Storming back for our month-long celebration of Indigenous Art and Cinema, WRITE BRAIN TV is proud to add to our ever-expanding Radical Library this exceptional and groundbreaking Inuk ‘novel’ that defies both expectation and genre.

Sanaaq was originally conceived and written as a phrasebook to assist local Quebecois Catholic missionaries in their attempts to better understand the Indigenous community, Inuk teacher and sculptor Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk instead developed the simple stories into a vast cultural exploration into the quotidian lives of the semi-nomadic Inuits. Taking over twenty years to finish, the novel was written in Inuktitut syllabics, a Canadian writing system sometimes adopted by modernizing tribes whose language traditions were strictly oral.

Broken into 48 chapters, the story focuses on the everyday lives of the titular Sanaaq, a young widow, and her extended family as they trek the frozen land in the traditional of their ancestors. Offering heretofore unprecedented first-hand access to the lnuk people, the novel explores seal-hunting and fishing practices, winter survival methods, foraging tips, and even an account of a tradition Inuk wedding, Sanaaq also takes on some post-modernist meta elements, as the encroachment of European values and customs are also featured in the storytelling.

As the laws of the land continued to change and an increasing number of Inuk abandoned their Native language, Nappaaluk was attempting to preserve not only the literal language of her people, but the very lifestyle and heritage that was being driven out of existence by the ‘qallunaat,’ or white man.