Kelly Ward

My mother doesn’t know. She’s too grown up to remember the scary parts of our land. The scary things that hide around us. She thinks that the land is nothing more than the science of the space around us, environment and nature. She thinks this is all that lives outside. For some reason, elders and children know more than adults do, and I wonder why that is. They act like they know everything, as if everything has an explanation. At some point in their lives they forget the stories children are told, dismissing them as fairy tales and myths. They think that the scary women in the ice aren’t real, or that the little folk that you can only see at sunset are just imaginary, or that giants never roamed the earth. Just like all adults, my mother has forgotten all those things the elders had passed down. - from "The Haunted Blizzard" by Aviaq Johnston

A child who grows without love doesn’t grow into a peaceful or rational person. It was too late for me. The love that came too late brought up other feelings. Jealousy. Paranoia. Cowardice. Distrust. - from Revenge by Thomas Anguti Johnston

It’s easy to look inside yourself as a fellow man and see all those dark secrets, horrible thoughts, moronic attitudes, and then take your self-hatred out on some poor bastard who you know harbours all the same flaws deep down. All men are the same, some are just better at hiding this shared disease than others.