Unikkaat Sivunittinnit: Messages from the Past (English subs)

In 1991, Igloolik Isuma Productions gathered 13 Igloolik elders for a week of discussion, to choose and then record 24 traditional ajaja songs considered most important to preserve for the future: where did the songs come from, how where they made and how have they been passed down generation to generation?

Each elder remembers their own family’s ajaja songs and explains how they were created by poets taking their words from their life experiences. The video includes priceless footage of these elders singing and drumming the songs. The process also allowed Isuma to publish a full CD of the selected songs and to use and preserve many of them in Isuma's films over the next twenty-five years.

The film was remastered through the Hot Docs Redux program, with gracious support from Telefilm Canada and the Indigenous Screen Office.