The Experimental Eskimos at Alianait!
Nunavut debut for the Barry Greenwald’s powerful film at Alianait.
The 200-plus people, shivering inside the tent on a wet, windy Sunday evening, erupted into spontaneous applause when, in a piece of archival footage from one of the early 1980s constitutional conferences on aboriginal rights, they saw a determined Nungak say this to ex-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney:
“If it’s not going to be done in my generation, I have my son behind me who will take up this fight with your son and your son’s sons.”
Peter Ittinuar was one of three Inuit sent to southern Canada in the early 1960s to live with non-Inuit families and attend school in Ottawa alongside non-Inuit children ------------------------------------------------>
Nungak, from Puvirnituq, Nunavik, and Peter Ittinuar and Eric Hannan Tagoona, from Rankin Inlet in the Kivalliq, were only about 11 or 12 years old when they were taken to Ottawa in 1962 in a federal experiment to help academically inclined Inuit children develop leadership skills from a southern quality education.
