Abstract

This research-creation project consists of a short “making of '' film and a short documentary film called The Walker. It centers on the life story-history of Annie Pisuktie, a Black Inuk woman who migrates to Montreal as well as a land-based educational experience for her grandson Nicholas Inniss. In this film, co-created with Nicholas, Diego and Annie the main objective has been to aid him in reconnecting with his grandmother’s Black-Inuit identity and to the land his relatives come from. We repurpose film and photo archives to retell Annie and Nicholas’ story from an Afro- Inuk perspective. With this movie we hope to establish a creative initiative to reconnect intergenerational ties. Through the use of co-creative documentary filmmaking, counter-archival methodologies, land-based education and the use of Inuit oral tradition, this project seeks to bridge a communication gap between two generations and establish a bridge between Inuit youth. It fosters a creative medium where other Inuit youth can relink with their own complex family identities, geographies and histories.Through a video interview with Annie that is integrated into the film, the project foregrounds Annie’s experience of displacement. This research also addresses displacement and the conditions of modern migration of Inuit women to the South of Canada which stem from historical-colonial- societal complexities in Nunavut and the Eastern Canadian Arctic (poor infrastructure, housing issues, lack of health and social services, absence of post-secondary educational facilities, high cost of living and food insecurity to name a few).
Key words: Black Inuit identity, Inuit youth, Inuit sovereignty, land-based education, mental health, Distant Early Warning Line, Southern Quebec Inuit Association, Inuit Traditional Knowledge, leadership, counter archival, research-creation, participatory media, co-creation.