Böcker i Contemporary Studies on the North-serien

Labrador Innu cultural and environmental activist Tshaukuesh Elizabeth Penashue is well known both within and far beyond the Innu Nation. This book began as a diary written in Innu-aimun, in which Tshaukuesh recorded day-to-day experiences as well as speeches, court appearances, and interviews with reporters.

Sanaaq is an intimate story of an Inuit family negotiating the changes brought into their community by the coming of the qallunaat, the white people, in the mid-nineteenth century. Composed in 48 episodes, it recounts the daily life of Sanaaq, a strong and outspoken young widow, her daughter Qumaq, and their small semi-nomadic community in northern Quebec. Here they live their lives hunting seal, repairing their kayak, and gathering mussels under blue sea ice before the tide comes in. These are ordinary extraordinary lives: marriages are made and unmade, children are born and named, violence appears in the form of a fearful husband or a hungry polar bear. Here the spirit world is alive and relations with non-humans are never taken lightly. And under it all, the growing intrusion of the qallunaat and the battle for souls between the Catholic and Anglican missionaries threatens to forever change the way of life of Sanaaq and her young family.

An important compendium of Inuit culture illustrated through Inuit words. The book brings the sum of the author's decades of experience and engagement with Inuit and Inuktitut to bear on what he fashions as an amiable, leisurely stroll through words and meanings.