Holiday reading: prominent Nunavummiut share challenges, triumphs

Fighting for Our Rights tells the story of Louis Tapardjuk, champion of Inuit culture.

William Lyall tells both his story and the story of the co-op movement in Helping Ourselves by Helping Each Other.

Jordin Tootoo’s autobiography gives an unfiltered account of growing up hard in Nunavut, and his path to NHL success.

Nunavut might not have a long history as a territory, but it already has its share of remarkable people who seemed to defy the odds to accomplish extraordinary endeavours.

Late this year, the stories of no fewer than three, as told in their own words, hit the bookstores within a few months of each other.

The foundations of Nunavut’s history come to life in the memories of Louis Tapardjuk and William Lyall — people of an earlier generation who remember life on the land as children, and took an active role in the events that brought fellow Inuit into the 21st century.

Each of them, starting with their work as leaders in the northern co-operative movement, took part in building Arctic communities from the ground up, and contributed to turning the dream of an Inuit homeland into reality.

But the realities of life growing up in this new territory comes through in the story of Jordin Tootoo, who in his book “All the Way” describes how he overcame harrowing challenges growing up in the North to become the first Inuk to build a career in the National Hockey League.

Although Tootoo’s mass-marketed book has been the hottest sell of the three biographies by far — and possibly the best-selling book of the year in Nunavut—Tapardjuk’s and Lyall’s memoirs reveal the complex political history of Nunavut.

“There’s a need, really, for a Nunavut political discussion, and a more informed discussion among Inuit,” said editor Louis McComber, who put Tapardjuk’s and Lyall’s words into print.

Published by the Nunavut Research Institute as part of a series on Inuit leadership and governance, the authors’ words read like direct oral testimonies.

Coincidentally, sports journalist and author Stephen Brunt used the same technique to record Tootoo’s story as well.

“We try to keep the words and the style of the person interviewed as much as possible,” said McComber, who relayed the stories of other Inuit leaders of Nunavut in earlier books.

Louis Tapardjuk, 61, has made an impact on Nunavut’s recent history as a pre-eminent champion of Inuit culture and language, helping to enshrine Inuit language rights and culture in territorial law.

In “Fighting for our Rights: the Life Story of Louis Tapardjuk,” he recalls his earliest days, growing up on the land near modern-day Igloolik on Melville peninsula, in a culture evolving under the influence of missionaries and the Canadian government.

He describes how Inuit were moved from camps on the land to more permanent settlements such as Igloolik, where people were expected to relinquish their language and culture to adopt an identity more in tune with mainstream Christian English-speaking Canada.

But Tapardjuk questioned that cultural assimilation at every turn, starting from an early age.

“I wondered, ‘Why is that? Why do we have to look up to these white people and do what they want?’ Even if what they expected from us was contrary to our beliefs and cultural values,” he says early in the book.

“I couldn’t understand why this was happening. Maybe that explains why I became somewhat of a radical, constantly trying to find ways for us Inuit to do things the way we wanted to.”

Tapardjuk worked his way up at the Igloolik Co-op, starting first as a stock boy during the summer, when he was back home from residential school.

He ultimately served as president of the Canadian Arctic Co-operatives Federation Ltd., until it evolved into Arctic Co-operatives Ltd., which heads up all Arctic co-ops to this day.

The co-operative movement is in line with Inuit values such as co-operation and sharing of resources, Tapardjuk says, and for that reason it attracted mostly Inuit employees.

His concern over the loss of Inuit values drove Tapardjuk to take part in the Igloolik Oral History Project to learn what he “had missed out on” of his own ancestral culture.

“He really did the job of an ethnographer in Igloolik,” McComber told Nunatsiaq News. Tapardjuk recorded more than 250 hours of interviews with Inuit elders of the community, documenting cultural practices as they were before Inuit adopted Christianity and settled in communities.

Later, as a Nunavut MLA, he pushed to give the Inuit language full legal status in the territory, and to include the principals of Inuit traditional knowledge, Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, in government policies on environment and education.

Will Tapardjuk’s efforts to enshrine Inuit language rights and culture in territorial law stand the test of time?

“That’s a test to be played out,” McComber said. “A test of Canada, and a test of the political strength of Inuit.”

William Lyall’s life story is tied even more closely to the history of the co-operative movement in the Arctic.

His biography, “Helping Ourselves by Helping Each Other,” also starts with an early childhood on the land, and education in residential school. Lyall, now 73, found inspiration in co-op principles in his youth.

“Co-ops reminded me so much of the way we [Inuit] used to live,” he says in the book. “Cooperation is the basis of Inuit life. We help ourselves by helping each other.”

After settling in Cambridge Bay around 1970, Lyall started working with a small fishing co-operative in the community. He and fellow members bought it up in 1977, and expanded the operation to include other enterprises over the next decade: a hotel, grocery store, cable company, gas station, and a taxi service.

Lyall also served a term as an elected member of the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories.

He climbed the ranks to serve as president of Arctic Co-operatives Ltd., and remains president of the Ikaluktutiak Co-op in Cambridge Bay.

Co-ops, as Lyall describes them, re-invest money in community enterprises, making them a key driver in community development in Nunavut.

“Outside of government, the co-operatives are the biggest employers of aboriginal people in the North,” Lyall says in his book.

“The co-op system in the North is fifty years old. Especially in the early years, it was a professional training ground for a lot of people,” he says, noting a long list of Inuit who “all started out at the co-op level and went on to hold jobs within the government or within Inuit organizations.”

In the world of Canadian co-ops, the northern version “is an extraordinary accomplishment,” McComber told Nunatsiaq News.

Jordin Tootoo’s autobiography All the Way tells the story of a different kind of accomplishment.

Tootoo’s story is less about hockey and more about his battle to overcome challenges faced by fellow Nunavummiut.

“I didn’t just want [the book] to be about Jordin Tootoo the hockey player,” the author told Nunatsiaq News this past October. “I wanted it to be a story that a lot of people can relate to.”

Tootoo, 31, describes, in words recorded and recounted by sports reporter and author Stephen Brunt, how he overcame seemingly impossible odds to reach his goal.

The athlete grew up in a household troubled by alcohol addiction and violence, balanced by a love of hockey and life on the land.

He would later face his own battle with addiction well into his career, and struggle to understand the unexplained suicide of his older brother Terence, who took his life just as Tootoo was hitting his stride.

Tootoo weathered all those tests and managed to get healthy again after his first NHL team, the Nashville Predators, put him through rehab.

Upon emerging from the experience in 2011, Tootoo returned to play, but the “healing process,” as he describes it, was just beginning.

Sharing his story through the book, particularly with fellow Northerners and others who face similar ordeals with addiction and suicide, is part of it, he said.

“Part of healing is speaking out, and being comfortable with that,” Tootoo said of his project. “I’ve experienced a lot throughout my life, and I wanted it to be a raw, and upfront book.”

“I’ve been pretty fortunate to have had the life that I’ve had for the past 15 years, doing what I love every day,” he said of his hockey career.

“Not everyone is able to do that, and part of my story is to let people know that it doesn’t matter who you are, we all have our own battles. When you have a helping hand, it just opens more doors.”

All three biographies are on sale at Co-op stores throughout Nunavut. Copies of Tapardjuk and Lyall’s books are also available from the Nunavut Research Institute in Iqaluit.