Four Inuit youth spent a summer interviewing elders and government officials learning about their history from those who lived it.
The result, a feature length documentary to be screened for the first time in Canada at Carleton and hopefully it’s only the beginning, the director said.
“It was about educating young people about what the Inuit journey’s been like and how they were able to take on a very large bureaucracy and change it,” said Kath Clarida, director and co-creator of the film.
The film explores the Inuit Land Claims Agreement through interviews with those involved in the negotiations.
Carleton professor Frances Abele was also involved in the film, acting as an outside source and providing global and Canadian perspectives during the time of land negotiations.
Although a struggle, these land claims brought the people together to create change, Clarida said.
Through the Nunavut Sivuniksavut (NS) program, the young adults learned about the activists’ and Inuit’s dedication and motivation, she said.
NS is a not-for-profit program for Nunavut youth. It teaches them about their past and the land claim agreement while preparing them for jobs up north.
“We saw how many kids in the North don’t graduate high school and then we saw the impact [NS] has on youth, just teaching them about their land claims and making them really understand the work that the activists and the Inuit did to secure self-determination,” Clarida said.
Clarida and co-creator Marianne Demmer originally intended to create a documentary-based teaching tool for Inuit schools, but when the project began expanding they decided to produce it as a resource that all Canadian high schools could use, Clarida said.
“This is a story everybody should know, not just Inuit youth,” Clarida said.
Clarida and Demmer received enough funding for their project to take four Inuit youth to the North to interview Inuit elders and others involved.
“It was a good combination of telling the past with the youth,” said Teevi Mackay, a Carleton student, and NSprogram alumni, who is helping to promote the film.
“[We] had them interview all of the activists and their leaders and elders about what was going on during those times,” Clarida said.
Tommy Akulujuk, one of the student interviewers and an NS graduate, said he wishes he could have learned about this when he was younger.
“When we went to school (at NS) we all kept saying, ‘How come we never learned this in Nunavut?’ This is way too late,” Akulujuk said.
Although he said it is too late for older youths, it is not for younger Nunavut students. It was for them that they did this project, Akulujuk said.
“I think that was a big draw for some of the Inuit leaders because the implementation of a land claim is not going to spontaneously happen by itself,” he said. “There needs to be people who ask for change and I think the leaders kind of saw that when we were talking to them.”
Screening the film at Carleton is important because students, especially Inuit students, face many struggles during their time at school and just like the Inuit they have to make sacrifices, Mackay said.
After the screening at Carleton, Clarida and Akulujuk said they hope schools across Canada will want to show the film to students and some day even in Europe and the United States.
“Let’s just hope that all the young people, like my nieces and nephews think it’s not enough,” Akulujuk said. “[I hope] that they will want to go out, just as we wanted to go out, and search for their own history.”