Fatty Legs: A True Story

Margaret-Olemaun Pokiak-Fenton was born in 1936 and grew up in an Inuvialuit community on Banks Island in Canada’s High Arctic. Fatty Legs is the story of her experience at a residential school for Indigenous children. Her first-person narrative drives most of the story, though introductory and supplemental materials offer broader analysis of her experience and are authored by her daughter-in-law. When referencing the main character in her childhood, the text uses just “Olemaun,” the Inuvialuit name that her grandfather gave her. At school, a nun christens her “Margaret,” a name she used in her life beyond school as well. Notes on language at the end of the book explain that Margaret-Olemaun has steadily “reclaimed” the name Olemaun over the decade since the book was first published.

The story stresses Margaret-Olemaun’s strength of character, which she attributes in part to her Inuvialuit culture. She considers herself strong-willed, and while the nuns’ abuses at school test her strength and resolve, she ultimately stands up for herself and perseveres. We learn in the beginning of the book that she is curious and eager to learn, but because she has never left her home community, she does not understand the detrimental effects of intimate