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Life Among the Qallunaat
Life Among the Qallunaat is the story of Mini Aodla Freeman’s experiences growing up in the Inuit communities of James Bay and her journey in the 1950s from her home to the strange land and stranger customs of the Qallunaat, those living south of the Arctic. Her extraordinary story, sometimes humourous and sometimes heartbreaking, illustrates an Inuit woman’s movement between worlds and ways of understanding. It also provides a clear-eyed record of the changes that swept through Inuit communities in the 1940s and 1950s. Mini Aodla Freeman was born in 1936 on Cape Hope Island in James Bay. At the age of sixteen, she began nurse's training at Ste. Therese School in Fort George, Quebec, and in 1957 she moved to Ottawa to work as a translator for the then Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources. Her memoir, Life Among the Qallunaat, was published in 1978 and has been translated into French, German, and Greenlandic. Life Among the Qallunaat is the third book in the First Voices, First Texts series, which publishes lost or under appreciated texts by Indigenous writers. This reissue of Mini Aodla Freeman’s path-breaking work includes new material, an interview with the author, and an afterword by Keavy Martin and Julie Rak, with Norma Dunning.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
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716 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
September 25, 2016
An honest, simple, and vital memoir of an Inuk woman's experiences during a time of massive transition in Canadian Inuit communities. The editors did a great job at retaining Aodla Freeman's voice. An important yet subtle work that has finally found a readership after its original publication in 1978.
June 8, 2016
I absolutely loved this, didn't want it to end. I learned so much about Inuk culture and life in the North. Mini's story of course played a huge part and I appreciated so much the details and nuances of her culture. I never knew! Why do some Westerners think only *they* are the civilized people?
July 10, 2016
Interesting, especially the inside views of Inuit attitudes to raising children and respecting elders, how one learns, what one says, how and when. I was intrigued by the references to noises made by parents to express their love to their children. What would they sound like?
Also, the descriptions of quallunaat or white culture from the author's perspective are insightful.
I found the overall structure of the book a bit choppy and repetitive (which is why it took a while to finish), but well worth reading.
Also, the descriptions of quallunaat or white culture from the author's perspective are insightful.
I found the overall structure of the book a bit choppy and repetitive (which is why it took a while to finish), but well worth reading.
February 23, 2019
Re-edited and reissued by The University of Manitoba Press’s First Voices, First Texts series, bless their hearts. This is a wonderful, highly readable memoir by Aodla Freeman, an Inuit woman born in 1936 in an island community in James Bay in what is now Nunavut, Canada.
She writes about growing up in the North, experiencing the early paternalistic overtures of southern white Canadians (the qallunaat), learning from her family and community, growing up, going to residential school, getting TB and getting treated for it by being shipped south away from everyone she knew, training as a nurse, and working as a maid and child care provider, laundress, teacher, and translator. Her kind and thoughtful personality and her intelligence shine through in all of this. Her memory is prodigious—apparently she wrote the book more or less in one go and delivered it to her publisher in a single original MS.
The changes that took place over the course of her life are incredible, and by the end of the book I felt I knew her and had some shared sense of a life lived and seen in retrospect. This is also a gentle, subtle, but plainspoken perspective on Canadian racism and imperialism, from an Inuit woman’s direct experience. And it’s funny. Pretty amazing.
Final note: the Canadian government “acquired” most of the copies of this book when it was first published in the seventies (in a slightly different, slightly more heavy-handed edit) and stuck them in storage where they couldn’t be sold or read. Few records survive of why or how this was done, but it seems to have been motivated by fear of what Aodla Freeman might have had to say about residential schools. Ironically, her stories about school life are very circumspect. Nonetheless, her book was censored and never received wide readership or was made a contender for the Governor General’s Award for Nonfiction, although it had a strong champion in one of the judges. It’s infuriating to learn this now, as an adult working to read and learn more about Canada’s politics and history than what little I was taught in school. I’m grateful to U of Manitoba Press, and to the collective of editors and scholars who are issuing the First Voices, First Texts series. And to Aodla Freeman, for writing.
She writes about growing up in the North, experiencing the early paternalistic overtures of southern white Canadians (the qallunaat), learning from her family and community, growing up, going to residential school, getting TB and getting treated for it by being shipped south away from everyone she knew, training as a nurse, and working as a maid and child care provider, laundress, teacher, and translator. Her kind and thoughtful personality and her intelligence shine through in all of this. Her memory is prodigious—apparently she wrote the book more or less in one go and delivered it to her publisher in a single original MS.
