The story of Sedna

The Goddess Companion

 

Where is the woman who refused to marry?

Look: she is in a kayak going to sea with a puffin.

Where is the father of the woman who refused to marry?

He is taking her home in a kayak to the mainland.

Now he is taking the woman back home.

Now a storm is rising. Now the wind is rising.

Now the man is pushing the woman into the sea.

Now she is clinging to the boat. Now he is striking her.

With a knife he is cutting her fingers. Seals emerge.

Again he is striking at her arms. Whales emerge.

Now she is sinking, Sedna the beautiful.

Now she is sinking. The tide is taking her.

~Inuit Song

 

One of the most powerful and violent of the world's goddess myths is the story of Sedna, the great Goddess

of Abundance to the Artic Inuit people and their relatives the Inupiat and Yup'ik. A woman who found no

human man appealing enough to marry, Sedna was finally courted and won by a sea bird. He took her to

an island, where she lived in a huge best and ate fish scraps. After some time, her father came to rescue her,

but the sea rose up against him, for the bird was a prince of the ocean.

 

The man, realizing he could not win against the elements, pushed his daughter overboard. She clung to

the side of the boat. He pushed her away. She sank beneath the waves. And there, she underwent a

transformation. From her arms, whales emerged; from her fingers, seals. The foodstuff from which her

people would rely came from Sedna's body.

 

Variants of this myth - in which a primal mother gives up her body in order to feed her people - appear across

the world. However shocking it might seem, it encodes an inescapable truth: we live of the lives of others.

To do so without gratitude is the ultimate insult to our great mother, nature.

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By Patricia Monaghan ~ From "The Goddess Companion"