The Jealous Aunt

Yupik mother and child

The Aunt was tired of her entire family being terrified of her. Every time there was any sort of gathering people would avoid her - looking for exits, avoiding eye contact, drawing straws to decide who the unlucky person to sit next to her would be. It never ended. Sure, every time a son in the family came of age her husband, Uncle, would take them out into the woods and they'd never be seen again, but that was hardly her fault! It wasn't like she enjoyed their disappearance, she just wan't, you know, actively trying to stop it. But the family barbecue last weekend was the final straw! Her pregnant sister had all but fallen over in her haste to get away from her, her own sister! Something had to be done.

After much consideration she came up with a plan: disguise the child as a girl. Whatever issue Uncle found with boys, even he wouldn't stoop so low as to harm a defenseless girl. Set on the idea, Aunt told her sister and began to sew dresses for her new "niece" immediately. For many years this worked well, her nephew disguised himself admirably, playing only with little girls and wearing his hair long. He certainly didn't make the prettiest little girl but you can't win them all. Unfortunately years of deception were ruined when the young boy, thinking he was alone, stripped off his dress to swim, revealing his decidedly not female body to his uncle. Whoops.

Soon after Uncle sent for Nephew, just as he had sent for all of his other nephews and Aunt grew frustrated. If this one died too it would be back to social isolation for her at every family get-together! No way! Determined to win back her families approval (and like save her Nephew or whatever) the Aunt went to visit her sister and prepare Nephew. Arming him with a knife, eagle down, and cranberries Aunt lectured him on the best ways to avoid uncles traps.

It took awhile - the whole Uncle putting him in a box and sailing him out to sea thing was definitely unexpected - but eventually Nephew was successful and even managed to kill his Uncle. Kicking back at her home, finally free of her murderous husband and welcomed back into her family, Aunt was finally happy. If she had known saving one of her bratty nephews would end like this she would have done it a longgg time ago.

Authors Note:
I wanted to tell the story of the Jealous Uncle from the Aunts perspective because I thought it was totally weird that everyone knew he was murdering his nephews but people just kept letting him do it. I figured that the only way Aunt or someone else wasn't stopping him would be if it the Nephews safety wasn't really that important to them either. I think it is super interesting (but also totally weird) that so many of these stories from the Native American unit feature confilict between a younger male and an older male. Uncles, Fathers, Father-in-laws - it's a really interesting trend.