The changes that took place over the course of her life are incredible, and by the end of the book I felt I knew her and had some shared sense of a life lived and seen in retrospect. This is also a gentle, subtle, but plainspoken perspective on Canadian racism and imperialism, from an Inuit woman’s direct experience. And it’s funny. Pretty amazing.
Final note: the Canadian government “acquired” most of the copies of this book when it was first published in the seventies (in a slightly different, slightly more heavy-handed edit) and stuck them in storage where they couldn’t be sold or read. Few records survive of why or how this was done, but it seems to have been motivated by fear of what Aodla Freeman might have had to say about residential schools. Ironically, her stories about school life are very circumspect. Nonetheless, her book was censored and never received wide readership or was made a contender for the Governor General’s Award for Nonfiction, although it had a strong champion in one of the judges. It’s infuriating to learn this now, as an adult working to read and learn more about Canada’s politics and history than what little I was taught in school. I’m grateful to U of Manitoba Press, and to the collective of editors and scholars who are issuing the First Voices, First Texts series. And to Aodla Freeman, for writing.
November 23, 2020
I really enjoyed this book and learnt a lot from it. It was very well written and kept me interested throughout. I would definitely recommend it.
My reason for only giving it 4/5 stars (though probably more like 4.5/5) is due to the organization of the book. The first third speaks about the authors experience in Ottawa and makes it sound like it is her first time in the South. About a third of the way through, it switches to the timeline of her childhood up to the point at which she moves to Ottawa.
It did make me feel intrigued as to how she reached Ottawa so there were pros to ordering the book this way. However, while around the middle point of this book, I felt confused about the sudden change in era, which I think could have been avoided by making the memoir chronological.
My reason for only giving it 4/5 stars (though probably more like 4.5/5) is due to the organization of the book. The first third speaks about the authors experience in Ottawa and makes it sound like it is her first time in the South. About a third of the way through, it switches to the timeline of her childhood up to the point at which she moves to Ottawa.
It did make me feel intrigued as to how she reached Ottawa so there were pros to ordering the book this way. However, while around the middle point of this book, I felt confused about the sudden change in era, which I think could have been avoided by making the memoir chronological.
October 8, 2022
That was lovely and I read it slowly so it would last longer. Mini is so non-judgemental and its a joy to hear about her life (although it's sad afterwards realizing that what she described has been destroyed and she's been forced into the Qallunaat way for all her adult life now which is probably why I didn't want it to end.)
December 31, 2018
Today I’d like to highlight an Inuit author who has seen a lifetime of change in her own family and in Canada’s Inuit north. If you are not familiar with the Inuit word “qallunaat,” it literally translates as “those who pamper their eyebrows,” but figuratively refers to those who live in the south or in non-Inuit environments.
I have met and come to know many Qallunaat … and learned to be cautious with them. Some are nice and kind, but none want to see or understand my Native culture. Some don’t want to know, some don’t have time, some try but find it too deep to understand or accept. They all want to cover it up with their own ways. They always want me to be different, a novelty, and they refuse to see that I am a plain human being with feelings, aches, hatred, the desire to cheat, lie, love, adore, understanding, kindness, humanity, pain, joy, happiness, gratitude, and all the other things that every other being was capable of having, doing, thinking and acting. (p.219, 220)
Mini Aodla Freeman was born in 1936 in Canada’s north, in James Bay. Her memoir Life Among the Qallunaat, first published in 1978, is a glimpse into her life as an Inuk child within a hunting family. But it is bigger than that: It compares and contrasts her rural life with the urban life of Canada’s south.
Aodla Freeman and her family lived on the land, hunting and fishing and moving from winter lands to their summer lands. They were familiar with the Native Cree tribes and dealt with the Hudson’s Bay Company. She grew up in tents and was in for a major culture shock when she came to southern Ontario for the first time.
This was a time of cataclysmic change for the indigenous communities of the north. By the time she was in her early twenties, Aodla had lived in the north, travelled by canoe, learned nursing in Moose Factory, Ont., and became a translator in Ottawa. We see her extraordinary nomadic family life and we experience her loneliness at a residential school, in a tuberculosis hospital in Hamilton and her busy life in Ottawa, translating for native people in four languages. The author is married to Milton Freeman, a renowned anthropologist who lived and worked in the north nearly all his early life. They have raised a family and currently live in Edmonton.
