Gifts From My Ancestors

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. I remember when I first saw them.

I was 8 years old and my Mother and I still lived in Sápmi, traveling with and tending to our reindeer herd across the tundra. I had woken suddenly from a deep sleep that night, and felt an unsettling feeling wash over me.

I sat up slowly and waited for my eyes to adjusted to my surroundings. There was a soft, golden glow from the crackling fire in the center of the lávvu, our tent made of hides, and my mother sat with her back to me. As she added one last piece of birch-wood to the fire, she sang the joik that my grandmother used to sing of her when she was a child.

“You don’t joik to someone, you joik them, just as you love them,” my mother used to say, as her mother used to say to her.

I reached for my wooden cup, my kuksa that my grandfather carved years ago, and I slid out from under the heavy wool blankets. My mother heard me stir and turned.

“I need some water.”

“There’s some left in the kettle. Do you not feel well?”

“I feel strange. Like something is heavy inside of me. I want to go outside.”

“I will come with you, I want to show you something.”

I grabbed a wool blanket from my bed and my red hat, and my Mother lifted the reindeer hide she was sitting on as we headed for the door. It was June, still midnight sun, so the sky remained softly illuminated all through the night. But the moment I stepped outside, I saw them. The clouds. They were swirling and twisting slowly in every direction, I had never seen anything like it. My mouth hung open and I couldn’t move, transfixed.

“What is this?” I asked as I remained entranced by the sight splayed out before me across the wide open sky.

“It is a gift from our ancestors. It protects us, our land and our reindeer. It will guide us back if we are ever lost.”

I looked out across the tundra at the reindeer scattered, grey and white, across the horizon, lit up from the sun resting above the mountains to the west. They continued to graze, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

“What is it, though?”

“Some say we will never find out, but I think that, given time, the truth will be revealed,” my mother said as she laid the hide on the cold dry ground. She sat down and gestured for me to join her.

I sat down close to her as she put her arm around me. She studied my face.

“You look so much like her, you know? Your grandmother.”

I had never met my grandmother, but I know that she found humor in all things, as I always have, had a deep love for the reindeer, like me, and she was strong, very strong, both in body and in spirit, like I had always been told I also was.

“Hu-,” was all I could say as I lowered down onto my back to get a better view. My mother did the same.

My mother died 9 years later. I was 17 and had to go live with my aunt and uncle in a village far away. We were forced to sell all the reindeer, except for Alta, who was born the morning after I first saw the purple clouds. She quickly became my best friend and was more like a dog than a reindeer. She was a miracle. She had one silver eye, that appeared to glow purple whenever I missed my mother, or felt that deeper sadness that would sometimes come, and which I could never understand. She would speak to me in a silent language that only Alta and I understood. A language of the cosmos. Alta, I knew, was a gift from my ancestors. She was my protection, my hope and my strength, until she disappeared one winter night, which changed me forever. It changed my world. I was told that many reindeer lost their way after the pipeline cut through our land.

I’m 43 now and, somehow through the dark, I’ve never stopped believing in the power of those clouds, the love of my ancestors, my mother and Alta.

These days I walk upon very different land. Stolen land. Land with roads and buildings, while more roads are paved and more buildings are built. Land stolen from my ancestors, not a reindeer in sight.

Nothing is the same anymore, except for those clouds and the waiting.