Nunavut Day celebration in Winnipeg offers growing Inuit community chance to share culture

A gathering at Winnipeg's Vimy Ridge Park on Sunday afternoon shared traditional Inuit food, games and music in celebration of Nunavut's 24th birthday.

Nunavut Day marks Parliament's passage of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, which went into effect July 9, 1993. It's celebrated as a milestone on the road to Nunavut becoming a territory, though that didn't happen officially until April 1, 1999.

Nunavut's establishment as its own territory is significant for the Inuit because it granted them power over their governance, said Pudlulak Ayaruak, whose grandmother was at the inaugural ceremony for Nunavut Day in 1999.

"We could have our own voice and not [be] told how we have to govern ourselves, how to be for our people, our own land," she told CBC News at Vimy Ridge Park.

Ayaruak, who was raised in both Winnipeg and Rankin Inlet, said she attended Sunday's event to honour her grandmother and the legacy of her ancestors.

She brought her four children, and four children she adopted from family in Nunavut, to Sunday's gathering so they could meet other Inuit living in Winnipeg, see some familiar faces and take part in the festivities.

Ayaruak would like to see more large gatherings for Inuit Winnipeggers in the future, as the community is continuously expanding.

"It just keeps growing and growing. I'm happy that they're going and living outside of our territory, but still able to participate in activities like this," she said.

"We can gather and have that healing time together. I feel it's healing."

The head of Western Canada's first Inuit resource centre says they have been holding the community celebrations in Winnipeg since the centre's inception in 2019.

"It's really a day for Inuit to celebrate," Nikki Komaksiutiksak, executive director of Tunngasugit Inuit Resource Centre, told CBC News on Sunday.

The Inuit are often forgotten, misrepresented or not represented at all, she said, and Sunday's event gives Winnipeg's Inuit community a chance to feel included.

"It's also such a great way for our community of Winnipeg to learn more about our culture, to learn about Inuit, and know that we are Canadians and we come from the same land," Komaksiutiksak said.

'It's a blessing'

Attendees enjoyed Inuit throat singing, games and traditional foods, including arctic char, goose stew, whale blubber and caribou head, legs and ribs.

Komaksiutiksak said offering traditional foods at the event means the world to Winnipeg's Inuit community, since it's a taste of home for many who have had to leave to access educational and housing opportunities.

"It's a great way for their soul to be rejuvenated — to feel that they have a little piece of home within them — and food in Indigenous cultures is such an important way of coming together as well."

Blandine Kuglugiak, who was raised in Nunavut's Chesterfield Inlet and has lived in Winnipeg for the last 29 years, said she rarely has access to many of the traditional foods offered at Sunday's gathering.

"It's yummy. It's a blessing," she said, adding the food took her back to her childhood in Nunavut.

Kuglugiak competed in a T-shirt contest at the event, decorating a makeshift frock from a garbage bag to garner the most applause from attendees.

She said the annual celebration means connecting with fellow Inuit to share love.

"It's good to get together as a nation."