Two Old Women

Two old women are part of a migrating Athabaskan Indian tribe during a harsh Arctic winter. The people are starving, and the two old women are abandoned by the group.

But the two women don't just sit down in the snow and die. Instead, they struggle to make their way to an old camp they remember as being flush with animals from the past, and with unexpected resolve and determination, the two women build a shelter from the freezing cold, hunt and store food, and make warm mittens and clothing from the skins of the animals they kill.

It's a wonderful story. I was rooting for the women the entire time and they proved themselves to be worthy every step of the way during their trials in the Arctic.

This book is a novelization of a Athabascan Indian legend.

I have had several friends who romanticize or “spiritualize” Native Americans (and other, non-European peoples) to the point of making them unhuman. I once had a friend who told me about how the virtuous arctic peoples would deal with food shortages in Winter. The eldest would stay behind so they would not be a burden to the rest of the people. This was done, in her telling, voluntarily and with great serenity. I could almost see their halos as she told the tale. BUT, the little voice in my head yelled “BS!” Sure, it might well have happened that way sometimes, but I know human beings (despite being of European descent, I am not totally unfamiliar with the human race.) Humans want to live! Humans abandon other humans and feel like crap for it. Humans sometimes are jerks.

This book shows the tribe abandoning these two old women, and it is not pretty at all. We are allowed to witness slow murder. It feels real. Not romanticized at all, this story is an authentic picture of humans in extremis. Of course, there is a necessary and fitting happy ending, but it did not invalidate what went before.