Inuit

Ndè Sii Wet'aà: Northern Indigenous Voices on Land, Life, & Art is a collection of essays, interviews, short stories and poetry written by emerging and established northern Indigenous writers and artists. Centred on land, cultural practice and northern life, this ground-breaking collection shares wealth of Dene (Gwichʼin, Sahtú, Dehcho, Tłı̨chǫ, Saysi, Kaska, Dënesuiné, W?ìl?ìdeh ) Inuit, Alutiiq, Inuvialuit, Métis, Nêhiyawak (Cree), Northern Tutchone, and Tanana Athabascan creative brilliance. Ndè Sii Wet'aà holds up the voices of women and Two Spirit and Queer writers to create a chorus of voices reflecting a deep love of Indigenous cultures, languages, homelands and the north. The book includes a series of pieces and interviews from established northern artists and musicians including Leela Gilday, Randy Baillargeon (lead singer for the W?ìl?ìdeh Drummers), Inuit sisters, song-writers and throat singers Tiffany Ayalik and Inuksuk Mackay of Piqsiq, Two Spirit Vuntut Gwitchin visual artist Jeneen Frei Njootli, Nunavik singer-songwriters Elisapie and Beatrice Deere and visual artist Camille Georgeson-Usher. Ndè Sii Wet'aà also includes writing from well-known northern writers Siku Allooloo, T'áncháy Redvers (Fireweed), Antione Mountain (From Bear Rock Mountain), Glen Coulthard (Red Skin, White Masks), Catherine Lafferty (Northern Wildflower, Land-Water-Sky) and Lianne Marie Leda Charlie, in amongst the best emerging writers in the north.

Additional Information
264 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

Qummut Qukiria! celebrates art and culture within and beyond traditional Inuit and Sámi homelands in the Circumpolar Arctic — from the continuance of longstanding practices such as storytelling and skin sewing to the development of innovative new art forms such as throatboxing (a hybrid of traditional Inuit throat singing and beatboxing). In this illuminating book, curators, scholars, artists, and activists from Inuit Nunangat, Kalaallit Nunaat, Sápmi, Canada, and Scandinavia address topics as diverse as Sámi rematriation and the revival of the ládjogahpir (a Sámi woman’s headgear), the experience of bringing Inuit stone carving to a workshop for inner-city youth, and the decolonizing potential of Traditional Knowledge and its role in contemporary design and beyond.

Qummut Qukiria! showcases the thriving art and culture of the Indigenous Circumpolar peoples in the present and demonstrates its importance for the revitalization of language, social wellbeing, and cultural identity.

Educator Information
Qummut Qukiria! means "up like a bullet" in Inuktitut and is used to convey excitement and enthusiasm. It also signifies the connection to the land and nature's offerings in the Circumpolar North. 

Features over 200 images as well as essays from artists, educators, and scholars on contemporary Inuit and Sámi life and art, including filmmaking, sculpture, storytelling, and design.

Additional Information
368 pages | 9.25" x 6.75" | Hardcover

Arctic ice is a daily consideration for people living above the Arctic circle. Ice is key to successful hunts, ease of travel, and the health of wildlife. This book features sweeping landscape photography of Arctic sea ice in all its forms, accompanied by anecdotes from community members across the North. From traditional stories of what lurks under the ice to harrowing tales of hunters on the ice and traditional knowledge about ice safety and conditions, this book presents the beauty, complexity, and unique challenges of living daily in an ever-evolving icy landscape.

Educator Information
Foreword by Sheila Watt-Cloutier

Additional Information
72 pages | 11.00" x 8.00" | Colour photographs | Hardcover 

“The Net” features a girl and her mother, known only as the mother and the daughter, who arrive at their secluded cabin on a frozen lake to find their fishing net has been attacked, a massive hole ripped through the middle. After the net has been mended and the night’s catch eaten, the daughter sits awake playing with a bit of leftover netting string. When she was a girl, her grandmother taught her to make string figures—just as her mother had taught her—a game played by Inuit for generations, but a game not to be taken lightly . . . as the daughter plays late into the night, and the mother sleeps, other monstrous forces are soon awakened from beneath the frozen lake.

In “Before Dawn” a young boy runs out onto the tundra to play with his new friend by his side, venturing far beyond his mother’s rule that he not stray past the inuksuk on the horizon. The boy’s friend beckons him farther and farther, and the farther they get from home, the more the friend seems to change . . . and shift . . . until he is no longer human at all. Horrified, the boy listens to the creature’s proposition: return home before dawn, or be lost forever to the other side . . .

