Ideas - How Inuit Storytelling and Modern Horror Fiction Come Together

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

Examining the parallels between Inuit storytelling and modern horror narratives, writer Jamesie Fournier explores the importance of being afraid and how the other side comes back to haunt us for our own good. This episode is part of our on-going series called IDEAS at Crow's Theatre.

When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation. There's a man living in this address in the name of a deceased. He's one of the most wanted men in the world. This isn't really happening. Officers are finding large sums of money. It's a tale of murder, skullduggery and international intrigue. So who really is he? I'm Sam Mullins and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncovered.

Available now. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. And welcome to a live recording of Ide ideas at Crow's Theatre in Toronto. We think we know who we are. We think we know where we're going, but our lives are shaped by forces beyond our control,

gender, race, culture, influencers that sit on our shoulder and talk sometimes loudly, sometimes invisibly. They're powerful forces that demand to be recognized and acknowledged, forces that James Yffournier will be exploring in his talk today. At a time of polarization and division, we at Ideas are proud to help develop a space where meaningful conversation thrives and curiosity rules.

And what better place to do that than on the stage? The fictional lives played out on stage are very much like our own. They're urgent, sometimes painful, and always unpredictable. With that in mind, we have invited five thinkers to meditate on ideas raised by one of the plays in the Crow's Theatre season. This is the third in the series, and the play that we're jumping off of today is the current

Crow's Theatre production of Whites by Liz Appel. It's Halloween 2024, one week before the US election, and we all know how that turned out. Anita Knight, a brilliant and ambitious Yale academic, has gathered her closest friends to help her prepare for the job interview of a lifetime. In this biting social satire, two couples confront each other and themselves. As their carefully constructed stories unravel, dark forces threaten friendships, marriages, and perhaps even the fate of humanity itself. These forces are real, pressing against the window,

literally trying to get in. This is a story of ghosts, past and present and future, over which we have no control. Today we'll be hearing from Inuk writer Jameisie Fournier. We first met Jameisie when we were on the Massey Lectures Tour in Accaluate, where he lives and writes and works with Inhabit Media, the first independent publisher in the Canadian Arctic. As a writer, Jame C. is best known for his

horror fiction. His debut book, The Other Ones, explored the worlds of darkness and monstrous creatures. He's also published poetry and most recently a book for children, Lemming's First Christmas. Inuit storytelling, he says, is able to express the kind of darkness and stark reality that there is out there in life. Jamus's talk today is titled, Underneath the Ice. Please join me in welcoming Jamus Ifornia. Thank you, Nell. It's beautiful. Thank you. Thank you, Nal.

It's beautiful. So, hi, everyone. Good morning. Nakulmik, thank you all for coming out. I know the Sunday morning drama radio crowd is a small but dedicated community. So that's something which I'm grateful for. So Nakulmink. So my name is Jamesi, Jamesi Uyunga.

I myself am from the NWT originally and I'm currently living in Akaluwe, Nunavut. So coming down here to Toronto is kind of a mixed blessing for me weather-wise. It's definitely not as cold as the North, so I get to be a tough, grizzled Northerner for about a day, and then the damp sinks in and I'm just shivering like the rest of you. I've been trying to tell my friends about what this talk will be like, and I kept comparing it to something like a TED like, and I kept comparing it to something like a TED Talk, except I'll be talking about scary things. So it's more like a dead talk, if you will.

So I've always enjoyed horror. I can't tell you why. If you asked me as a kid, I would have just said, because it's cool. And as an adult, I think that answer still holds water. Or is it blood? I write among other things horror stories where I work elements from our traditional Inuit storytelling into contemporary settings. I find it interesting how these stories have evolved over time, yet also how

they remain true to their nature. Growing up, my Inuit mother would tell my brother and I scary stories with the intent of scaring us into bed and making us stay there. And it would work, right? I would lay in bed too scared to look out the window, afraid that some unearthly dead face was waiting for me in the glass. So a couple years back, I moved to Nunavut to learn our culture's language, Inuktitut. And while attending the Pilovik language school, my first book, The Other Ones, was published with Inhabit Media. And now this year we are making a short horror film based on it. It has been a tremendous, staggering experience bringing these stories into our waking dreams,

right? As it should be. I got to work with Inuit actors and record entirely in Inuktitut, you know, something which my education has helped prepare me for. It has been just such an honor bringing these haunting characters to life with all their joys and all their traumas. However, it has also filled me with a sense of dread, as though I am now that specter who is lurking on the other side, trying to find my way in.

