An Inuit Creation Story
At the beginning of the world there were two eggs. The first egg floated up and became the sky and the heavens, the second egg sank down and became the earth.
In those eggs were two giants. Edna was the first egg who fell down from the heavens to break Paul out of his earthly shell. As Edna crashed into Paul there was a large explosion, which created the sun and the moon. But come to find out they have also created there first child, Sedna.
Day by day, as the sun became weaker and smaller, Sedna grew stronger and bigger. She grew and grew very quickly until, in no time at all, she was huge. Soon she was bigger than her giant parents.
The bigger she got the more she ate and the more she needed to eat, but there were not enough plants on the land to satisfy her hunger. One night, ravenously hungry, she began to gnaw her parents legs.
‘Owww!’ they cried, ‘that's enough of that.’ With a great struggle they bundled Sedna up in a blanket and carried her on their backs, letting a huge crow tie the knot and help them lift her into the boat. Once Sedna was in the canoe Edna and Paul climbed on top. It was dark but they used their long paddleds and headed out to sea, in the light of a hazy moon. When they reached the middle of the ocean, the boat cracked and the icy waters engulfed Sedna, but during the decent of there large child the crow came to Edna and Pauls rescue.
As they were flying towards shore safely on the crows back, they were sad about what they had done to there daughter. But before they got to far, they saw two giant hands, Sedna's hands, reaching out of the water to grab the crow and she began pulling the feathers from the crow.
Simply to save themselves, they pulled out sharp knives and chopped off Sedna's fingers. One by one the fingers splashed into the sea and, as they sank, they changed into swimming creatures. One became a whale, one a seal, another a walrus, another a salmon. The fingers changed into all the creatures of the seas.
As for Sedna, she drifted through new shoals of fish to the bottom off the ocean. There the fishes built her an underwater tent. Above her, the cold waters formed a crust of ice and sealed Sedna in her wintry, watery world. She still lives there, and whenever the Inuit are short of food, they call on Sedna and she provides it, even in the depths of winter.
