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Arctic Indigenous Languages Symposium: Jose Kusugak
About
Jose Amaujaq Kusugak speaks at the Arctic Indigenous Languages Symposium in Tromso, Norway on October 20th, 2008. Jose Amaujaq Kusugak was born in Naujaat, Nunavut in 1950. He is the second born of 8 brothers and 4 sisters. His passion for language started when he was taking Latin in high school and he realized that unlike Latin, Inuktitut was a working and living language. Right after high school he started working as an Inuit language teacher at the Churchill Manitoba Vocational Training Centre. In 1970 he moved back to Rankin Inlet and taught qablunaat Inuktitut then transferred to the high school to teach Inuktitut there. Developing school curriculum in Inuktitut was next to impossible with the different dialects and writing systems so he proposed to the newly formed Inuit Tapiriisat of Canada for a grant to standardize the Kivalliq writing forms. ITC invited him to do his work across the Canadian Arctic. In the mid-70s he was the director of the Inuit Language Commission, which studied many aspects of contemporary Canadian Inuktitut.
Filmmaker Contact:
isuma@isuma.ca
Year of Production: 2008
Country: Canada
Region: Arctic