To me, Inuit storytelling has always held a degree of horror. My introduction was cautionary as a child, what not to do, which I see the logic in. When you are afraid, you are alert. When you're afraid, you are aware of your surroundings, right, you do as you're told. Our stories were meant to scare, yes, but ultimately to keep us safe.

Stories are a great vehicle for passing along knowledge, and an attractive aspect of the horror genre is that it makes knowledge memorable. Inuit were some of the last cultures to have had our symbolic realms explored. The Greenland Danish explorer Knut Rasmussen of actually of Inuit and European descent, he had spent many years documenting what he called the spiritual culture of Inuit. And in 1921 when he came into conversation with Ava, the revered Iglooling Mut Angakuk,

or Igloolik shaman, Rasmisen had asked Ava what the basis of Inuit beliefs were. And Ava famously replied, we do not believe, we fear. Ava contrasted the idea of Christian belief with that of Inuit fear. Fear for survival, fear of illness, suffering, starvation, fear for our families and home. So our stories, our beliefs reflected that fear. So to survive, a delicate balance of community and family helped prevent misfortune.

As such, a series of taboos and customs dictated traditional life. And storytelling enabled Inuit to define these boundaries by delineating what could happen should these boundaries be ignored. A framework that exemplified how disrespectful ways of life held consequences. Yet, when we tell a story, however well we explain or define its rules, they are generally ignored. Trespasses are made, and the perpetrators are subject to a reckoning manifested by an appropriate agent. Fortunately, in Inuit storytelling, a host of supernatural nemeses are just waiting for their chance to get in. Supernatural, legend, mythology.

The linguistics describing traditional belief are perilous. Even the word belief is confining, suggesting a superstitious or backwards people. So utilizing these same systems of Eurocentric linguistics to describe indigenous cultural liminal spaces is patronizing, if only to invalidate an indigenous point of view. Liminal in that these are attempts to address concerns of a threshold, a spiritual other. When traversing, conversing, or mediating in between realms, the lines begin to blur, and therein lies our dilemma. There exists a desire to delineate what is real and what is not.

Yet reality is just what we tell each other it is. We have a fundamental need to draw that line for our own mental and emotional health, to keep those unnatural forces from the safety of our world. Reassurance that the embryotic sac of our reality has not been breached and the monsters have not made their way inside. Consensus on reality only serves our own ego. that humanity is on top, that there is nothing else beyond what we see, and that nervous supremacy is maintained by subverting Indigenous

peoples' point of view, to dispel the idea of a realm both greater and more terrible than ours, a notion that can be frightening and inherently interesting at the same time. And that's what I love. The late great American filmmaker David Lynch best described being disturbed as taking the familiar, say, our reality, and making it unfamiliar. So I get a kick when I tell a scary story. And children, they ask me afterwards, like, is this a real story?

And I smile for something I have said has cut deep. The knife has hit the bone, so to speak. And I reply with a line from Cormac McCarthy, and I say, well, it is true that it's a story. One neat thing about horror stories is when they get real. When they shake your world. By design, these scary stories are made to imitate reality. And when they become too real, it's

like they can reach out and cause us harm. Suddenly, we are vulnerable. Suddenly, we are careful of our actions. We are careful of what we say. So, fear, belief, how we label the world is important. It imparts meaning. Words hold power. They have their own agency and must be handled delicately.

The things you say are powerful and have repercussions, consequences. In Inuit storytelling, we have a story that warns you about being mindful of what you say. How magic had once been more powerful. and it is not so much a scary story as it exemplifies the power in between realms and the words we use to describe them. So this is the story of the origin of night and day. Originally the world was devoid of light. That is until Arctic Hare, Uclic, and Raven, Tulagak, happened to cross paths in the dark.

