Olemaun wanted to go, even after her father and older sister warned her it would wear her down, like the sea turns a jagged rock to a pebble. I wrongly assumed, too, that all children were taken to residential school by force. They were not like us Inuvialuit and did not get along with our people.” Of course I can’t assume that all Gwich’in and Inuvialuit are enemies either, as my own history includes marriages of Irish and Scots, historical enemies. Olemaun’s mother warns her “about the Gwich’in. Why did I assume that the Inuit were protected by their remote homes, and that this allowed their culture to stay strong? I’ve also been fighting the assumption that all Indigenous should get along, even though I don’t get along with all settlers. But Olemaun was from Banks Island, and she went to a settler village in Aklavik, near Tuktoyaktuk. I realized that I wrongly assumed that Inuit children were spared from residential schools, because I didn’t think colonizers cared about the north. It is important for settler Canadians to seek out multiple accounts of residential school experiences not just so we can sympathize with modern Indigenous challenges, not just so we can learn to recognize the symptoms of colonization and racism, but also to root out our own assumptions and biases, and to diversify our concept of the Indigenous experience. Soon, a bitter nun is named Raven, a kind nun named Swan, and the children Wrens, so we can picture them small and vulnerable in the nest.
They plucked us from our homes on the scattered islands of the Arctic Ocean and carried us back to the nests they called schools, in Aklavik.” This writing is concise yet rich, a consummate example of a strong artist’s voice.
“When I was a young girl, outsiders came flitting about the North. But her resilience also allows her to hold on to her culture, to flourish as an adult, and to write this book.įatty Legs reads like an oral tale, composed in the moment with keen attention paid to images that help listeners keep everything straight. Olemaun (OO-lee-mawn) is named by her grandfather, for “the hard stone that is used to sharpen an ulu.” Her inner strength hurts her at residential school, a place where the nuns’ goal is to “take the Indian out of the child”, so self-confidence is punished. The subject matter is serious but not macabre, so this is not just a book for adults.
The vocabulary is basic but the writing is artful, evoking both a place and a culture, so this is not just a book for kids. Fatty Legs is a short chapter book for elementary school children, telling the true story of eight-year-old Olemaun (Margaret) Pokiak-Fenton’s two years in residential school in the 1940’s.
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