Life Among the Qallunaat is written in diary fashion with a great many sections, each representing a single event or story. In this, Aodla Freeman mimics the Inuit tradition of oral storytelling, where details are repeated so that they will be remembered. Storytelling is very meaningful and everyone is taught to memorize and retell stories. There was very little written language.
As a child, she lived with her father, grandparents, and brother, and we get to know them quite well. Equally, we are introduced to the various people, white and Indigenous, that she meets through the years. She is very open about her opinions and observations and she takes us with her into her unusual world.
Life Among the Qallunaat is a play on the title of another book: My Life Among the Eskimos: Baffinland Journeys of Bernard Adolph Hantzsch, 1909 to 1911. Mel Hurtig, first a bookstore owner, then a publisher, best known for the Canadian Encyclopedia and the Junior Canadian Encyclopedia, took on Aodla Freeman’s book and wanted to parallel the Hantzsch memoir.
Life Among the Qallunaat was published in 1978 and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s medal for literature, but then the book disappeared. It had been suppressed by the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs because they were afraid that the book contained information criticizing the residential school system. It didn’t, but 20 years later, the University of Manitoba Press republished it in its original form.
The residential school system was established in 1880 by the Christian church in collaboration with the Canadian government to convert and integrate Indigenous children to Canadian society. The last residential school was closed in 1996. It was a terrible experiment that disrupted Indigenous family life, language, and culture.
The tone of the book reflects the writer’s upbringing and beliefs that life is to be experienced, not necessarily directed. Aodla Freeman is like a feather in the wind. “I am Inuk — I do not shape my future for my own gain. I let others shape it for me and learn to take whatever comes, good or bad.” (p.239)
Life Among the Qallunaat is an important book for every Canadian to read. It is a mirror that reflects a piece of both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures and history. It is also one of my favourite books this year.
I have met and come to know many Qallunaat … and learned to be cautious with them. Some are nice and kind, but none want to see or understand my Native culture. Some don’t want to know, some don’t have time, some try but find it too deep to understand or accept. They all want to cover it up with their own ways. They always want me to be different, a novelty, and they refuse to see that I am a plain human being with feelings, aches, hatred, the desire to cheat, lie, love, adore, understanding, kindness, humanity, pain, joy, happiness, gratitude, and all the other things that every other being was capable of having, doing, thinking and acting. (p.219, 220)
Mini Aodla Freeman was born in 1936 in Canada’s north, in James Bay. Her memoir Life Among the Qallunaat, first published in 1978, is a glimpse into her life as an Inuk child within a hunting family. But it is bigger than that: It compares and contrasts her rural life with the urban life of Canada’s south.
Aodla Freeman and her family lived on the land, hunting and fishing and moving from winter lands to their summer lands. They were familiar with the Native Cree tribes and dealt with the Hudson’s Bay Company. She grew up in tents and was in for a major culture shock when she came to southern Ontario for the first time.
This was a time of cataclysmic change for the indigenous communities of the north. By the time she was in her early twenties, Aodla had lived in the north, travelled by canoe, learned nursing in Moose Factory, Ont., and became a translator in Ottawa. We see her extraordinary nomadic family life and we experience her loneliness at a residential school, in a tuberculosis hospital in Hamilton and her busy life in Ottawa, translating for native people in four languages. The author is married to Milton Freeman, a renowned anthropologist who lived and worked in the north nearly all his early life. They have raised a family and currently live in Edmonton.
Life Among the Qallunaat is written in diary fashion with a great many sections, each representing a single event or story. In this, Aodla Freeman mimics the Inuit tradition of oral storytelling, where details are repeated so that they will be remembered. Storytelling is very meaningful and everyone is taught to memorize and retell stories. There was very little written language.
As a child, she lived with her father, grandparents, and brother, and we get to know them quite well. Equally, we are introduced to the various people, white and Indigenous, that she meets through the years. She is very open about her opinions and observations and she takes us with her into her unusual world.
Life Among the Qallunaat is a play on the title of another book: My Life Among the Eskimos: Baffinland Journeys of Bernard Adolph Hantzsch, 1909 to 1911. Mel Hurtig, first a bookstore owner, then a publisher, best known for the Canadian Encyclopedia and the Junior Canadian Encyclopedia, took on Aodla Freeman’s book and wanted to parallel the Hantzsch memoir.