And Uclic wanted to see Raven, to see Tulagak. And so Hare said, Day, oolak, day. And existence was filled with a beautiful brilliance. However, you know, Raven did not like this, not one bit. And so he ruffled his feathers and he cried, dark, talk, dark. And the world fell into darkness once more. So the two argued back and forth,

creating a kaleidoscope of light and dark until exhausted. They both walked away from each other, and they have stayed apart ever since. So that is how day and night were created, more or less. In some tellings, it is a fox and a raven. In others, it is a fox and a rabbit. I like to think raven and rabbit

had fallen in and out of love. However, that probably says more about me than the story itself, so we don't need to get into that. But what is important is that this act of naming should not be taken lightly. And any custom that also exists along these same lines lies within our traditional songs, our piscite, where we do not name animals or individuals outright.

To do so would be considered disrespectful and risk incurring misfortune. Think of it like pointing fingers, which is generally considered to be rude. And so we avoided naming for fear of the power in our words, so we have workarounds to keep polite company and avoid a day and night type fiasco. We use other words in our songs to coyly speak of these individuals without drawing their ire. Kilniktuk, for example, is the Inuktitut word for the color black. However,

we can also poetically use this word to refer to musk ox, which is just a reference to their dark furs. For polar bear, we can say the one who sways his neck or the one who like, he runs funny. And so this custom of warding against the act of naming or not naming, this can also be used in modern contexts as well. Recently, I've been working with the Montreal Science Centre and we've been creating an

exhibit that investigates mysterious phenomena. Phenomena which may or may not be caused by something called a nanourloque or a polar bear of legendary giant proportions. Traditionally, Nannoulouite were said to be the size of mountains, right? Their hunger and anger wreaked disaster upon communities. However, when time came to name our exhibit, the obvious choice being Nannoulouite, we were lucky to be reminded of this custom of naming,

which interestingly enough was echoed from Inuit all across the Arctic. We could not outright name the exhibit Nanuluk for fear it would sow disrespect into the wind. And so in the end we settled on a different name, Nannualok, essentially just a very large polar bear. This ire or curse of naming of speaking below the radar to avoid misfortune is not unique to Inuit, right? If anything this seems to be universal to the human condition. Inherently, we understand on some base level the dangers of invoking or of conjuring our own demise. And yet despite that, we are inexplicably drawn to it.

We dim the lights and we chant Bloody Mary. Beetlejuice, you know, he who shall not be named. Our hubris has no limits. One of my favorites is old split foot, so called that we can talk about the devil without having to worry about him knocking on our door. Another favorite, and how I love Inuit for this, is Satanacy.

Now, whether or not an Inuit invention, but most likely Satanacy was used to convert Inuit to Christianity in order that we may see our culture reflected in it. So we had Satanacy, Jesusy, Matusi, and so on. The very real horrors of colonization is another topic. However, in an attempt to dissuade Inuit from our own traditional practices, missionaries spoke of Jesusy and gave a certain moniker to the most powerful or renowned figure in Inuit beliefs, who is Nuleiok, or the woman who lives under the sea. Yet, what missionaries had referred to her as was the grandmother of the devil, which as far as names go is pretty badass.

If anything, that would have had the opposite effect on me. Something about that just seems to ring true. The woman under the sea is a central figure in Inuit cultures throughout the circumpolar Arctic. Across borders, countries, communities, dialects, one thing that we can all agree on is that there is a woman at the bottom of the sea and she is awful.

Awful in that her power and bounty in life is awe-inspiring. Her story is tragic, yet through her pain, that her power and bounty in life is awe-inspiring. Her story is tragic, yet through her pain, betrayal, and ultimately murder, the woman descends to the bottom of the sea and so becomes its inheritor. She becomes the mother of the sea upon which all of Inuit life depend. So much is owed to this woman, so we are careful not to show her disrespect.

