Fatty Legs: A True Story

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What were the residential schools in the US and Canada? What purpose did they serve? What effect did they have on Indigenous Nations and their people? Consider multiple levels of “people”: community, family, and individual.

Teaching Suggestion: Use student discussion and exploration of this text to introduce all three of the text’s themes—especially The Intimate and Impersonal Dimensions of Colonialism. Understanding the global versus local and impersonal versus personal impacts of colonialism is essential for students to understand this text and the world around them.

• The front and back matter of the 10th Anniversary Edition of Fatty Legs provide an excellent resource that will help students analyze and discuss this short answer question. Start with the afterword written by Christy Jordan-Fenton; then follow it up with “A Note on Language.” Lastly, both the preface (also by Jordan-Fenton) and the foreword written by Debbie Reese provide passionate and detailed explanations of the importance, universality, and impact of Pokiak-Fenton’s story.
• Canada Parks has a page that provides a brief history of residential schools in Canada. The resource accompanies other pages about former school buildings that now serve as national historic sites throughout the country.
• Canada’s National Center for Truth and Reconciliation offers a teaching resource that includes pictures of some of the school buildings. The site features a timeline with images from primary sources.

2. What is life like for Indigenous Nations living in or near the Arctic Circle where Pokiak-Fenton grew up? Consider climate and seasons, how people feed themselves, how people stay warm, how people organize themselves into family groups, and/or changes over the last 60-80 years.

Teaching Suggestion: Help students to use the present tense when speaking and writing about these indigenous peoples. Indigenous nations still exist and, in many cases, the people still live on the land under consideration for this question. Guide students to consider modern/contemporary life in the Arctic Circle and compare it to life there 60-80 years ago. This question also lends itself to a jigsaw. Teachers can assign small groups of students different subtopics (like climate and seasons) and have students report their findings to the whole group.

• Again, the back matter of the text provides an entry point and visuals that provide insight into Olemaun’s world. The section titled “Olemaun’s Scrapbook” features many photographs that can help students better understand the time and place of the text. Some photographs serve as footnotes and will make more sense once students read the text.
• The Canadian Encyclopedia features in-depth, comprehensive information about Canada’s Arctic region and its people.
• The site for the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation (which “represents the collective interests of Inuvialuit”) provides important historical and cultural information about the people and the region. It also links out to more resources for learning about Inuvialuit history and culture.