Complemented by colour illustrations from illustrator Toma Feizo Gas, The Other Ones is a fresh take on modern horror by an exciting new Inuit voice.

Educator Information
Short stories.

Additional Information
50 pages | 6.75" x 8.75" | Hardcover

A “kunik” is a traditional Inuit greeting, often given to loved ones, in which a person places their nose on another’s cheek and breathes them in. Where the Sea Kuniks the Land extends that gesture of love to the Arctic landscape, in a suite of poems that celebrates the interconnectedness of people and place, past and present.

The importance of land, culture, and identity play key roles in these poems, and the collection will move readers to think deeply about colonization, intergenerational trauma, and grief.

This collection paints beautiful pictures of Arctic landscapes, love stories, and growth. It will take readers on a journey through the seasons, from fierce snowstorms to a warm field of Labrador tea flowers.

Additional Information
80 pages | 7.00" x 9.25" | Paperback

A new English translation of an acclaimed 1970 novel reveals a stark, powerful story, an Inuit worldview, and the unique voice of Markoosie Patsauq.

Published fifty years ago under the title Harpoon of the Hunter, Markoosie Patsauq's novel helped establish the genre of Indigenous fiction in Canada. This new English translation unfolds the story of Kamik, a young hero who comes to manhood while on a perilous hunt for a wounded polar bear. In this astonishing tale of a people struggling for survival in a brutal environment, Patsauq describes a life in the Canadian Arctic as one that is reliant on cooperation and vigilance.

In collaboration with the author, Valerie Henitiuk and Marc-Antoine Mahieu return to the original Inuktitut text to provide English readers with a more accurate translation. With a preface by Patsauq and an afterword from the translators, this edition offers a fresh and contextualized interpretation of a cultural milestone. Whether revisiting this classic or discovering it for the first time, readers will find in Hunter with Harpoon a sophisticated coming-of-age tale illustrating a way of life not as it appeared to southerners, but as it has survived in the memory of the Inuit themselves.

Educator Information
Translated from the Inuktitut by Valerie Henitiuk and Marc-Antoine Mahieu.

Valerie Henitiuk, translation studies specialist, is provost at Concordia University of Edmonton.

Marc-Antoine Mahieu is professor of Inuktitut at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales, Université Sorbonne Paris Cité, and consultant for the Kativik school board in Nunavik.

This book is available in French: Chasseur au harpon

Additional Information
104 pages | 5.98" x 7.99"

Larry Audlaluk has seen incredible changes in his lifetime. Born in northern Quebec, he relocated with his family to the High Arctic in the early 1950s. They were promised a land of plenty. They discovered an inhospitable polar desert. 

Sharing memories both painful and joyous, Larry takes the reader on a journey to the Arctic as his family struggles to survive and new communities are formed. By turns heart-wrenching and humorous. Larry tells of his journey through relocation, illness, residential schooling, and the encroachment of southern culture.

Excerpt from What I Remember, What I Know
Many stories have been written about how Inuit families were relocated to the High Arctic. The one most written about is economic opportunity. The other is sovereignty. The writers are always careful to use the word "claims" when they're talking about sovereignty, as if to make our claims untrue. The story is long, complicated, and documented by various groups, besides the official records. It has been told from so many angles and moods, from social and political perspectives. I will tell you the story of my family's relocation from personal experience.

Additional Information
300 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

The small island of Igloolik lies between the Melville Peninsula and Baffin Island at the northern end of Hudson Bay north of the Arctic Circle. It has fascinated many in the Western world since 1824, when a London publisher printed the narratives by William Parry and his second-in-command, George Lyon, about their two years spent looking for the mythical Northwest Passage.

Nearly a hundred and fifty years later, Bernard Saladin d’Anglure arrived in Igloolik, hoping to complete the study he had been conducting for nearly six months in Arctic Quebec (present-day Nunavik). He was supposed to spend a month on Igloolik, but on his first morning there, Saladin d’Anglure met the elders Ujarak and Iqallijuq. He learned that they had been informants for Knud Rasmussen in 1922. Moreover, they had spent most of their lives in the camps and fully remembered the pre-Christian period.

Ujarak and Iqallijuq soon became Saladin d’Anglure’s friends and initiated him into the symbolism, myths, beliefs, and ancestral rules of the local Inuit. With them and their families, Saladin d’Anglure would work for thirty years, gathering the oral traditions of their people.