If so, she may call her children home, and the world above suffers scarcity, illness, and death. So for fear of her retribution, pains are taken not to invoke her wrath. And her litany of names is a testament to this. Nulyayuk, the wife. Takanaluk, that one down below. Takanakapsuluk, that terrible one down below. Sesuma Alna, mother of the sea, or even Nwini Gmokwitok, which is just that one who doesn't want to marry,

or who doesn't want to have a husband. Sedna is another, however, that is just an anglicization of the word sana, which is just derived from the Inuit word for down there. Knock, knock. Who's there in the other devil's name? So me, I love the Scottish play, especially the scene with the drunken porter where he pretends to be the doorman of hell and he attempts to talk about the devil in a clandestine way, but then botches

it, right? And this scene is then immediately followed by the announced death of the king. So you can make of that what you will, but something about it kind of speaks to that words can have an anonymous spiritual quality. The study of the correct use of words is orthology. The Greek prefix ortho means something considered correct or true. Etymology is the study of words or the origin of words. Etim meaning truth or true meaning.

These may work for describing our mythos or spiritual understandings. However, these are also outsider attempts to define something inherently indigenous. Even from an Inuit point of view, it is difficult to provide a term that does our notions of spirituality justice. They simply just are. Eurocentric terms adopt a tone of pseudo-realism, something perceived as

not real, as false, as imaginary. I cannot speak for other cultures, however I can relate that an inuktitut term that may do these notions justice is inugtitut. The root word is inuk or inu to describe a person or life or life force, yet the vowel is elongated, inu. And now the term possesses the quality of its root. So in this case, possessing the quality of being alive or of being human. However, the affix ngit turns the whole phrase on its head, making it negative, inu ngit. Not possessing the quality of being alive, not possessing the quality of being human. And the athixtut is third person plural. So you put them all together and what do you got? You have innuidut, those who are not alive, those who are not human.

That is what I find most interesting about innuidut horror. The sense of the other side is very real. Most indigenous cultures believe in a spiritual background behind the world that we see, an orthoreality, if you will, an etimensional realm where the weight of our actions is sevenfold. As so, in such realms exist agents of a sort of a spiritual immune system who can aid or manifest if given the opportunity. And that opportunity lies at the discretion of the individual, which is what we as humans boil down to the ability to exercise choice. That is our modus operandi, or our motivation that theater directors like to talk about so much.

And therein lies so much potential for conflict. The characters in our stories have the choice to honor what their elders have told them. And do they? Unfortunately, or perhaps for our sakes, fortunately, they do not. For if they hadn't have done what we had told them not to do, there would be no story. And we can't have that. No, no, no, no.

Mistakes must be made. Lessons will be learned. Blood will be shed. Because we are human. Inugata. We are human. Our stories are memento mori, tales to remind us of our mortality. Of what happens when we stray from the path. Because we will

trespass, right? Proudly. Because consequences happen to other people. But not us. We're better than that, right? We're smarter. Does this sound familiar? So these youngsters, they need to transgress. They forego the voices that bid them to turn back. In the horror or storytelling community, these voices are called harbingers or heralds, someone or something who warns of oncoming danger and begs the summer students to turn away Before it is too late and do they listen? No, and again, we are thankful they do not right there annoying as hell and

We can't wait for them to be slaughtered You know warnings do not apply to them them to be slaughtered. Warnings do not apply to them. Interestingly enough, J.P.T. Anakak, the brilliant linguist, had taught me the Inuktitut equivalent of the word harbinger, which is nyuvirriakti tukku, or the one who shops or the one who welcomes or predicts death, which in traditional storytelling corresponds to the parents or elders. They tell their children not to do something,

lest they should face the consequences. The children, of course, ignore this advice, and as horrid as this may be, they pay the ultimate price. For what better way to caution than with a fantastic, awesome, disturbing deterrent? A horrifying setup which always reminds me of a young girl named Alashua. Now Alashua is the protagonist from Michael Kusagak's 1988 classic, Promise is a Promise, in which Alashua, our young Inuit heroine, is cautioned by her parents not to go fishing at the cracks in the sea ice, but to go fishing at a lake instead.

