My Village in Nunavik: little-known film celebrated Inuit past and future
Nearly a quarter century later, director Bobby Kenuajuak seen as a pioneer
*** This is the last episode in our four-part series called Another Country: Change and Resilience in Nunavik.***
In his proposal for his first documentary film, Bobby Kenuajuak was single-minded about his aim: to change the narrative about his land and about Inuit people.
Kenuajuak was just shy of 22 years old at the time, and had grown up in Puvirnituq, a young Inuit village on the Eastern shore of Hudson Bay, a place where he learned in his formative years to embrace both tradition and modernity at once.
"I want to try to convince a person from the South that a small village in the North is not sad and isolated but that on the contrary, nature is magnificent and there are many activities to practice," he wrote, according to documents held in the National Film Board's Institutional Archives.
According to the same documents, Kenuajuak wanted to call the film: Puvirnituq, Quebec: Another Country.
In 1999, Kenuajuak did ultimately make a 47-minute documentary as the first Inuk to participate in the National Film Board's French language Programme cinéastes autochtones, created to help Indigenous individuals make their first film.
But his preferred title was dropped. Still, what was instead titled My Village in Nunavik carried the message Kenuajuak had envisioned.
"When you hear about us in the south it is often through stories of disaster and human suffering," he narrates early in the film. "While this does exist, there is far more a kind of joy we take from being together."
'A poetry of being'
Kenuajuak's film was released at a time when Puvirnituq was still reeling from a wave of youth suicides — one of them a close friend of his.
The film manages to get past that, and past all the stereotypes, to reveal an easy juxtaposition of traditions like hunting, with modern conveniences like wooden housing, the store, and shortwave radio.
"There's a poetry of being," said Mark David Turner, author of On Inuit Cinema, an adjunct professor of music at Memorial University who considers himself an "advocate" for Inuit cinema.
Turner says, Kenuajuak "loves his space, he understands the complexity of it, and he's willing to share that."
He had a "clarity of vision" unusual for his age that he managed to carry through from proposal to the final film, making him a "pioneer" in the world of Inuit cinema.
The making of a filmmaker
Kenuajuak was born in 1976, and was raised by his uncle. As a child, he grew up learning to love hunting, and to be passionate about music. He also loved to play the button accordion and guitar, and was an accomplished hockey player, according to friends and relatives in Puvirnituq who remember him warmly.
"He was an open-minded guy, very quiet, but open to people who want to get close to him," Juani Novalinga, a childhood friend, said in an interview in his Puvirnituq home.
Along the way, Kenuajuak also learned how to use a camera.
He went south to Montreal and attended College Marie Victorin. It was at a symposium on Inuit culture there in 1998 that he showed his first amateur film — an hour-long piece with footage he gathered during Christmas holidays back in Puvirnituq.
It was partly that film that impressed the jury that chose him for the NFB program, to produce what the NFB describes as a documentary that "tenderly" portrays village life in Puvirnituq "as well as the elements that forge the character of its people: their history, the great open spaces, and their unflagging humour."
"It was so amazing to see how similar life in the Arctic is today… to the way it was when he was making his film," said Nyla Innukshuk, a filmmaker who grew up in the Arctic and recently released her first feature film called Slash/Back — a coming of age story about four teenage girls living in Pangnirtung on Baffin Island fighting aliens.
She said she realized after making the film that people weren't used to "seeing Indigenous communities existing in [the] modern day with teenagers who listen to Justin Bieber and are on Instagram and still know how to throat sing and hunt seal.
There is a north-south "disconnect" about Inuit society, she added.
"If you're not seeing us as living in the modern time, it's hard to see us as people with the same kinds of needs as you and your neighbours."
'He understood'
After his success with his documentary, Kenuajuak returned to Puvirnituq to work for Taqrimiut Nipingat Incorporated, the "Voice of the North," where over a decade, he worked on a number of documentaries as either camera, director or sometimes both.
Among his work were pieces on the "junior rangers programme" for youth, the local community's response to the spate of suicides there, as well as a beautifully shot series on elders.
"He got it, he understood," said Dave Stonier, a videographer and producer and longtime trainer with TNI and a colleague of Kenuajuak's.
He described Kenuajuak as an "energetic guy" who was "interested in doing the work and doing a good job. He "was happy to be there."
After more than a decade of working at TNI, Kuanjuak's career appears to falter. It becomes difficult to track exactly what he did during his 30s, or where he was based.
Kenuajuak enters a troubled period then, a period during which he pleads guilty to charges including assault, impaired driving, and eventually, robbery.
In July, 2020 police arrested Kenuajuak at a Montreal business for "aggressive and disorganized behaviour." By then, he had been struggling with addiction, and experiencing homelessness.
He was put in a cell in a Montreal prison. Guards did not check on him for 11 hours. When they finally did, Kenuajuak was found dead on the prison floor. A coroner's report concluded Kenuajuak's death could have been prevented had the prison guards given him medical attention when he arrived.
A family member spoke out then, to say Kenuajuak was much more than his struggles. That he wasn't a bad guy.
IDEAS reached out several times to speak to family members, but heard nothing back.
Shining a light on Inuit history
In Puvirnituq, the place Kenuajuak loved, they see him as one more example of how easily Inuit youth can become lost in Canada's justice system.
Harry Tulugak, a former mayor of Puvirnituq, said Kenuajuak was a victim of "systemic racism."
"What can we do? What can be said except, to publicize the fact that there's neglect in the justice system."
He added that Kenuajuak had so much more to offer, and "yet he was cut off too soon.
"But I'm glad that he left something… that he left that little documentary he did, and he enjoyed it."
Kenuajuak's documentary was shown and won awards abroad. The NFB included it recently in a package of films offered to Cuban television, it is also available online and at university and school libraries, but otherwise, it had largely been forgotten.
Watch Inuktitut version
It is an artefact, an important record of a moment in time in Inuit history, and the history of Inuit filmmaking.
"Maybe this is the thing," said Turner, "that now we take the opportunity to celebrate the fact that it was made, and celebrate the fact that it's always been with us and that it's a really important document — and to shine that light back on it."
Appearing in this episode (in order of appearance):
Mark David Turner is an adjunct professor at Memorial University's School of Music. He is also the editor of On Inuit Cinema/Inuit TakugatsaliuKatiget.
Nyla Innuksuk is a filmmaker. She recently directed Slash/Back, a 2022 Canadian Inuit science fiction film.
Harry Tulugak is a forrmer mayor of Puvirnituq, and an uncle to Bobby Kenuajuak.
Paulusi Novalinga is a former mayor of Puvirnituq.
Juani Novalinga is a childhood friend of Bobby Kenuajuak's.
Dave Stonier is a producer, videographer and trainer at Taqramiut Nipingat Incorporated. He was also a colleague of Bobby Kenuajuak.
*This episode was produced by Nahlah Ayed, with help from Pauline Holdsworth and Nicola Luksic.
Here are more episodes from Another Country: Change and Resilience in Nunavik:
