Ottawa Inuit arts group rebuilds ‘Inuk style’ after eviction

A year ago, Isaruit Inuit Arts was in crisis.

The organization was told on March 8, 2024, it had six weeks to vacate its shop at a space rented from the Odawa Native Friendship Centre in Ottawa.

The eviction was to make room for a food bank.

“It was a wonderful shop, everything was there,” said Beverly Illauq, founding co-ordinator of Isaruit. “We had to take apart all of our hard work and pivot quickly.”

That pivot led the organization to a new space at the Rideau Community Hub in Ottawa’s Vanier neighbourhood, formerly Rideau High School.

The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, which owns the building, stepped up, offering Isaruit seven rooms in the lower level — spaces staff refer to as the “basement suites.”

Isaruit was established in 2017 as the Inuit Women’s Sewing Centre when five Inuit women in Ottawa — Aigah Attagutsiaq, Martha Flaherty, Malachi Kigutak, Simona Arnatsiaq, and Illauq — came together to create a space for other Inuit women to meet and learn traditional skills.

The Isaruit sewing room at the Rideau Community Hub, once a high school dance studio, has been transformed into a communal space. “Everything is done in a circle, including our meeting room,” says co-founder Beverly Illauq. (Photo by Nehaa Bimal)

By 2018, their group had expanded into a full non-profit organization.

Originally focused on women, the organization expanded its mandate in 2023 to include men, responding to the need for a platform supporting all Inuit visual artists.

This shift led to the adoption of a new working name, Isaruit Inuit Arts: Pijunnarnivut. It now offers sewing instruction, language revitalization and arts programs like seal-skinning and metal-working.

Renovation of the new space at Rideau Community Hub has been extensive, with adaptations made to each room.

The school’s former dance studio has been transformed into a communal sewing space and the girls’ locker room is being repurposed as a dedicated seal-skinning room. Another room houses a “treasured” pattern collection featuring traditional designs for knives, ulus and clothing. Each pattern is labelled with the maker’s name, home community, size, and the materials it would traditionally be made from.

“We’re working toward a system to track pattern use in order to help protect this knowledge from intellectual property erosion,” Illauq said.

Carver and Isaruit shop co-ordinator Ruben Komangapik and his daughter, Aija, who are behind the company Reconseal Inuksuiti, provide seal meat from the Magdalen Islands for the group.

Ruben Komangapik, carver and co-ordinator of Isaruit’s Sanavvik metal-working workshop, holds up “modern artifacts” crafted from metal and wood. These ulus, seamstress knives and seal-hunting harpoons were created for Tungasuvvingat Inuit. “We’re using the same design, same concept, but in the modern time,” he said. (Photo by Nehaa Bimal)

They are also leading the development of the seal-skinning room.

“We’re going to make a frame where we put a drying unit for seal skins between the girls’ lockers,” said Komangapik.

“We really need to be innovative, as we can export our knowledge anywhere and adapt it here.”

The locker room, for example, needs new plumbing and a tub to hold seal blubber.

Isaruit has also been imagining the creation of a $500,000 “state of the art” carving room out of an old changing room in the high school.

“We’ve had a meeting with architects and engineers provided by the Ottawa-Carleton school board which went very well in January,” Illauq said.

Isaruit is now waiting on the design plans and is brainstorming funding options, she said.

With a growing staff — 21 people currently, up from six a year ago — Isaruit now has dedicated co-ordinators for hospitality and performing arts, as well as a technical adviser, office assistants and consultants.

Isaruit began receiving funding a year ago from Indigenous Services Canada’s Family Violence Prevention Program, which has made it possible for staff to be paid.

“Fully Inuit staff forever and a full Inuit board forever,” is what Isaruit commits to, Illauq said, noting trauma, addiction and housing insecurity are part of the reality many of its employees face every day.

“As an employer and a skill-building place, Isaruit is also a place that is helping people work their way into the employment situation when for years they’ve been sidebarred because too much is going on,” Illauq said.

“Developing an Inuk style of running an organization, Inuk style [human resources] is a huge challenge, but it’s worth every minute.”