NAPPAALUK, Mitiarjuk, 2014 Sanaaq, Winnipeg, University of Manitoba Press, 248 pages.

Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk has gifted Canada and the Inuit world, of both past and present, with her beautiful story, her novel Sanaaq. She has allowed each of us a small look into the once everyday existence of the Inuit from her home territory in northern Quebec. The world is a better place for it. Nappaaluk introduces the main character of the story, Sanaaq, as a woman characterized by a practical approach toward life from the opening scene onward. Readers are invited into her life as she prepares herself to head out, on her own, to gather mat-making material, taking with her a couple of dogs and enough food to last her through her day. The opening sentence reveals to the reader that the Qallunaat, the white men, have a presence in Sanaaq’s life already as she gathers up “matches and chewing tobacco” (p. 3) as a part of her provisions for this full day of work. As Sanaaq is returning, she stoops to pick berries for her little girl, who yells, “It’s Mother! It’s Mother!” (p. 5) upon seeing her returning home. There is a narrative within the first third of this book that brings to mind those readers that lined the desks of our elementary school years, the “Dick and Jane” genre of how we all learned to read; however the subject matter within Sanaaq is much different. We are brought into a world of making your own: everything from the meals prepared from the game shot out on the land to the clothes on your back and to the stories told and handed down from generation to generation. Ningiukuluk tells us, “I can no longer do anything because I am an old woman,” (p. 67) and recounts a story of wisdom, passed on to her from years before. It is the story of a lone Inuk who is frightened within his snow house. He is later given the dead bodies of a caribou and a wolf, lying side by side, which had been killed by the she-wolf who had frightened him from his shelter. Ningiukuluk says, “We get by thanks to gifts” (p. 69) to remind the world of the importance of sharing and remaining fearless of the unknown. Nappaaluk disperses her Indigenous knowledge throughout the book, like small teasers peppered here and there, enriching the text with elderly insight. The influence of the Qallunaat is seen again when Ningiukuluk tells Sanaaq of a bad dream she had had, one in which something is broken, and she cautions Sanaaq to take care of her baby son or else someone close to her will die (p. 86). Sanaaq chides the old woman, telling her, “We’ve been told not to believe at all in such things. They’re not really things to believe in ai!” From that moment onward, bad luck falls upon the encampment, and it is not until Nappaaluk writes down the importance of an elder’s wisdom that the situation begins to improve, “Without elders the Inuit are nothing, for this is much knowledge that the elders alone possess!” (p. 112). Nappaaluk brings back how to view the world with Inuit eyes over and over again, perhaps writing in her own way to the generations that have not yet come into this world but who are waiting to. The book falls out of the “Dick and Jane” genre completely. There is a change in voice as this book progresses and it would be feasible to assume that as the author matures her writing style becomes more conformed to the standards of the English language. The beating of Sanaaq …