For if Alashua were to go down to the cracks in the ice, the monstrous Kalupeleuit would come out of the ocean and drag her down, down, underneath the sea. The Kalupeleuit are among the innumerable Inuit who are just waiting for us to trespass that they may fulfill their brutal Functions it is said actually it is said when you approach the shore ice without your parents You can hear the kalupe Luit knocking underneath Letting you know they are there waiting for their chance to grab you and

Take you down, down below. So when Elashua comes to her literal fork in the road, does she heed her parents' advice or head down the long, snowy path to the sea? Those who have not read the book can imagine which path she takes and what horrors she must face down that damn road. On ideas you've been listening to, Underneath the Ice by Inuk writer, Jameis Hefornier. You can hear ideas on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on US public radio, across North America, on Sirius XM, on World Radio Paris, in Australia, on ABC Radio National, and around the world

at cbc.ca slash ideas. You can also find us on the CBC News app and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayed. Did you know it was nearly eight o'clock at night in Washington when Donald Trump set a date for Canadian tariffs? I think we'll do it February 1st. And his plan for steel and aluminum just sort of slipped out on the way to the Super Bowl. The United States is going to have a 25% tariff. The new U.S. administration is making news that matters to Canadians whenever and wherever it wants. And we stay on top of it. I'm Susan Bonner, host of Your World Tonight from CBC News.

Find us wherever you get your podcasts. Today's talk is part of a series we've developed with Crowe's Theatre in Toronto, an opportunity to explore some of the ideas that animate great theatre and shape our own lives today. The play at hand today is Whites by Liz Appel, a dark play about forces outside of ourselves that we cannot control, ghosts of the past and of the future that shape events beyond us in ways that we can never predict. events beyond us in ways that we can never predict. So, the poet Robert Frost was right. You know, the road less traveled makes all the difference, and no matter how

foreboding or ominous we make that road out to be, we want to provoke the unknown and see where it will take us. And there is a French term that echoes this same phenomenon, la perle de vide, the call of the void. It is the uncanny voice that implores you when you stand at the edge of a building or a precipice to just jump for no reason whatsoever. And echoing that call, horror stories, traditional stories,

allow us to make those terrible choices and jump into that void from the safety of our storytellers. By the end of the story, we may be slightly traumatized, yet we are the better for it, because that's what we signed up for. We are possessed with dreadful excitement when we tempt fate, despite being told otherwise. It's intoxicating, right? We love it.

We whistle at the Northern Lights. We look in the mirror. Another fascinating Inuktitut translation I came across actually comes, actually concerns reflections themselves. This family of words all stem from the root Tar'ak meaning shadow, which again comes from the root word taak meaning darkness, which you have Raven to thank for. So taak is darkness, taak is shadow, and so the word for mirror is taaktut, whose etymology breaks down to the likeness of a shadow. And this I learned from the immensely talented Selina Khaluk, who taught me that when you

want to say he or she or it looks at themselves in the mirror, you say, t'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a'a shade or your own darkness. Now if you want to take this one step further and say, I use my own shadow, you look in the mirror and you say, it's tempting, isn't it? To summon something lurking in your own reflection. As we gaze into the mirror, we see that these horrors, these monsters are also reflections of ourselves. We are lost. We are lonely outsiders. We are mocked and teased.

We live lives of pain and solitude. These characters serve as their own cautionary tales for fear of what we may become. For if you started down the wrong paths, there is no telling what may happen. If you are not careful, we too can become lost. The original monster stories held a degree of this. Vampires, werewolves, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were all, once upon a time, good people.

However, some misfortune or some trauma had left them scarred. And now, when day becomes night, things oh so wrong feel oh so right. If we are not careful, we too can turn into something else. Someone else. Terrors that prey upon our friends and loved ones, damaging not only our lives, but those around us as well. Inuit needed to keep our families safe, so story was one way

that enabled us to ward against dangers looming both above and below the surface of the community. Inuit storytelling with all of its blood and thunder provides discipline not to punish but to provide structure. The children in these stories learn the hard way, gaining experience and insight along the way. There's something about being pitted against tremendous, terrifying odds that seems to elevate human nature. It brings out what shines best about humanity, our resolve and our ingenuity comes to light. The acclaimed cleecho storyteller Richard Van Camp, also from the NWT, offers horror writing workshops online.

And if you're interested and you ever get the chance, I heavily, definitely recommend it. But what Richard had taught me was that horror stories kind of wake you up in a way. They show you exactly what is at risk, what it is you hold dear. They show you what it is that you want to protect. And that realization that everything you care for is in peril is what makes the story hit home.

