The Sun and the Moon is an unipkaaqtuat, a story in Inuit folklore. The traditional explanation for the movement of the Sun and Moon through the sky is a brother and sister are constantly chasing each other across the sky. The story also explains the dappled gray appearance of the Moon as soot smeared on his face.
Names
The brother is most often called Aningaat. In other versions he is simply called Moon (Inuktitut: , ). He is sometimes equated with Tarqiup Inua.
The sister is most commonly called Sun (Inuktitut: , ) (Greenlandic: ). Other times she is simply called "Aningaat's sister". One account from Hans Egede reports her being called Malina or Ajut in Greenland.
One version says their names are Taqqiq and Siqiniq, but that they call each other and (archaic forms of address between a brother and sister). Bernard Saladin D'Anglure gives the etymology that means "favorite brother", from ("brother" when a male is addressed by his sister) paired with one of several synonymous suffixes ("favorite").
Versions
There are two parts to the story: the part about the blind boy and the loon, and the part about the sister and brother becoming the Sun and Moon.
Full tellings of the story include: Repulse Bay storyteller Ivaluardjuk's telling from the early 1920s, Netsilik storyteller Thomas Kusugaq's telling from 1950, Igloolik storyteller George Kappianaq's telling from 1986, and Igloolik storyteller Alexina Kublu's telling from 1999.
The Sun and Moon part is sometimes told without the blind boy part. Such tellings include the 1880s account by Franz Boas of what is reportedly an Akudnirmiut and Oqomiut version, and a 1990 telling by Igloolik storyteller Hervé Paniaq.
The blind boy part is also sometimes told without the Sun and Moon part, particularly by Athabaskan peoples to the west and south.
Blind boy and loon
Aningaat and his sister are orphans living with their grandmother. (In some tellings their mother or stepmother.) The brother is blind. One day a polar bear comes to their camp, to the window of their house. The blind brother shoots the bear through the window, but his grandmother lies and says he only hit the window frame. The grandmother butchers the bear in secret, keeping the meat for herself and the girl. The boy is given dog meat, and not even allowed to live in the main house. The sister gives bear meat to her brother in secret.
The brother asks his sister to take him to a nearby lake where there are red-throated loons. The brother stands by the lake until he hears the sound of a kayak and a voice invites him to sit in it. He sits down and is paddled toward the center of the lake. (In Kusugaq's telling he is simply lead into the lake, no kayak.) They are submerged. When Aningaat needs air, they resurface. After taking air, they dive again. The stranger asks if he can see. This repeats several times: they dive, the stranger asks the boy if he can see. The stranger licks the boy's eyes (a detailing absent in Ivaluardjuk's version) and they dive again. Each time the boy can see a little more, and by the end he is no longer blind. The stranger is a loon (a detail not specified in Kappianaq's version).
Returning home, Aningaat questions his grandmother about the bearskin he can now see. She lies, saying she got it from people who visited in an umiaq.
Now that he can see, the boy makes a harpoon and uses it with white whales passing along the shore. One day his grandmother comes hunting whales with him, serving as the anchor for the harpoon line. She tells him to harpoon the smallest whale, but he harpoons the largest. The large whale pulls her into the water, she surfaces once more, then disappears under the water. (In Kappianaq's version she becomes a narwhal, her hair becoming the horn.)
Aningaat and his sister move to a new camp. There, while getting water, the sister is attacked. The brother saves her. He heals her, then they move to a new camp.
They move to a new camp, inhabited by people who lack genitalia or anuses. Nonetheless both siblings marry people from this group, and the sister becomes pregnant and gives birth.
Sun and Moon
This version is much like the blind boy version, except it only covers the end of the story, beginning with the assault in the dark.
