Anti-Colonial Science: A Course Journal. Vol. X, 2XYZ. https://ojs.library.dal.ca/acs/

Navigating Narratives: Reflections on Indigenous Knowledge and Settler Identity in Nunavut

Chloë Nevin

Dalhousie University

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Iqaluit, Nunavut has been my home has been my home for as long as I can remember, and as I have grown up, I have become increasingly aware of my position as a settler and guest on Inuit Nunangat. I recognize what a privilege it is for me to be able to live on this land, eat inuksuit (traditional/land food), witness my friends reclaim their culture, and to be able to hear and learn Inuit stories and legends. I will be using Emilie Cameron's “Copper Stories: Imaginative Geographies and Material Orderings of the Central Arctic” and Lee Maracle's “Conversation 10: Appropriation” to reflect upon personal memories and anecdotes about storytelling as a tool for reclamation and as a tool for colonialism.

In the dining room of mine and my father's house in Iqaluit there is a beautiful artwork by Germaine Arnaktauyok, a prolific and incredibly skilled Inuit artist from Igloolik, the piece is called “Exasperated Loon and Impatient Raven.” It depicts a story I have heard and seen before through several mediums including art, books, traditional oral storytelling, and film; the story of the Raven and the Loon or the Raven and the Owl. All the versions of this story that I have had the opportunity to take in have followed similar storylines about how the loon (or an owl) and the raven came to look like how we know them today: The raven as a wholly black bird, and the loon or owl with black markings.¹ Lee Maracle emphasizes that indigenous knowledge and stories belong first and foremost to indigenous youth.² I believe in my life that I have been lucky enough to be able to watch said knowledge and stories be returned and taught, in this instance, to Inuit youth. Maracle writes that “cultural and knowledge transmission exists primarily for children,” and throughout my schooling and childhood in Iqaluit this has been a clear goal for my community. I have many memories in which my class or entire school would gather to listen to a storyteller or perhaps more often watch a film retelling an Inuit legend. One that I remember watching many times is an older film by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), who produced the story of “Owl and the Raven: An eskimo legend.” And this effort to share stories to children goes beyond school events, an obvious one that comes to mind is library programs that focus on sharing Inuit legends. For example, I have worked as a Program co-coordinator and assistant librarian for my local library for the past two summers. This job entailed art and story time programming, and we have rather dedicated a week or simply fit published Inuit legends into our story time. I have read stories usually published by Inhabit media, an Inuit owned publishing company that is dedicated to preserving and sharing Inuit traditions and knowledge.³ A great example from inhabit media would be the 2013 children's storybook written by Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley “The Raven and the Loon” which can fit in to many weekly story time themes. Maracle's words about knowledge being for the children, resonated with me because Inuit culture has a rich tradition of storytelling, a tradition I admire and am honoured to be able to witness in my life and to be able to facilitate at my job, and I hope in the future I can find more ways to facilitate the Inuit story telling in honourable and appropriate ways.

Emilie Cameron's piece emphasizes two main points, the first being that settler stories of the North, or “imagined” stories of the North, often produces settler colonial rhetoric and an ignorance to the reality of the harsh conditions and as well as the beauty of the Arctic. Two stories I often hear perpetuated about the Nunavut center around money, both that it “must be so expensive to live there” and “I want to go up there to work for a few years.” I met a man in his mid-twenties here in Halifax that told me his father was a construction worker up North for a number of years and that he would like to possibly go work up there to make some money so he can travel more in the future.⁴ He did not really seem to understand the ignorance of his words or the implications of them. Firstly, he and his family benefitted from the fathers employment in Nunavut without the family ever needing to even step foot in the territory. This is a part of the ongoing topic of discussion I've heard regarding transient workers, why can some people come and benefit from the high wages afforded to some, usually transient, workers in Nunavut (higher wage ≠ livable wage) while their families are in the south. Meanwhile many families whose land live in poverty, and struggle with poor living conditions and food insecurity. Secondly, his father being able to do that has led him to believe that he thinks that Nunavut is some place he can go to make money and leave without a care about the ramifications of that decision. Cameron reflects on the how centering writing on “colonial imaginative geographies” in the North can underscore “imaginative force” and “material conditions of life in the region.”⁵ I think this story highlights both of the concepts: “Imaginative force” through the idea that this random man only really saw Nunavut as an economic or financial opportunity, instead of one that could be full of community and cultural experience outside of his own. And this affects the “material conditions” of the people of Nunavut and of Iqaluit as they need jobs to be able to provide for families and themselves, but instead of training and educating Inuit for a position, we hire workers from the south. Ultimately, this is not the failing of any individual transient worker, but more or less departments within the Government of Nunavut that are not being managed well enough to actually put the needs and goals of the community first. I once again do want to acknowledge the position through which I am writing this is a privileged one, both as a qallunaat and as the daughter of two nurses who brought their family up to Iqaluit because of their jobs.

This paper has been a reflection on my own personal memories, thoughts and feelings about topics that I have had the chance to have many opportunities to listen and discuss with a wealth of people from home. Iqaluit is and will always be my home, but I have to acknowledge my privilege to be able to say that and, in the future, I want to be able to bring home the knowledge I have acquired in university to help and better my community in ways that honour the land, people, and way of life of Inuit. I want to end this paper by saying that I am extremely excited to see the young Inuit I have grown up with reclaim their storytelling traditions as well as meld those traditions into something new and powerful stories of indigenous personhood. I am honored to be able to witness this and I look forward to the future in that regard.

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1. Germaine Arnaktauyok, Exasperated Loon and Impatient Raven; Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley, The Raven and the Loon, ed. Neil Christopher and Kelly Ward (Iqaluit, Nunavut: Inhabit Media Inc., 2013); Owl and the Raven: An Eskimo Legend, Video (National Film Board of Canada, 1973), https://www.nfb.ca/film/owl_raven_eskimo_legend/embed/player/.

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2. Lee Maracle, “Conversation 10: Appropriation,” in My Conversations with Canadians, Essais; Number 4 (Toronto, Ontario: BookThug, 2017), 112.

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3. Inhabit Media, “About,” Inhabit Media, accessed February 29, 2024, https://inhabitbooks.com/pages/about.

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4. In conversation with the author, November 25, 2023.

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5. Emilie Cameron, “Copper Stories: Imaginative Geographies and Material Ordering of the Central Canadian Arctic,” in Far off Metal River: Inuit Lands, Settler Stories, and the Makings of the Contemporary Arctic (Vancouver; UBC Press, 2015), 170.

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Copyright (c) Chloë Nevin

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