The Epic of Qayaq: The Longest Story Ever Told by My People

Richard W. Parker is an associate professor and chair of the Classics
Department at Brock University in St. Catharines.

In Qayaq, Inuit folklore possesses a culture hero combining Odysseus’s
undaunted wanderlust and the tireless philanthropy of Hercules. Lela
Oman, of the Inupiat people of Alaska, heard and transcribed Qayaq
stories in the 1940s, returning to them in 1975 with the desire to
create a “month-long tale.” The episodic and diverse nature of
Oman’s source material is evident in the many doublets and
oft-recurring themes and motifs. As Homer (but not his immediate
successors) realized, recounting a cycle of myth does not an epic make.
Nevertheless, one must be grateful for episodic accounts as a
preservative skeleton-catalogue of a cycle’s stories. The aim in
Qayaq, however, is not to make the complex of tales sound literary, but
to convey some measure of the experience of a weeks-long session of oral
storytelling.

Whereas epics of the Mediterranean and ancient Near East are set in a
wondrous early time when humans, gods, and other creatures interacted,
First Nations myth is characterized by easy interaction between humans
and animals. There are frequent metamorphoses to and from humans and
animals (as well as other things). Indeed, in the heroic age or
“story-time” the distinction between beast and human is blurred.
Qayaq turns into various creatures or leaves his body in animal form; he
lives with, even marries into, communities of people who, at his
parting, are revealed to be hawks, mountain sheep, and the like.

Epic qualities abound. There are accounts of the first humans, the
Great Flood, and a visit to the Land of the Dead. Qayaq possesses a
culture hero’s qualities in abundance; he successfully negotiates
trials, combats, and quests, and acquires talismans and unexpected
helpers while freeing the oppressed, punishing the arrogant, ridding
communities of monsters, and sharing or devising improvements in human
culture. All the while he manages scrupulously to respect tribal customs
and ethics, to use exemplary manners, and to show compassion and
humanity. Can one imagine Hercules apologizing to a community for
killing its oppressive chiefs? The Epic of Qayaq is a good and
enlightening read, best savored when told over several evenings.