First published in French in 2006, Inuit Stories of Being and Rebirth contains an in-depth, paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of stories on womb memories, birth, namesaking, and reincarnation. This new English edition introduces this material to a broader audience and contains a new afterword by Saladin d’Anglure.

Contents

Ch. 1—Savviurtalik is Reincarnated
Ch. 2—Inuit Genesis and the Desire for Children
Ch. 3—‘Big Belly’
Ch. 4—Incestuous Moon Brother chases Sun Sister
Ch. 5—A Headstrong Daughter
Ch. 6—A Cheated Husband
Ch. 7—Girls Should not Play at Marriage
Ch. 8—A Battered Wife
Ch. 9—Walrus Skin, a Mistreated Orphan, Rescued by the Moon Man
Ch. 10—The Danger of Being Impregnated by a Spirit
Ch. 11—The First Woman Healer
Ch. 12—The Strange Man and His Whale
Ch. 13—Atanaarjuat, The Fast Runner, a Mythical Hero
Ch. 14—Aaguttaaluk, the Cannibal Forebear
Ch. 15—Qisaruatsiaq, Back to Her Mother’s Womb

For over two decades, Manitoban artist Gerald Kuehl has travelled to the far-flung corners of Canada to draw out these answers from the last generation of Indigenous Peoples born on the land, and, pencil in hand, to record their likenesses and experiences. These Elders shared their gripping stories with him so that he might share them with the world.

Picking up where Kuehl’s acclaimed Portraits of the North left off, these pages follow the artist as he crosses the 60th parallel into Nunavut and the Far North, to meet the few Inuit Elders who still remember the days when their people lived entirely off the bounty of the land. The astonishing graphite pencil drawings and accompanying stories within—the result of Kuehl’s travels in Nunavut over thirteen years, hundreds of interviews with Elders, and thousands of hours at the drawing board—provide an unprecedented, poignant account of the changing realities Inuit experienced over the course of the last century, and their bright hopes for the future. These are tales of hardship and survival, of family and tradition, and of optimism and resilience. These are the faces and the voices of the Far North.

Additional Information
240 pages | 10.25" x 10.50"

A qaggiq, or large communal iglu, is a place of community renewal and celebration.

In many Inuit communities late winter and early spring gatherings, with all the markers of Qaggiq, have persisted through modernization. The Qaggiq process has always been used to share news and knowledge, and to enjoy feasts and friendly skill-building competitions. They are also forums for community justice and healing work. Qaggiq is at the centre of renewal, as it begins when people have survived another winter.

In The Qaggiq Model, Janet Tamalik McGrath considers how the structure and symbolism of the Qaggiq can be used to understand Inuit-centred methodologies toward enhanced wellbeing in Inuit communities.

Drawing on interviews with the late philosopher and Inuit elder Mariano Aupilarjuk, along with her own life—long experiences, McGrath bridges Inuktut and Western academic ways of knowing. She addresses the question of how Inuktut knowledge renewal can be supported on its own terms. It is through an understanding of Inuktut knowledge renewal, McGrath argues, that the impacts of colonialism and capitalism can be more effectively critiqued in Inuit Nunangat.

The Qaggiq Model offers new ways of seeing how Inuit-centred spaces can be created and supported toward communal well-being. This wide-ranging work will be of interest to scholars of epistemology, Indigenous studies, and Canadian studies, as well as all readers with an interest in Inuit worldviews.

Additional Information
410 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | English with Inuktitut Transcripts

Indigenous perspectives much older than the nation itself shared through maps, artwork, history and culture.

The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, in partnership with Canada's national Indigenous organizations, has created a groundbreaking four-volume atlas that shares the experiences, perspectives, and histories of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. It's an ambitious and unprecedented project inspired by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action. Exploring themes of language, demographics, economy, environment and culture, with in-depth coverage of treaties and residential schools, these are stories of Canada's Indigenous Peoples, told in detailed maps and rich narratives.

This extraordinary project offers Canada a step on the path toward understanding.

The volumes contain more than 48 pages of reference maps, content from more than 50 Indigenous writers; hundreds of historical and contemporary photographs and a glossary of Indigenous terms, timelines, map of Indigenous languages, and frequently asked questions. All packaged together in a beautifully designed protective slipcase.

Educator Information
Recommended for ages 13+.

The Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada includes a four volume print atlas, an online atlas, an app, and more!

