In grade three or four (something like that), for one of our classes, each of us had to give a presentation on one of the provinces or territories. I chose Nunavut, which is Canada’s most recently established province or territory, only becoming official in the 1990s. Why did I pick it? To be honest, I was fascinated with the Inuit. On a superficial level, being the only level a third-grader could realistically be expected to grasp, they just seemed very cool (no pun intended): they survived in the arctic, an incredibly hostile environment, and this conjured images in my mind of dogsleds, fur-skin coats, igloos, northern lights, and lots and lots of fish. Also, I’m not going to lie, their writing looked aesthetically pleasing, like a northern Canadian hieroglyphics. You could say that there was just something that set that territory apart. A bit like Québec, actually, Nunavut seemed to express a unique (and indigenous) demographic. It charmed me—what can I say?

Years later, long after I left the third grade, I stumble across a YouTube video about Inuit mythology. It had been a while since my thoughts had wandered that far north, but I was curious, so I gave it a watch. Needless to say, it was immediately apparent why I’d never read these stories as a kid. Not even Disney could sanitise some of these stories like they sanitised the myth of Herakles! (Fun fact: Hercules is the Latinised name of the original Greek hero Herakles, who took his name from Hera, who was not his mother but was his father’s wife. I believe Zeus was thinking that this might smooth over the inevitable argument that would ensue from his repeated infidelity. Not quite the family man Disney made him out to be.)

Let’s see…. Of the stories I have begun to read thus far, many include incest, mutilation, murder, and bestiality as well as the expected shamanistic and supernatural elements. Some of these stories are crazy, but in a good way! You see, the mythology of a people betrays their sense of place and relationship to the world. The Inuit, for example, were not farmers. What could you grow up there? Nothing! So, they needed to do a lot of hunting, not out of cruelty, but as a matter of survival. This is becomes clear in stories about animals, some of which even involve the transformation of human beings into creatures of another species, like seals. Some are even hunted, as in the case of one old woman who transforms into all the animals of the world. Nevertheless, the mythology shows us that the relationship of the Inuit to their environment was quite unlike that of our Western culture, which instead was predicated on domination (cf. Genesis 1:28). No; for the Inuit, the line between human being and animal was far more blurred, and it was believed that “there was not much difference between an animal’s soul and a human’s soul,” whereas (in our Western context) philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle have been especially keen to distinguish the two.

And how does this subtle difference change one’s relationship to their environment, their sense of place in the world or larger cosmos? Quite drastically, in fact, since one could not justifiably maintain an anthropocentric view of the world. We are but one kind of creature to walk this planet, which is not our’s to conquer. However, this is just one example (and perhaps a superficial one) of how Inuit myth might be said to offer a different perspective. I would encourage you to read the stories and discover some of these differences for yourselves. (I’d recommend: Unikkaaqtuat: An Introduction to Inuit Myths and Legends, by Neil Christopher and Germaine Arnattaujuq.) Imagine yourself in the cold winters of Nunavut, hearing these stories in your small village, and put aside everything you think you know. Find your beginner’s mind, and consider: how differently might you have understood the world had these been the stories you grew up with?

There is a bit of a cliché among the new atheist camp of our days that understands mythology as something descriptive. They take for granted, in other words, that the task of religions of the past has primarily been like that of science for us today: they were like a theory or explanation of natural phenomena. So, for example, there is the (R-rated) Inuit story of how the sun and the moon came to be, and the Greek stories, and the Christian stories, and so on. However, I think that is a bland and boring utilitarian view, and I’d admonish anybody whose curiosity stopped there. What’s more important, I think, is always the ethical dimension, or ethos, of these stories: that is, how do we fit into the world, how do we conduct ourselves there, and how do we relate to what or who we find there? It is not even so much the telos—or meaning—of why we’re here! Attempts at the ultimate answer, ranging from serving or praising God to Douglas Adams’ “42”, all seem to fall short. Instead, I think it is far more a question of what story allows you to feel at home where you are—or, to put it another way, it functions as an antidote to our alienation, due to our undoubtedly being the weirdest things on the planet.

This is the great thing about mythologies, and I why I insist that we all take the time to learn of humanity’s broader grasp on these things. For while religious and spiritual demographics have changed drastically, and for many of these mythologies there may not even be contemporary believers, they are still a part of our story—our collective, human story. There is nothing wrong with change, of course, but we’d be damned to forget the experiences of the past, more so if we neglected to learn anything from them. Like the Inuit adventurer, Kiviuq, we’re on a journey, and that entails the sum total of experiences, not the intended destination.