Qitsualik: Shapeshifter: An Inuit tale

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Long have humans recognized the powers that animals possess, which we do not. The animals that a culture recognizes - even in the most industrialized society - form the basis of its archetypes, one of the pillars upon which that society's cosmology rests.

Ever since humans have admired animal traits, we have been trying to acquire them. We have always imitated animals in dress, or worn symbols associated with them, in order to take on their ''feel'' - as though whatever they possess can somehow be transferred to us via sympathetic magic. An extreme way of trying to assume an animal's trait is to ingest it (most usually a special part of it). But the most extreme way of assuming animal traits is to convince oneself that one has become that animal (in English, ''therianthropy''), an imagining that no culture has ever completely abandoned (just watch a werewolf movie).

In Inuit culture, all human beings have ''personal animals,'' those that are friend or foe (i.e., an animal that one must especially respect, or altogether avoid); but the lore of human-to-animal shape-changing generally remains attributable to the angakkuit (shamans). The stories of shamanic transformation are among the most sensationalistic of Inuit tales, however cautionary, being the tales of unbridled power and its price.

Taitsumaniguuq (once upon a time), an angakoq (shaman) of the Netsilik Inuit met an angakoq of the Utku folk. Despite any attempts to get along, two angakkuit meeting almost always spelled trouble, since they could not resist the temptation to talk about each other's powers. As they went on about their respective feats, each began to try to top the other. After all, camp people were listening and reputations were at stake. In this way, each ego offended the other until a fight broke out - and that meant a duel.
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