Origin of Light

In the early times, there was only darkness. Not the comfortable darkness of night, which the people knew — but absolute darkness, the darkness before the world had decided to begin. There was no sky, or the sky was too close. There was no sun, no moon, no stars. There were no people, and there were no animals, and there was no land that anyone could find in the dark.

Then light and darkness began to argue. They had no words, but they had force, and they pulled at each other across the nothing. After a long time — after what the elders call a very long time, longer than any person can imagine — the light won a little ground and the first dim glow spread across the world.

In that first faint light, land appeared. Ice appeared. And with the land came life: first the smallest things, the mosses and the creatures of the tidal zones, and then larger creatures, and then, at last, the people. The Iñupiaq also remember what came before them. They speak of the time of the great animals — animals so large the ground shook when they walked, animals with curved teeth that scraped the sky.

After the darkness, after the flood, after the great animals were gone, the world was given to the people. They were small and had no claws or great teeth. But they had their minds, and they had the seal's gift of understanding cold water, and they had the willingness of the raven to try anything, and with these things they survived the long night of the world and came through into the light.