Life Among the Qallunaat was published in 1978 and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s medal for literature, but then the book disappeared. It had been suppressed by the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs because they were afraid that the book contained information criticizing the residential school system. It didn’t, but 20 years later, the University of Manitoba Press republished it in its original form.
The residential school system was established in 1880 by the Christian church in collaboration with the Canadian government to convert and integrate Indigenous children to Canadian society. The last residential school was closed in 1996. It was a terrible experiment that disrupted Indigenous family life, language, and culture.
The tone of the book reflects the writer’s upbringing and beliefs that life is to be experienced, not necessarily directed. Aodla Freeman is like a feather in the wind. “I am Inuk — I do not shape my future for my own gain. I let others shape it for me and learn to take whatever comes, good or bad.” (p.239)
Life Among the Qallunaat is an important book for every Canadian to read. It is a mirror that reflects a piece of both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures and history. It is also one of my favourite books this year.
March 3, 2017
I had to rewrite this review as I feel I didn't do the book justice.
I feel like "Life Among the Qallunaat" is a must-read book, that it is incredibly important as a piece of Canadian, Inuit and North American cultural history; however, I felt like Mini Aodla Freeman's writing at times made the book a drag. It felt much longer and drab than it was meant to be - my rating is a reflection of that.
I read it from a Qallunaat-living-in-a-modern-Inuit-village point of view. It was interesting to see how Mini Aodla Freeman interacted with Qallunaat and how the two cultures clashed. However, I feel like she got bogged down in some descriptions of how her routine life was in the north. "I woke up and looked out at the world. Then I sewed and teased my brother." Basically those two sentences seemed to repeat themselves over and over again when she described her childhood in the north.
I felt she could have been a little more specific about things that were going on. It was almost like she got bored of writing about her own experiences in the north. I know it's called "Life Among the Qallunaat," but it would have been nice to read more about her northern experiences in order to emphasize the contrast between cultures a bit more. I was hoping for more of her experiences in Ottawa, especially since she ended up living the bulk of her life there, and less about Moose Factory and Moosonee.
I'm glad I read this book. It gave me a different point of view of how the elders in my town must have viewed Qallunaat back in the day (and, quite possibly, still view them now). There's a part of the book where the author wonders if some day the asphalt roads and buildings and towers will encroach into Inuit communities, and how it would impact Inuit culture if they do. I can only wonder what elders today think about that.
I feel like "Life Among the Qallunaat" is a must-read book, that it is incredibly important as a piece of Canadian, Inuit and North American cultural history; however, I felt like Mini Aodla Freeman's writing at times made the book a drag. It felt much longer and drab than it was meant to be - my rating is a reflection of that.
I read it from a Qallunaat-living-in-a-modern-Inuit-village point of view. It was interesting to see how Mini Aodla Freeman interacted with Qallunaat and how the two cultures clashed. However, I feel like she got bogged down in some descriptions of how her routine life was in the north. "I woke up and looked out at the world. Then I sewed and teased my brother." Basically those two sentences seemed to repeat themselves over and over again when she described her childhood in the north.
I felt she could have been a little more specific about things that were going on. It was almost like she got bored of writing about her own experiences in the north. I know it's called "Life Among the Qallunaat," but it would have been nice to read more about her northern experiences in order to emphasize the contrast between cultures a bit more. I was hoping for more of her experiences in Ottawa, especially since she ended up living the bulk of her life there, and less about Moose Factory and Moosonee.
I'm glad I read this book. It gave me a different point of view of how the elders in my town must have viewed Qallunaat back in the day (and, quite possibly, still view them now). There's a part of the book where the author wonders if some day the asphalt roads and buildings and towers will encroach into Inuit communities, and how it would impact Inuit culture if they do. I can only wonder what elders today think about that.
April 30, 2022
This turned out to be a truly interesting and informative book. The writing style is simple and straightforward, as is Mini herself, and I have never read a book like this. She was recording history that would sadly disappear all too quickly.
So many things that happened in her life were surprising: among them the fact that she got to learn nursing, and entered a beauty contest - so absolutely foreign to her culture.
I was actually living on Hamilton Mountain in the early 1950’s, just a little girl at the time, the same time when Mini was sent there to the Sanatorium. I remember my mom mentioning the ‘ sanatorium’ where many ‘Eskimos’, as she called them then, were living with tuberculosis.
There is a true sadness underlying Mini’s story as her beloved culture is disappearing, but the book is not depressing at all.
