Comment by svat

From the article itself:

> At first, these stories seemed to me a bit too scary for little children. And my knee-jerk reaction was to dismiss them. But my opinion flipped 180 degrees after I watched my own daughter's response to similar tales — and after I learned more about humanity's intricate relationship with storytelling.

> Oral storytelling is what's known as a human universal. For tens of thousands of years, it has been a key way that parents teach children about values and how to behave.

Also, the Inuit parents don't want their little children going near the water. That the ocean is dangerous and to be avoided is the truth. The story about the sea monster is a way of communicating this truth in terms that the little children can understand.

(Calling this “lying” is like calling it lying to teach classical mechanics: to a first approximation Newton's laws of motion are true; they can be refined later. Similarly, though we can later refine the sea monster to say that it takes the form of waves and currents and depths and drowning and all that, IMO to a first approximation there is a sea monster, and in primal moments it can be useful to remember that.)