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Introduction. L’emploi dans l’Inuit Nunangat

Magalie Quintal-Marineau and Gabrielle Slowey

Introduction. Employment in Inuit Nunangat

Magalie Quintal-Marineau and Gabrielle Slowey

Conversation with Okalik Eegeesiak

Okalik Eegeesiak, Magalie Quintal-Marineau and Félixe Caron Boudrias

Travailleuses et travailleurs qallunaat au Nunavik : Discours d’aide et de dépendance coloniale

Béatrice Monfette and Magalie Quintal-Marineau
Jobs in Nunavik are predominantly held by temporary workers from southern Quebec, a situation rooted in colonial dynamics in the Canadian Arctic. Despite the challenges this presence creates for labour market organization and for relations between Inuit and Qallunaat (non-Inuit), these work experiences remain understudied. This article draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with former qallunaat workers in the care sectors (education, health, and social services) to examine their perspectives on their work. The objective is to contextualize their role and contribution by exploring how they construct their relationship to the labour market in Nunavik.The findings reveal that their experience is marked by a sense of being indispensable to the proper functioning of Nunavik’s labour market. This perception is based on a view of Inuit as dependent on, and “in need of” Qallunaat because of the challenges they face and the shortage of qualified staff in services. The construction of this need serves to justify and legitimize qallunaat presence while easing doubts and discomfort related to its negative effects. This stance stems from a form of structural ignorance that denies power dynamics and reinforces logics of dependency.This project highlights the representations held by these workers within Nunavik’s care institutions, showing how colonial dynamics of dependency benefit them while excluding Inuit from jobs in their own territory.

Making It Work: Inuit Labour, Unionization, and Employment Partnerships in Nunavut’s Mining Economy

Gabrielle A. Slowey
This article examines Inuit participation in the labour force in Nunavut through a case study of the Mary River iron ore mine and the Qikiqtani Skills and Training for Employment Partnership (Q-STEP) program. Drawing on academic literature, policy documents, Inuit Impact and Benefit Agreements (IIBAs), union materials, and a one-day workshop, it explores the structural challenges Inuit workers continue to face, including housing shortages, educational inequities, language barriers, and distrust of southern institutions. The article argues that Inuit engagement with wage labour cannot be understood through simplistic binaries of exploitation versus empowerment. Instead, Inuit communities are navigating resource development in pragmatic and innovative ways that seek to balance economic opportunity, cultural continuity, and political self-determination. Attention is paid to Inuit-led initiatives such as Q-STEP, the Tuttarvik employment application, and the role of the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 793 in supporting workplace training, retention, and safer labour conditions. The paper contributes to scholarship on Indigenous labour and Arctic political economy by emphasizing Inuit agency and institutional innovation. It argues that Inuit participation in wage labour and traditional land-based practices is not mutually exclusive but increasingly interconnected within contemporary forms of Arctic development and governance.

Exploring the Connections between Employment and the Housing Crisis in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut

Gloria Song
This article examines the role of housing with respect to goals of increasing Inuit employment. This is part of a larger project that used institutional ethnography to interview service providers and community members in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut to understand how their experiences of the housing crisis are coordinated by the institutional features of bureaucratic systems in Nunavut. The research confirms significant correlations between housing and employment. Local Inuit skilled workers must consider moving out of Cambridge Bay due to the lack of affordable housing. The housing crisis is also affected by the employment context, as local labor shortages contribute to challenges in building and maintaining homes in the community. Staff housing is one solution used by employers to incentivize the hiring and retaining of local skilled workers in Nunavut and support Inuit participation in the labor force. However, other solutions are needed, as workers living in staff housing risk losing their home if their employment is terminated, leaving them in a legally precarious position. To sustainably support Inuit employment, the housing crisis must be dealt with in a holistic manner, addressing all types of housing.

Innovative Approaches to Workforce Development of Construction Trades in Nunavut (Conference Note)

Eiryn Devereaux and Albert Netser

Employment, Identity and the Politics of Skills in Nunavut

Magalie Quintal-Marineau
Over the past decades, social policy in the Canadian Arctic has increasingly emphasized Inuit employability, largely through vocational training and skills development programs. While these initiatives aim to reduce unemployment and integrate Inuit into the formal economy, they often overlook how notions of “skills” intersect with Inuit cultural values and lived experiences. This paper explores how concepts of competence, merit, and knowledge are interpreted and negotiated within the Nunavut Public Service (NPS). Drawing on interviews with current and former Inuit public servants, the study examines how institutional definitions of work, learning, and expertise shape – and are shaped by – Inuit worldviews. Four main themes emerge from participants’ testimonies: (1) cultural wellbeing; (2) diverging understandings of work; (3) career aspirations and contributions; and (4) knowledge and experience hierarchy. These findings challenge deficit-based narratives and call for a rethinking of labour frameworks through the lens of Inuit identity, governance, and self-determination. The paper argues that power relations embedded in dominant skill assessments contribute to structural barriers, and that re-centering Inuit ways of knowing is essential for equitable workforce participation and economic autonomy in Nunavut.

Protecting Inuit Language and Culture from Linguistic and Cultural Imperialism: Resisting English Dominance through Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, Community-Driven Educational Reform and Social Media in Nunavik

Natasha Ita MacDonald
This Inuit-led research explores Inuit voices on decolonizing English second-language (ESL) education in Nunavik by examining how Inuit adults and youth envision protecting Inuktitut and culture while framed by Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit. Thirty-two Inuit adults and 11 youth from three Nunavik communities participated in this research from January to September 2024. They called for decolonizing education by returning to traditional values (IQ) and for schools to uphold Inuit identity and language. The youth identified social media as a key tool for language and cultural preservation, while the adults emphasized the importance of critical dialogue on culture and language within the community. This study contributes to the decolonial discourse in Inuit education by offering an original Inuit-specific methodological framework, Silattusarniq, for research that centers Inuit voices and perspectives on decolonization.

Paysages radiophoniques au Nunavik : Circulation des voix, inclusion des êtres

John-Samuel MacKay
Through radio, the Nunavimmiut not only share information, but they also connect, recognize, and build relationships. Radio plays a major role in linking individuals within a network of real and potential relationships, ranging from community members in their homes or workplaces, to hunters on the tundra, and even to people in other villages and beyond. I suggest that radio amplifies and renders “public” forms and strategies of communication that underpin all community life in Nunavik. The voices that speak and are heard on the airwaves are part of relational and communal “landscapes” that are lived and sustained at every moment, taking shape both in the village and across the territory. To explain this process, I analyze radio as a mechanism that facilitates two fundamental aspects of relational life in Nunavik: circulation (of goods, people, and also voices) and inclusion (of people and beings in the environment).

Patsauq, Markoosie, avec Henitiuk, Valerie et Marc-Antoine Mahieu (dir.). 2021. Uumajursiutik unaatuinnamut. Hunter with Harpoon. Chasseur au harpon. Montréal, Kingston : Presses universitaires McGill-Queen's, 104 pages.

Allie Miot-Bruneau

Guy Bordin, 2015, Beyond Darkness and Sleep: The Inuit Night in North Baffin Island, Louvain – Paris – Bristol, CT: Peeters Publishers, 415 pages.

Roxanne Blanchard-Gagné, PhD Student

Alexina Kublu (1954-2025) : la disparition d’une linguiste-juriste et médiatrice exceptionnelle

Frédéric Laugrand

Louis Tapardjuk (1953-2026)

John MacDonald

Remembering Three Inuit Scholars from Igloolik

Louis-Jacques Dorais, Stéphane Cloutier and John MacDonald