So many things that happened in her life were surprising: among them the fact that she got to learn nursing, and entered a beauty contest - so absolutely foreign to her culture.
I was actually living on Hamilton Mountain in the early 1950’s, just a little girl at the time, the same time when Mini was sent there to the Sanatorium. I remember my mom mentioning the ‘ sanatorium’ where many ‘Eskimos’, as she called them then, were living with tuberculosis.
There is a true sadness underlying Mini’s story as her beloved culture is disappearing, but the book is not depressing at all.
January 14, 2016
Aodla Freeman's telling of what life was like growing up in James Bay, along with her sharing of the culture and traditions that guided her through her formative years, made for a wonderful read.
November 9, 2018
This book was originally published in 1978, but the Canadian government feared what it might say and bought up more than half the copies and hid them in a cellar. It had received glowing reviews, but the lack of books in circulation meant it could not possibly become a best seller. A couple of years later, an official read the book, realized Canada had nothing to fear (no horrible secrets were revealed), and the bunkered copies were allowed into circulation. Canadian literature is the poorer for it, because Aodla Freeman might have been a terrific author and might have created some wonderful books. If only.... In 2015 it was reworked with the permission and cooperation of the author and reissued, closer to the original she had written, before her first editor took control of her book back in the 1970s.
The title harks back to a previous book called "Life Among the Eskimos" and means something like life among the Southerners (white European immigrants who were running Canada). It begins with how Aodla Freeman first came to Ottawa in the south to work as translator. It tells how she settled in and learnt about urban life. Eventually, she decides to visit home and takes her roommate with her. The book then takes up her life as a young child and progresses back up to how she came to move to Ottawa to become a translator.
Aodla Freeman is an Inuit and was born in 1936 in St. James Bay, at a time when her family were still nomadic. As well as the Inuit, there were also Cree Indians, and a few white settlers, mostly from the Hudson Bay Company. There were also missionaries. Eventually the family was pressured to put her and her brother in a boarding school. Her Inuit life was such a part of nature, and life in the boarding school was totally alien. The adults there are described as being kindly, but the other children could be vicious. It was here that the author learnt French.
Aodla Freeman tells much about her culture and contrasts it with that of the Qallunaat who had taken over Canada. The world all around her changed so much. I was quite amazed at how very traditional Inuit life still was in the early years of her life. I had never thought about it much, but I guess I thought that Western life had invaded most of Canada by then. I don't think I am expressing my thoughts on this very well.
Borrowed from the library. I'm very pleased that the Aberdeenshire Library Service has a copy of this book, which surprised me greatly.
The title harks back to a previous book called "Life Among the Eskimos" and means something like life among the Southerners (white European immigrants who were running Canada). It begins with how Aodla Freeman first came to Ottawa in the south to work as translator. It tells how she settled in and learnt about urban life. Eventually, she decides to visit home and takes her roommate with her. The book then takes up her life as a young child and progresses back up to how she came to move to Ottawa to become a translator.
Aodla Freeman is an Inuit and was born in 1936 in St. James Bay, at a time when her family were still nomadic. As well as the Inuit, there were also Cree Indians, and a few white settlers, mostly from the Hudson Bay Company. There were also missionaries. Eventually the family was pressured to put her and her brother in a boarding school. Her Inuit life was such a part of nature, and life in the boarding school was totally alien. The adults there are described as being kindly, but the other children could be vicious. It was here that the author learnt French.
Aodla Freeman tells much about her culture and contrasts it with that of the Qallunaat who had taken over Canada. The world all around her changed so much. I was quite amazed at how very traditional Inuit life still was in the early years of her life. I had never thought about it much, but I guess I thought that Western life had invaded most of Canada by then. I don't think I am expressing my thoughts on this very well.
Borrowed from the library. I'm very pleased that the Aberdeenshire Library Service has a copy of this book, which surprised me greatly.
September 9, 2021
This is a memoir, first published in 1978, by an Inuk woman named Mini, who was born in James Bay and eventually moves south for work. Here among the Qallunaat (those who live south of the Arctic), Mini encounters new and unfamiliar ways of living. In a series of sometimes adorably named segments (like My Feet Were Smelly But They Were Warm), she reminisces not only about her life in the south, but also about her childhood in the north.
