‘Things happen when Eskimos go south!’: Inuit/unique encounters between north and south, city and tundra, the dead and the living in Norma Dunning’s Tainna: The Unseen Ones

This article considers how Norma Dunning, a writer of Inuit descent, maps out Edmonton in Tainna: The Unseen Ones . It examines the role Dunning gives the Inuit spirits who descend from the north to help their descendants. The stories provide a crude evocation of contemporary Inuit lives on the streets of Edmonton. However, thanks to the spirits, a more humane vision of the southern city surfaces. Even though Dunning does not provide her readers with Inuit myths or an idealized vision of the north, her stories are infused with Inuit spirituality that destabilizes Euro-western visions of space and time.