Now you got some skin in the game, as Richard likes to say. Whereas before you may have been unsure about your future, unsure about your life, unsure about your values. However, when gazing down the barrel of a gun or down the maw of some hideous beast, there comes a certain clarity. Somewhere deep down, we find there is something that we want to hold on to, someone or something worth fighting for. And that gives us the drive to defend what we value.

Once you know what you are up against, you know what you are. And that contrast provides definition. In order to be brave, first you have to know what scares you. In her 2018 album, Inuit songwriter, Elizabeth Isaacs sang, "'Darkness brings the light.'" Now, I cannot be sure of what she was referring to, but perhaps she spoke of how life's tribulations

help shape the beauty of being alive. We need these horrors to show us what we cherish, to show us what is at stake of being lost. These horrors allow us to appreciate what we have in life. Scary stories are interesting by nature. They draw us in with their danger and conflict, and they make it personal. That is what makes them captivating. That is what I have loved about horror since I was a child. I could be captivated. I could be drawn into their world. I could feel their terror and humor and be transported to a backstage realm where everything held a deeper meaning.

And we need that. By continuing to tell our stories, we keep their danger alive. We need them, our boogeymen. We need to sharpen their teeth and loose them into the world so that they may feast upon the guts of our future ancestors. We shall teach them to tremble, that they may know themselves. For if there are no more monsters left in the world we will have no choice but to become them ourselves and we can't have that we can't have

that. Teima. Thank you very much everyone. Nakumya. Wow. I feel like I've been watching a film. Thank you very much for a beautiful presentation. So now, as I said, I have a few questions for you, James T. And then we'll throw it to you, to the audience. If you have a question, this is the moment to write it down. And we'll try to get to as many as possible. But first, again, James T., what a beautiful presentation. And so thoughtful. My God. I mean, you took, what a beautiful presentation and so thoughtful. My God, I mean, he took us to a whole other world.

Oh, definitely. It's my pleasure. And then getting to come up here and ramble on about scary stories and horror movies. Yes, definitely. The nerd in me is very delighted. Well, I'm interested in that nerd because I'm not a big horror fan. I have to begin by saying, I know. But listen, you make a wonderful case for it at the end.

For us to reflect on ourselves and to understand what's at stake. I mean, that's a really great argument for horror. And yet you begin your presentation by saying that you've, I've always enjoyed horror and I can't tell you why. Tell me about the journey between that, the person who didn't know why you enjoyed horror, and these incredible arguments that you make in favour of it, of why you love it.

I think like, you know, as a kid, you have those, what do you call it, those high interest values of it where you see horror and you see, you know, the big gory scenes and blood gushing everywhere and they make you kind of squeamish. And I kind of liked that as a kid that I saw that there isn't kind of a bit of maybe power in that of being able to kind of sit through a squeamish scene. We made others kind of turn away and I was fascinated by that. I'm like, why? Why this kind of dichotomy is happening here?

And so just going through that and going through comic books and all that, I don't want to say violence, but that spooky element of being able to draw you into this darkness and believe that there were scary things out there. I was just thinking about this the other day where I remember as a kid and going to the public library and you go to like that junior non-fiction section where you find like the spooky kind of cryptid, you know, these

official books on UFOs and Sasquatch and things like that. And I just remember being so fascinated by that. And so continuing to go down that way and as a kid growing up that hearing a lot of our traditional storytelling, right, of these spooky stories, these spooky monsters waiting to come and get you, you know, if you don't do as you're told, I found that I was proud of that, that this was my culture, you know, that kind of exercised these beings. And so I wanted to kind of play and dance in that realm. And it wasn't, I don't know, for the longest time, I had these two kind of worlds colliding

of how much I love them. I never thought, like, what if you just put them together? You refer to the story of, is it Knut Rasmussen? And the Iglulik Shaman Ava, who famously says of Inuit belief systems that we do not believe, we fear. Can you expand on your interpretation of that difference in approach? Belief versus