Additional Information
322 pages | 10.50" x 12.87"

The product of intensive, highly detailed work, this dictionary is more than a language document. It is a unique window into the Inuinnait culture and way of life.

Kangiryuarmiut Inuinnaqtun Uqauhiitaa Numiktitirutait - Kangiryuarmiut Inuinnaqtun Dictionary details the Kangiryuarmiut dialect of Inuinnaqtun, as spoken in the community of Ulukhaktok in the Inuvialuit Region of Canada's Northwest Territories. Very similar dialects of Inuinnaqtun are spoken in Qurluqtuq (Kugluktuk) and Iqaluktuuttiaq (Cambridge Bay) in Nunavut.

This is the most comprehensive dictionary of any Western Canadian dialect of the Inuit language. It contains over 5,000 Inuinnaqtun entries and subentries with their translations, over 3,000 example sentences, and a large inventory of suffixes.

The introduction includes a brief overview of Inuinnaqtun, its sound system, orthography, and major word classes. Main entries include both related subentries and examples. Suffix entries include information about lexical categories, inflection, the different forms a suffix may take, and examples of how each suffix is used.

Additional Information
582 pages | 6.50" x 9.50" | English, Inuinnaqtun

I woke up with Moses Henry’s boot holding open my jaw and my right eye was looking into his gun barrel. I heard the slow words, “Take. It. Back.” I know one thing about Moses Henry; he means business when he means business. I took it back and for the last eight months I have not uttered Annie Mukluk’s name.

In strolls Annie Mukluk in all her mukiness glory. Tonight she has gone traditional. Her long black hair is wrapped in intu’dlit braids. Only my mom still does that. She’s got mukluks, real mukluks on and she’s wearing the old-style caribou parka. It must be something her grandma gave her. No one makes that anymore. She’s got the faint black eyeliner showing off those brown eyes and to top off her face she’s put pretend face tattooing on. We all know it’ll wash out tomorrow. — from "Annie Muktuk"

When Sedna feels the urge, she reaches out from the Land of the Dead to where Kakoot waits in hospital to depart from the Land of the Living. What ensues is a struggle for life and death and identity. In “Kakoot” and throughout this audacious collection of short stories, Norma Dunning makes the interplay between contemporary realities and experiences and Inuit cosmology seem deceptively easy. The stories are raucous and funny and resonate with raw honesty. Each eye-opening narrative twist in Annie Muktuk and Other Stories challenges readers’ perceptions of who Inuit people are.

Awards

• 2017-2018 Danuta Gleed Literary Award Winner
• 2018 INDIEFAB Book of the Year (Short Stories)
• 2018 Howard O'Hagan Award for Short Story

Reviews
"Dunning’s stories, nuanced and deeply felt, reach deep into the heart of what it means to be Inuit, into the sacred place where the songs of the north are still sung, visions are still seen, and the spirits still speak. From this place, it is possible to laugh at those who come to destroy. From this place, dignity is maintained and the connection to the turning of the seasons is unbroken. Together with grief for what has been lost, there is power and light in these stories." — Kristine Morris, Foreword Magazine, June 2017

"When I read the article, 'What inspired her was getting mad,' about the story behind Norma Dunning’s debut collection, Annie Mukluk and Other Stories, I was not surprised. Acts of justice and revenge factor throughout the book, propelling the stories so terrifically. Dunning wrote her stories in response to ethnographic representations of Inuit people that neglected to show them as actual people, and the result is a book that’s really extraordinary. Because her people are so real, people who laugh, and joke, and drink, and have sex (and they have a lot of sex)." — Kerry Clare, Pickle Me This, August 2017

"Although [Dunning] deals with serious contemporary realities for Inuit people, she manages to work in moments of humour that flesh out her characters, making them fully realized and complex.”— Matthew Stepanic, Where.ca, September 2017

"A successful short story takes us to unfamiliar places, and the 16 stories in this collection certainly fill that bill. It’s a journey deep into Inuit life, with tales of Inuk of all shapes, genders and ages. The title story is at turns funny, violent and cunning: Jimmy tries to convince best friend Moses to stay away from the glorious Annie Muktuk, an arnaluk (naughty woman, according to the glossary) who will cause him grief." — Sarah Murdoch, Toronto Star, November 2017

"This whole collection is fantastic, but the story with the bad trip is 'Husky', inspired by the life of trapper and HBC Factor "Husky" Harris whose visit to Winnipeg with his three Inuit wives, Tetuk, Alaq and Keenaq, is written about in history books. In the story, naturally, the group and their children make an impression at their hotel, and the racism of hotel staff leads to a fight that lands Husky in the hospital. The violence doesn't end there and the women are further victimized—but then they enact the most beautiful justice." — Kerry Clare, 49th Shelf, August 2017

