Margaret Pokiak-Fenton

Christy Jordan-Fenton

Looks at the experiences of a strong-willed young Inuit girl who receives permission from her father to travel to a residential religious school run by non-Inuit outsiders, where she struggles to adapt to the new way of living.

A True Story

Fatty Legs

Romy

They don’t care. They don’t have the patience to 

wait for you to braid your hair. They want all of your 

time for chores and for kneeling on your knees to ask 

“The outsiders do not teach you how to hunt,” he said, pointing his knife at the fox he was about to skin. “They only use your knowledge of making snares for their own profit and send you to gather the animals from their traplines. They do not teach you how to cure meat and clean fish so that you can live off of the land. They feed you cabbage soup and porridge. They do not teach you how to make parkas and kamik,” he said, eyeing the beautifully crafted Delta braid on my parka and the embroidered, fur-lined boots on my feet. “They make you wear their scratchy outsid￾ers’ clothes, which keep out neither the mosquitoes nor the cold. They teach you their songs and dances instead of your own. And they tell you that the spirit inside of you is bad and needs their forgiveness.”

Do you see this rock? It was once jagged and full of sharp, jutting points, but the water of the ocean slapped and slapped at it, carrying away its angles and edges. Now it is nothing but a small pebble. That is what the outsiders will do to you at the school.

My stomach ached with hunger and my mind ached 

[...] they were paid by the government per student, 

and plucking us from our homes and keeping us in 

Next we were told to write 'I love it here at the school. The nuns 

I hate this school. You were right. The food is awful and the nuns are very mean. They won’t even let me wear the stockings you bought for me. As you can see, I have already learned to read and write. Please, come to get me as soon as you can. I am ready to go home

how can you be so mean to a nine years old child ?

The Raven had played a heartless trick on me.

The laughter of the other girls enveloped me. It wrapped a million fingers around me and would not let go.

The hideous things sizzled and crackled in the fire as they shrank before my eyes and vaporized into a thin wisp of smoke. I smiled with satisfaction. I would not be bested.

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