In the early 1950s, 22-year-old Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk began compiling Inuktitut phrases as a language guide for missionaries. She then created
Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk was 22 years old in 1953 when Catholic missionaries in Nunavik, the Inuit homeland in what is now northern Quebec, came to her asking for help in learning her native language. Nappaaluk started by writing down sentences in Inuktitut syllabics, using as many words as she could find. She eventually let her mind wander and started inventing characters, imagining the life of an independent young woman named Sanaaq. Nappaaluk ended up working on the story for more than 20 years, while also raising seven children, working as a teacher and spending summers in the family’s hunting camp. The writing was interrupted by two trips south to receive treatment for tuberculosis — the first a five-year stint, the second for six months — during the TB epidemic of the 1950s and ‘60s. When Nappaaluk returned to Nunavik, it was rapidly changing, as southern business interests, agents for the federal government and missionaries reshaped life in the North. She worked her impressions of these changes into the story. The result was Sanaaq, the first novel written in Inuktitut syllabics in Canada. It was published in Inuktitut in 1984 and has since been translated into both French and English. It is considered a classic of Inuit literature.
