Jose Kusugak is president of Inuit Tapirisat of Canada
(ITC), a national organization founded in 1971 and dedicated to the
needs and aspirations of all Canadian Inuit. Its goal is not to build
a wall around Inuit culture, but rather to help support and promote
Inuit culture so that it will remain as a guide and ally in helping
the Inuit cope in a positive way with the changes they confront.
ITC played an important role in the land claim process that eventually
gave rise to Nunavut. Currently, ITC's political and policy agenda includes
mandates defined by health, environment, youth, education, and economic
development. Recently, ITC has provided a leadership role in planning
for Inuit participation in the development of the Aboriginal Health
Institute. The creation of this institute represents an historic step
in the delivery of greatly improved and culturally appropriate health
services to all aboriginal peoples. One of ITC's most active set of
mandates is the creation of policies and programs focusing on the protection
and management of the Arctic environment and its biological and mineral
resources and on the culturally determined sustainable use of these
resources. ITC works to maintain the quality of the Inuktitut language
and supports initiatives to expand its use especially in the workplace.
In addition, ITC is working on issues of intellectual property rights
and traditional knowledge.
Kusugak was born in 1950 in an igloo in Naujaat (Repulse
Bay) on the Arctic Circle. He first became involved with ITC in the
early 1970s to work on the standardization of the Inuit writing system.
In 1974, he went to Alaska to study land claims and traveled the Inuvialuit
region as part of the land use and occupancy study tour. From 1974 to
1977, he chaired the standardization program of the Inuktitut language;
from 1980 to 1990, he was the area manager of the Canadian Broadcasting
Company in the Kivalliq (Keewatin) region; he was president of the Nunavut
Tunngavik Inc., an affiliate of ITC, from 1994 to 2000.
Kusugak writes about his lecture, "[I] will examine
the popularization of Inuit art and its expression of Inuit traditions
and history, as well as how it is changing in the current political
landscape. For example, Inuit dances are becoming less ritualistic and
more modern, causing concern for Inuit traditionalists. This is symptomatic
of the changing Inuit art world, as mainstream influences are given
an Inuit twist. This is also apparent in Inuit sculpture, as it evolves
from small ceremonial or toy artifacts to large commissions at the corporate
level. In art, as in politics, Inuit values are entering a new phase
of expression, reaching out as equals to non-Inuit."
