Introduction-E

would catch one. It wasn’t a taboo anymore to eat raw meat. They were much happier.
Now they could eat the liver and the heart, bits of meat and blubber. It was as if they
were having a holy communion, taking small bites of everything and taking their time
chewing it. Not everybody took to the new way of life right away. There were some
people who did not take to this way of life. There were some who tried hiding their
ways from people. It seemed as if the perfect people were more imperfect than the socalled
imperfect people. At least, that’s how my in-laws recalled them.
I don’t seem to have any more questions so if you have any stories
to share, go ahead.
Elisapee: I seem to have run out too, due to the questions that were asked. I’d like to talk
more about the person who experienced cannibalism. The way we see it, we don’t think
it’s right for a human to eat another human. She ate her husband and she ate her
children when they were going through starvation. There was another child that she
was looking after at that time which wasn’t her own, which she ate as well. We can state
that we will never eat a fellow human being, but we do not know what our future holds.
If it were our only chance for survival, we just might end up doing that too. She went
through an experience which she had to go through. Amazingly, she was discovered
and she pulled through it and had a chance to bear children again. If she didn’t do what
she had to do, there’s no way we would be around today. We can see life meant a lot to
this person. A lot of us today want to kill ourselves, hang ourselves because we can’t
deal with life’s problems anymore. Imagine what she went through. It must have been
hard. Alone all winter in the dark, and her husband dead. Imagine our own husbands;
she had to eat her own husband and her own children to survive. It must have been
hard. Yes, she must have had some rope to hang herself with, but her life meant
something to her. She eventually died from sickness. If she had just given up on life, we
wouldn’t be around today.
They had gone inland and they had nothing left to eat. Their grandmother had a
child and the child died of illness, where they were camping. She refused to leave her
dead child as she was really grieving over him. There’s an area up there that the caribou
leave when it’s time to move on. If only they had listened to her husband when he
wanted to go toward the coast, they would’ve probably survived, but she refused to
leave the dead child. Sometimes we women think we’re wiser than our husbands, but
in some cases we are not. She loved her dead child dearly and didn’t want to leave him,
so in the end it cost practically the whole camp their lives. Men know more about which
camps they should be in. When we refuse to comply, sometimes we put ourselves in
unfortunate situations. Is this understandable? As women we have great capabilities but
there are some things we are not as wise as men about.
Life Stories – Hervé Paniaq 57