Multicoloured northern lights over St. Andrews, Manitoba
died a voluntary or violent death, and the Raven, have
been over this pathway. The spirits who live there light
torches to guide the feet of new arrivals. This is the
light of the aurora. They can be seen there feasting and
playing football with a walrus skull.
The whistling crackling noise which sometimes
accompanies the aurora is the voices of these spirits
trying to communicate with the people of the Earth.
They should always be answered in a whispering
voice. Youths dance to the aurora. The heavenly
spirits are called selamiut, ‘sky-dwellers,’ those who
live in the sky.
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Hawkes travelled the whole of the Labrador
Peninsula with Inuit companions, and this story
would have been told to him the same way it
had been relayed orally through generations. All
cultures in the world have some story version of an
afterlife and this one demonstrates their lack of fear
and their willingness to embrace death.
Many native North Americans had stories
and beliefs that the northern lights were a negative force. The Point Barrow Inuit considered the
northern lights an evil thing, and they carried
knives to keep it away from them.
The Yupik people of St. Lawrence Island claim