Fatty Legs: A True Story

The half-page Introduction begins, “My name is Olemaun Pokiak—that’s OO-lee-mawn—but some of my classmates used to call me ‘Fatty Legs’” (1). She explains that the origin of the cruel nickname was due to “a wicked nun” (1), but we get no further details yet. Halfway through the single-paragraph chapter comes a transition: “But I put an end to it” (1). The author then reveals that the book that follows is a decades-old secret about how she managed to do away with the stockings.

In this chapter, we learn about the Inuvialuit world of the High Arctic and its engagement with “outsiders” in the author’s youth. These “outsiders” took children from Arctic islands and relocated them to schools in Aklavik, locations visible on an accompanying map of Northwestern Canada, including Banks Island in the Beaufort Sea. The author was familiar with Aklavik before she became a student herself: She talks about traveling “across the open ocean […] and through the tangled Mackenzie River delta” to make yearly supply runs (3). She saw the nuns and priests who came from Europe and spoke French-Canadian and worked at the schools, and the author envied that they taught students how to read.