fear. Well, I think fear is kind of something a little more that we feel more kind of intrinsically like our bodies themselves, we're physically hardwired to be able to navigate through fear and through our nervous system, nerves and everything, through, I don't know, those reactions that we do before we can even think about it, we're already done. And so fear is one of our most base instincts, right? To be able to survive, to kind of preserve ourselves

for our own survivalism. And so kind of playing on that, you know, horror stories and nightmares, so to speak, they're kind of like, like something like dress rehearsals for, you know, when something terrible may happen in the real world. And also, and that plays in the same world that anxieties lay, right? Where you're just, you know, problem solving for, for problems that don't yet exist. And so having this basis of fear kind of grounds it in reality.

Thank you, by the way, for helping me finally understand how day and night came about. And I'm curious with that story with the hare and the raven, you know, it teaches us about the tension between day and night, and it suggests there's this kind of unending battle between forces over which we have no control. Is there a resolution?

Is there a balance in the way Inuit stories portray the universe? When you look at that kind of story? I think the, looking at the universe with Inuit storytelling, you see that there is a type of balance. There's a way to be able to live in kind of harmony despite there being great differences. And a lot of, you know, I don't want to make Inuit storytelling to be just all like doom

and gloom and terrible things. There's a lot of really fun and laughter and beauty, but also there's a lot of misfortune and kind of a lot of the origin stories can be kind of a little bit tragic like that, or like, you know, the way that love stories are all really tragedies, right? So I think looking at the universe in terms of balance, being able to say, yeah, there is an origin behind things. And it kind of gives you a framework to be able to have more kind of educational talks in that moment, right, of like learning on the spot.

And it's fun to be able to explore these kind of deeper themes within a story and, you know, especially when you're educating to youth, you know, it gives them pieces that they can hold on to, right, and be able to manipulate. The knocking throughout your presentation, what did you want us to feel or think as we heard those knocks? Yeah, I couldn't help myself. When I was writing out the thing, every time I'm like, just knocking comes, keeps coming up and I was practicing it and I kept on being, I just want to punch something.

And like being able to play with that knocking that there's something that you're tempting fate that there's something knocking at the door should you decide, you know, to exercise your free will and misstep and kind of invite that sense of misfortune of it always being there. So I always remember like, just again, like laying in bed and thinking that there's something like just tapping on the other side waiting to get in. And so kind of capturing that moment, but also realizing that it has a lot of other applications

as well of different sides of the threshold. Yeah. Our relationship with that realm, or it kind of seems to, you're describing kind of a tense relationship, at least that's what I got from what you wrote. You say that the weight of our actions is sevenfold there. And then you go on to say that this emphasizes the human necessity

of making good choices. How should that shape day-to-day life? Well, I like to think of day- day life as like, you know, how much will or won't you regret, right? And how much will you feel bad about it? You know, if you had a moment in a choice to kind of to be respectful or to be kind or to be nice, and it can weigh on you as the day goes long. And so thinking about what are these moments

where I'm like, I'm sowing misfortune into my own life, or I'm tempting bad luck, or this all kind of karmic type themes. So it kind of keeps you on the straight and narrow a little bit, but also you can kind of have fun with it, right? And you say, yeah, and kind of throw stuff to the side and see what's worse that can happen.

And sometimes it's terrible. The conclusion that you sort of, one of the conclusions that you kind of come to is that not only will mistakes be made by humans in dealing with the spirit world, but that mistakes need to be made to kind of remind us of our own mortality, momentum or you were saying, we're supposed to make bad decisions. It's a very powerful message. Why is it important?

Well, if we're making mistakes, you know, those are chances for us to learn. They're opportunities to learn, right? Every time a mistakes we made, we can be able to remember kind of a little bit what had happened last time. Remember, because otherwise they don't, they, you know otherwise they seem vague and that they don't apply to us. And that, oh yeah, there's no consequences, whatever. And so when you make a mistake, it becomes real. There are consequences.

There are repercussions to your actions. And I think that's a very good lesson to have there, especially in terms of human nature, because a lot of bad things can happen when you have people who believe that there are no consequences. And so being able to have that as an exemplar, but then also you know the bad things are going to happen despite the story, but then you kind of want to do it because you kind of want to manifest this bad, dark thing to happen, like the whole Candyman thing. Like, yes, you're going to die terribly, awfully. Like, oh, let's do it anyways, you know, because it's fun.

