Sedna: the Eternal Mother of Sea

The seals and whales the Inuit hunted grew from a drowning girl's severed fingers. She sank to the bottom of the ocean and became its mother, and every animal the people needed to live now belonged to her. She has no fingers left to comb her own hair. When someone on land breaks a taboo, the wrongdoing works its way into that hair as filth and knots, and the pain of it turns her against the living. She keeps the animals down in the dark with her, the hunt fails, and people begin to starve. The only remedy is a shaman willing to sink to the sea floor, calm her, and comb the tangles loose by hand while confessing everything his community has done. If it satisfies her, she lets the animals go and the hunting returns. This is not a goddess who loves the people who depend on her. She is the Arctic written as a woman, the source of all their food and fully able to withhold it without warning. This book follows where Sedna comes from, why the Inuit feared her as much as they needed her, and how her story is still told in the Arctic today.