"Inuk writer Norma Dunning’s debut collection passed under the radar of the big awards despite being the year’s best short fiction collection. The stories infuse Inuit myth with reality, explore the effects of colonialism, and delve into settler-writer portrayals of Inuit, all told with heart and humour that is infectious." — Michael Melgaard, National Post, December 2017

Additional Information
198 pages | 5.25" x 9.00"

“My name is Weetaltuk; Eddy Weetaltuk. My Eskimo tag name is E9-422.” So begins From the "Tundra to the Trenches." Weetaltuk means “innocent eyes” in Inuktitut, but to the Canadian government, he was known as E9-422: E for Eskimo, 9 for his community, 422 to identify Eddy.

In 1951, Eddy decided to leave James Bay. Because Inuit weren’t allowed to leave the North, he changed his name and used this new identity to enlist in the Canadian Forces: Edward Weetaltuk, E9-422, became Eddy Vital, SC-17515, and headed off to fight in the Korean War. In 1967, after fifteen years in the Canadian Forces, Eddy returned home. He worked with Inuit youth struggling with drug and alcohol addiction, and, in 1974, started writing his life’s story. This compelling memoir traces an Inuk’s experiences of world travel and military service. Looking back on his life, Weetaltuk wanted to show young Inuit that they can do and be what they choose. 

Reviews
“Endlessly interesting; an account of a traditional way of life now lost, a gripping first-hand account of a front-line soldier during the war, and an honest account of a young man’s adventures and misadventures. It is to all our benefit that it has, at last, found its way into print." — Michael Melgaard, The National Post

“Tender, honest, and often raw, Weetaltuk’s storytelling is masterful, engrossing, and deeply human. He has imbued his writing with a philosophical nuance that is characteristically Inuit: very subtle, yet profound." — Siku Allooloo, The Malahat Review

“Recounts the adventures of Inuk veteran Eddy Weetaltuk, from his early life in the North to his escape to the south under an assumed identity, to his enlistment in the Canadian Forces, which took him across the Canadian West, to Japan and Germany, and into battle in Korea. Adopting the name Eddy Vital was necessary in 1951 because the federal government restricted the movement of Inuit people. Through his alias, Weetaltuk was able to see the world; in the army, he experienced equality and respect – all the while never forgetting his true identity as an Inuk. The publication history of From the Tundra to the Trenches is itself a four-decades-long saga of many twists and turns. That it now finds English publication (after first appearing in French and German) owes to the author’s conviction that his life story be read as a work of literature with the makings of a bestseller. Eddy Weetaltuk was right.”— Jade Colbert, The Globe and Mail

“For those interested in Inuit culture it offers the rare and valuable perspective of an Inuk looking out from his culture at the world rather than the world looking in. “ — P. T. Sherrill, CHOICE

Educator & Series Information
From the Tundra to the Trenches is the fourth book in the First Voices, First Texts series, which publishes lost or underappreciated texts by Indigenous writers. This new English edition of Eddy Weetaltuk’s memoir includes a foreword and appendix by Thibault Martin and an introduction by Isabelle St-Amand.

Additional Information
280 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | 25 colour illustrations, 3 b&w photographs, bibliography

Through the voices of Inuit elders, this book is a critical and cultural-historical engagement with the traditional concepts of tirigusuusiit, piqujait, and maligait.

These three concepts refer to what had to be followed, done, or not done in Inuit culture. Although these terms are now often used as equivalents to modern Western notions of law, this work examines how Inuit and Western concepts of law derive from completely different cultural perspectives. Through the guiding concepts of maligait, piqujait, and tirigusuusiit, this book transcends discussions of law, examining how these Inuit concepts are embedded in social and cosmic relationships.

This unique book examines these challenging concepts through the knowledge and stories of Inuit elders and evokes a unique experience whereby Western knowledge—embodied in the participating scholars—works to describe and understand Inuit knowledge and models of traditional law. This is a new and updated edition of Interviewing Inuit Elders Vol. 2: Perspectives on Traditional Law.

Contributing Elders: Mariano Aupilaarjuk, Marie Tulimaaq, Akisu Joamie, Émile Imaruittuq, and Lucassie Nutaraaluk.

Additional Information
380 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 2nd Edition