I have a couple more questions, but I also have this big stack. So I thought maybe we could do a round of these, if you don't mind, from the audience. And we'll, because there's a few, we'll just do them fairly quickly, if you don't mind from the audience. And we'll, because there's a few, we'll just do them fairly quickly if you don't mind. All right, so the first one is, have or how have Inuit storytelling traditions

adopted or included some of our more modern horrors, such as substance abuse or online predators to send messages of caution to today's children and communities. I think like with a lot of indigenous storytelling and traditional ones and innuence is that there's this very real idea of addiction. So being able to kind of be haunted by something

of inviting that sense of misfortune and this thing that can not be satiated, right? And so how do you kill something that doesn't exist? So kind of looking at it from a monster's point of view of physical monsters and then theoretical ones as well, it really kind of makes you think about hard choices. Okay. How in your worldview does horror relate to precarity? To this, you know, the existence of many young people today.

Precarity in employment, precarity in housing, just not having any certainty about anything. Well, I think being able to, like, stories are a way to be able to kind of anchor us a little bit, right? And so, at the end of the day, being able to kind of sit down and, because I know I had this story, I had to deal with a lot of that with writing this thing. At the end of the day, there's so much craziness happening. I'm like, I have no idea what the future may bring, but I can sit down, I can read through this thing a little bit and be able to anchor myself right here in this moment.

And so that's what's fun about telling stories, even if you're telling same stories over and over again, that kind of repetition of that familiarity, right? That's why we like to watch our favourite shows over and over again, because they bring us that sense of comfort that everything's going to be okay in the world just for this next half hour. How does Inuit horror, and we could do a whole conversation around this, I think. How does Inuit horror deal with the horrors of colonization? I think like this idea of balance of this, you know, terrible injustices and misfortune

that have happened and still having these type of like spiritual forces on the other side also as being like sources of strength as well and being able to kind of survive like despite having an onslaught of erasure that we can still return back to our stories that have been with us since forever. We just keep telling them over and they still exist, which gives them power, right? And we need them, we need our bogeymen. And then it's great to be able to connect back like that and still feel very proud in our culture and say, yeah, that terrible, horrifying thing, that's my buddy. We're running out of time, so I'm going to read a last bit of script, but there is a

final question. You don't kind of in the end in your lecture offer any resolution to the problem of the spirit realm. And as you say, if there are no more monsters left in the world, we will have no choice but to become them. And that's a really sobering thought. Where does that leave us? I think of just trying to be mindful of ourselves

and our actions and the impact that we have on each other's lives. Because if we're not kind of respectful of our own lives, it's not just ourselves, right? It's everyone else we know, everyone that we're connected to, our family, our friends. And so if we're not kind of looking after ourselves in such a way that it can really reach out and hurt others. But how do we move forward without becoming those monsters ourselves? I guess just trying to study your actions and what kind of the motivations behind them

and kind of seeing, you know, what is self-serving and but what can I do to be able to help someone else? James Cifornia, thank you so much for taking our questions and for a wonderful presentation. Thank you. Really wonderful. Thank you. I like it. I like it.

Thank you. You love it. I'm a farmer. Can't say it properly. You did well. Thank you. On Ideas, you've been listening to Underneath the Ice by Inuk writer, James C. Fournier.

This was the third in a series of five talks this season produced in association with Crowe's Theatre in Toronto. This talk was inspired by the current Crowe's production of Whites by playwright, Liz Appel. Ideas at Crowe's Theatre is produced by Philip Coulter and Pauline Holzworth. Special thanks to Chris Abraham, Paolo Santaluccia, Katie Pounder, Carrie Sager, and the entire Crowes Theatre team. For ideas, our technical producer is Danielle Duval. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso, senior producer, Nikola Lukcic,

Greg Kelly is the executive producer of Ideas, and I'm Nala Ayed. And I'm super great for you, we're all here today. Thank you so much for coming. Have a wonderful Sunday. Thank you. Beautiful.