My Father's Land website

Also Part of My Father's Land

About My Father’s Land
By Zacharias Kunuk

Read complete text or download PDF www.isuma.tv/lo/en/did/zacharias-kunuk-formal-intervention-to-nirb-written-submission-june-8-2012. I was born in 1957 in a sod house at Kapuivik in the middle of Ikpiq, the top of Foxe Basin, halfway between Kangirdlukjuak – Steensby Inlet – and my home community of Igloolik. My birthplace is like the ‘heart’ of the Baffinland Iron Mine impact area, the part that would change the most if and when the mine, railroad, deep-water port and supertanker shipping passing through it are approved to go ahead for the next 100 years. I traveled a long way from Kapuivik since 1957 in space and in time, from the Stone Age to the Digital Age in one generation. As an Inuk I caught caribou, seals, walrus, wolves, ptarmigan, belugas, narwhal, polar bear, snow geese, muskox and arctic char, all harvested for food, skins and oil to keep my family well-fed and warm. As a filmmaker I showed my work, my language and my culture at the Cannes Film Festival and Adelaide, Australia, in New York and Paris, in Alert Bay on Vancouver Island and Tromso in arctic Norway. I learned more about my culture and Inuit ways, and more about the outside world and how it works. 

About Digital Indigenous Democracy (DID)
(Overview 5 May 2012)

Inuit consensus – "deciding together" – may be the strongest power communities can bring to negotiating with governments and transnational corporations. DID uses internet, community radio, local TV and social media to amplify Inuit traditional decision-making skills at a moment of crisis and opportunity, as Inuit face Environmental Review of the $6 billion Baffinland Iron Mine (BIM) on north Baffin Island. Through DID, Inuit adapt "deciding together" to get needed information in language they understand, talk about their concerns publicly and reach collective decisions with the power of consensus. Inuit consensus will be expressed publicly in a multimedia Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA), looking at the positive and negative impacts of the proposed mine in terms of international human rights standards and best practices, and then presented to the regulatory process, online through IsumaTV and through local radio and TV channels in all Nunavut communities. For more information see DID Overview. DID News Alert. Nipivut Nunatinnii Our Voice at Home.