Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Inuvik (July 26/02) - Holding an audience's attention is never easy, but when your audience is preschool-aged children, it can almost be impossible.

Rankin Inlet's Michael Kusagak started telling stories 15 years ago when his first book was published.

He picked up the craft on the memories of his grandmother and other elders in his hometown of Resolute Bay.

"People used to tell us stories to put us to sleep every night," Kusugak says.

"Those are the stories that have been passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years."

"I heard these stories from the greatest storytellers on Earth," he says.

Same stories around the world

He retells many of the stories he heard as a child and says they are the same stories told up and down the north coast and throughout the circumpolar world.

The story he tells of Kiviuq -- a boy who became strong as stone over night -- he has heard told by people from Greenland.

"It's about the same boy, but it's a different story out there," he said.

"He is a universal character in our legends and it's told in Alaska, Northern Canada and I'm sure Siberia."

'Stone man'

At a literary event at the Toronto harbourfront, he told the story of Kiviuq and was later approached by a man from Finland.

"He said, 'We have a word just like Kiviuq in our language,'" Kusugak recalled.

"He told me the word means 'stone man.' "

"In Resolute Bay, a woman told me that Kiviuq is still alive today and he is so old that his body is turning to stone," he said.

"When I was a kid, we were told that when his heart turns completely to stone that will be the end of the world."

Kusugak says that the secret to good storytelling is having a good time with the tale, no matter how bad things might get.

Have to have fun

"It would bother me when the kids would lose interest," he said.

"I noticed that if you let it bother you, the kids notice and it just gets worse."

"If the kids notice that you are not having fun, they will not have fun with you."

He also grew up with many of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales and Hans Christian Anderson, but says the coming of TV and Christianity had a profound effect on the art.

"The Jesuit and Catholic priests used to say that the stories interfered with their teachings and that's probably true," he said.

In many places he's visited in Northern Quebec and Labrador, story telling is long-lost art.

He has written six books including one written with Robert Munsch and one called Baseball Bats for Christmas, that was translated into Japanese and French and will soon be made into a version for television.

Kusugak said he's working on a new book called No One Forgets a Kindness.