WACHOWICH, Nancy, in collaboration with Apphia Agalakti AWA, Rhoda Kaukjak KATSAK, and Sandra Pikujak KATSAK, 1999, Saqiyuq, Stories from the Lives of Three Inuit Women, Montréal and Kingston, McGill-Queen's University Press.

As the hardback edition's dustjacket informs us, Saqiyuq means "strong wind that suddenly shifts direction." Although it is never mentioned by name in the narratives of Apphia Awa, Rhoda Katsak and Sandra Katsak (the grandmother-mother-daughter trio whose life histories form the core of this marvelous book), it is a metaphor that aptly portrays the lives of Inuit born in the last 75 years. Like a wind that changes directions, Nunavut Inuit moved off the land and into government-built settlements beginning in the mid-60s. This move exposed Inuit to a totalizing system of values, rules, and norms espoused by those controlling the settlements, the Qallunaat ("white people"). As if entering a bizarre dream, Inuit almost instantly found themselves trapped (and to some extent, protected) in a deeply foreign system of laws, routines and regulations strictly enforced by a dedicated if not idealistic group of civil servants, missionaries and educators committed to civilizing the Eskimo. Rhoda describes the situation succinctly, "when I [with her family] came off the land the people with the only type of authority were Qallunaat. The teachers were Qallunaat, the principals were Qallunaat, the RCMP were Qallunaat, the administrators were Qallunaat, the nurses were Qallunaat, it was them who told us what to do […] " (p. 194). I was therefore startled to learn from Sandra, Rhoda's daughter, that since the early 1980s, just two decades after Qallunaat ruled everything in town, most of the teachers in Pond Inlet were now Inuit. Such a turnaround, unimagineable when Sandra's mother was a young adult, highlights the ongoing transformation of Canadian Arctic society itself, one in which Qallunaat and Inuit share in its development and governance. A new era of Inuit professionalism is in full force now, bolstered by the creation of Nunavut as well as the expansion of numerous for profit and non-profit corporations run by Inuit, including Inuit Tapiriit Katami (ITK), Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated (NTI), and the numerous regional Inuit associations and business development corporations. But this new phase of Inuit history is not the main focus of this book. Rather, it is the quotidian lives of three women connected by kinship and geography, whose experiences and perspectives Wachowich has skillfully edited and integrated into one volume. Based on ethnographic and historical accounts of the lives of Inuit during the decades of upheaval and dislocation, it is clear that Apphia, Rhoda and Sandra, like many Inuit, view this period of history with considerable ambivalence and even confusion. The confusion stems from the fact that Inuit are not sure if access to money, public education, and modern conveniences has made their lives better or worse. Was life better before the Qallunaat arrived? Was it worse? Was it both? Two realms of knowledge and subjectivity, one linked to imagining the present, the other to imagining the past have emerged as key and inseparable components of an emerging Inuit historical consciousness and cultural identity. The past and present are intertwined because Qallunaat ushered in both a new way of living in the present and a new way of thinking about the past. Missionaries and non-Inuit educators introduced a version of world history in which Inuit were neither prominent nor relevant. But this modification of historical consciousness also reshaped Inuit attitudes about the present and the future. Rhoda admits that she grew up thinking that she should try to be Qallunnat, and that is why she had Qallunaat idols like the Supremes and Elvis Presley (p. 195). The adoption of popular icons and aspirations of mainstream Qallunaat society not only influenced Inuit to rethink their future, but it created a history in …