When Raven made people he gave them some rules to live by. If anyone broke his rules he would punish them or give them bad luck. One important rule was never to waste food. People always did a pretty good job of following that rule until one day a careless Eskimo hunter by the name of Qun came to a big Eskimo village called Takchak. He was always greedy to catch animals and every time he went hunting he always caught too many animals or non-edible ones just for the fun of it. The animals he didn't eat he would throw in the dump or anywhere around the village.

One day Raven was flying around Takchak looking for a good nesting tree when he saw carcasses of dead animals lying around without a bite taken from them for food. Raven got upset at this. He called the village people for a meeting in the qasgiq. During the meeting he asked who the person responsible for doing such a thing as this was. An elder said it was Qun. Raven waddled over to Qun and told him to stand next to him. "Are you the one that's wasting food by leaving the dead animals to rot?" Raven asked in a mean, deep voice. "Ahhh, yes,." Qun said, in a soft voice filled with shame. "Never are you to waste food again because next time something will happen!" Raven said and then flew out the skylight.

Qun obeyed Raven because he was afraid that Raven would give him bad luck. But after a while Qun got careless again and decided to kill a ptarmigan just for the fun of it. He killed it and hid it under the trunk of a tree without knowing that Raven had been watching him all along. Suddenly Raven swooped down from the sky and landed by Qun. Then he threw some dust on Qun's body and said, "I warned you and now you have to pay for what you did." Raven flew to all the houses of the village and told them not to give Qun any food even if he was starving or he would put a curse on them too.

A week went by and Qun was starving because he hadn't caught any animals since Raven had thrown dust on him. He didn't bother to ask the villagers for food because Raven had told them not to give him any food or they would have the same punishment as Qun. The next day Qun died, regretting that he had wasted all that food.

From this day forth Ravens still hang around the villages or their dumps to watch for anyone who wastes food.

By: Chris Fitka