I love horror set in the north. True Detective Season 4: Night Country was my second favourite True Detective season. And who can forget 30 Days of Night.
I also love Inuit stories. Arctic Dreams and Nightmares by Alootook Ipellie is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read.
Summary of Utiqtuq
Utiqtuq opens on a teenage girl, Aliisa, keeping watch while her family sleeps. She nods off, and when she comes to she is being approached by a zombie. She shoots the zombie and her family wakes. Ittuq, a man who took her in after her family turned into zombies, wakes up because of the noise. He stands beside her and helps her process the emotional trauma of being put in a position of having to kill something which used to be human.
A helicopter appears. Anirnuq, a small child who Ittuq also rescued, pokes his head out of the tent. A doctor and pilot come out of the helicopter and explain that they are from the government, they have developed a vaccine and a treatment, and they have come to take the three to a camp where they will receive the vaccine. Ittuq is wary due to his experience with residential schools, but Aliisa wants to return to normal life and find out whether or not her family received the treatment. Anirnuq cannot talk, so he does not express any opinion.
The doctor explains that the pilot was a zombie and he was treated. Now he gets two shots a day and he's fine. The doctor notices the time, and mentions that he it is time to give the pilot his shot. He looks at the medicine and says that it looks different, but delivers it anyhow.
Ittuq does not want the children to go. The doctor informs Ittuq that since he is not a parent, he does not have the ability to say no. And that if he does not give up the children, the proper authorities will be back to take the children. The doctor says that they have to leave right away in order to fly during daylight.
So Aliisa and Anirnuq get in the helicopter. As Aliisa gets into the helicopter, the doctor takes her rifle away, saying that she doesn't need it since they will keep her safe and the doctor also says that she should not have a rifle because she is thirteen. Ittuq does not go with them.
As they are flying away, the pilot begins to turn into a zombie and the plane crashes.
Thoughts
This story is so interesting to me. It is a zombie story. But the zombies are not the problem. Using their hunting skills and knowledge of land, this little family is able to survive in spite of the zombies. Aliisa is able to have the skills to contribute to the family by taking on a watch shift, and she is diligent and capable. Even when she makes a small mistake (nodding off) she is able to recover from her mistake.
It turns out that in the midst of a zombie outbreak the government is actually the real threat. The representative sent from the government values expediency and efficiency over relationship. He does not recognize Aliisa's ability to keep herself safe, rather, he has a paternalistic attitude towards her. He does not recognize their family structure, rather has a conventional and rigid understanding of family structures. He does not take a trauma informed approach to the adult in the group. And he does not obtain true consent, as he rushes the decision and threatens to involve law enforcement.
Even if the pilot had not turned into a zombie, the government's approach was not respectful. This story was written before the pandemic, and so I really want to emphasize that when Ittuq was expressing concern, his concern was not with the medical intervention itself. Rather, his concern was with the service delivery model. He refers to residential schools, which is another government policy which required separation from land and family in order to receive a public service. The service delivery model is also reminiscent of the Indian hospitals.
TRC 57 calls on the government to "provide education to public servants on the history of Aboriginal peoples, including the history and legacy of residential schools, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Treaties and Aboriginal rights, Indigenous law, and Aboriginal–Crown relations. This will require skills based training in intercultural competency, conflict resolution, human rights, and anti-racism." And TRC 23 calls for the government to "Provide cultural competency training for all healthcare professionals." I wonder whether Indigenous literature has a role to play in this training.
In the book S'TENISTOLW: Moving Indigenous Education Forward, Evalyn Voyageur and Joanna Fraser illustrate examples of community based, culturally competent, trauma informed health care delivery. Imagine if a group of learners read that chapter (or watched a powerpoint summarizing the chapter) alongside this short story, and then collaboratively wrote a critical incident report answering the following questions:
- What happened?
- What were the contributing factors?
- What could be done differently in the future to prevent this from happening again?
- What steps can be taken now in order to address the harm?
- Are there any larger policy/practice implications?
I note that Utiqtuq ended on a cliffhanger. The plane was crashing, but we don't know what happened to the children. I kind of wrote my own happy ending in my imagination where the children survived the crash and Ittuq was able to find them and help them. Perhaps there will be a sequel.
Works Cited
Kabloona, Gayle. (2019). Utiqtuq. In N. Christopher (Ed.) Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories (pp.105-124). Iqualuit, Nunavut: Inhabit Media.
Voyageur, E. & Fraser, J. (2020). A story of nurses living and learning with First Nations. In T. Ormiston, J. Green & K. Guirre (Eds.) S'TENISTOLW: Moving Indigenous Education Forward (pp.130-141). Vernon, British Columbia: JCharlton Publishing.
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Note: this blog is a sister blog to https://twinkleshappyplace.blogspot.com/
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