Someone who cared about their language asked one of these hunters, “What will you do when you get out of hospital?” “Oh, you must know that I sit waiting for the moon to turn back for me so that I can go to my home and listen again to the stories of my people. Oh that I could sit again listening to the stories which come from a great distance. For this is the time for telling stories. First I must sit cooling my arms so that the tiredness can go out of me, and then I must listen, waiting for the story to come, for the story I want to hear. The mountains may be between us but I will turn around on my feet. I will turn back on my tracks and, listening, open my ears to feel the story that comes in on the wind. Oh that I may listen again to the story that is the wind.” Now this comes straight out of the Stone Age heart. He was homesick above all, not for his people, not for his country even, but for the stories of this people.

Mary Panegoosho in Where are the Stories of My People?¹

From Paper Stays Put: A Collection of Inuit Writing, edited by Robin Gedalof