I learned a lot about Mini’s world. It reminded me of how truly unique each human experience is, how much I take certain things for granted, and how important it is to learn about lives so unlike your own. I cried a few tears for her being bullied and isolated from her family and culture at residential school. I shared her embarrassment in certain situations. And I silently cheered her on through some painful moments. Through it all, I felt what a special person she is. In my own imaginary memoir, I would have a chapter where I talk about the time I had tea with Mini and it was one of the highlights of my life. In the absence of that, I will always remember her thanks to this memoir.
An interesting side note: When I turned the page to the last photo in the book, I saw my grandmother. It was Mini of course, but wow, she looked like my grandmother. I even sent it to my family to confirm that I wasn’t seeing things. Mini did not look so much like my grandmother in the other photos, but in that one photo, they could have been sisters. I don’t know if that had anything to do with the affection I felt for Mini throughout the book. But I do know that they shared a kindness of heart and beautiful spirit.
I learned a lot about Mini’s world. It reminded me of how truly unique each human experience is, how much I take certain things for granted, and how important it is to learn about lives so unlike your own. I cried a few tears for her being bullied and isolated from her family and culture at residential school. I shared her embarrassment in certain situations. And I silently cheered her on through some painful moments. Through it all, I felt what a special person she is. In my own imaginary memoir, I would have a chapter where I talk about the time I had tea with Mini and it was one of the highlights of my life. In the absence of that, I will always remember her thanks to this memoir.
An interesting side note: When I turned the page to the last photo in the book, I saw my grandmother. It was Mini of course, but wow, she looked like my grandmother. I even sent it to my family to confirm that I wasn’t seeing things. Mini did not look so much like my grandmother in the other photos, but in that one photo, they could have been sisters. I don’t know if that had anything to do with the affection I felt for Mini throughout the book. But I do know that they shared a kindness of heart and beautiful spirit.
October 2, 2019
This was an excellent book once I got used to Mini's short sentences. I knew Mini when she was working on this book. I was in university in Hamilton Ontario and was dating her daughter. I found the family hard to understand sometimes because often very little was said. There were a lot of very meaningful silences. I knew that Inuit people didn't ask questions very often they just observed and learned that way. But I felt so sorry for Mini during this book because she said she was most often too shy to answer the questions the Qallunaat asked her no matter how simple or important. She is obviously an amazing lady and exceptionally intelligent. This book was written in the late 1970's but has been lost for many years. I am so happy it has been rediscovered and is now available as an audiobook. It should be considered an important piece of Canadian literature about a mostly lost way of life. I was selflessly disappointed she stopped her story when she moved to Ottawa in the late 1950's. I would have liked to hear the story of her married life when she had her children. I think there is an important story there too that either she or her editor decided not to include.
November 18, 2019
At first, I wasn't sure about this book but as I continued reading, I couldn't put it down. I was sad when it ended -I wanted to carry on living with Mini. This is a story of someone who experienced the intense and unforgiving experience of colonization, teetering between the life she has always known in her remote northern home and the life being forced on her by the Qallunaat like an unstoppable freight train.
June 12, 2020
Loved this book!
THe first 1/4 was a bit slow, but then the rest of the book is great. Both my parents are Inuit, and I knew a lot of this stuff internally but seeing it in writing was really clarifying. It put some of the teaching I got into clear view, like why it's important to keep your living clear because it keeps you clear, and why my mom had certain mannerisms etc. It was also helpful to read as an Inuk among the Qallunaat. I'm so glad they re-printed and re-released this book!
THe first 1/4 was a bit slow, but then the rest of the book is great. Both my parents are Inuit, and I knew a lot of this stuff internally but seeing it in writing was really clarifying. It put some of the teaching I got into clear view, like why it's important to keep your living clear because it keeps you clear, and why my mom had certain mannerisms etc. It was also helpful to read as an Inuk among the Qallunaat. I'm so glad they re-printed and re-released this book!
June 24, 2022
Mini has her say about life among us Qallunaat (people who are not Inuit).
Yes us Qallunaat are indeed a crazy mixed up and selfish bunch.
Listened to the audiobook free from Audible.com.
Her journey from Cape Hope Island down to Moosonee, Hamilton and Ottawa is so well recounted and the narrator does a great job.
I will have to Google to see what became of Mini Aodla Freeman.
I think she has lived a good life and has wisdom galore.
Worth reading or listening to.
Yes us Qallunaat are indeed a crazy mixed up and selfish bunch.
Listened to the audiobook free from Audible.com.
Her journey from Cape Hope Island down to Moosonee, Hamilton and Ottawa is so well recounted and the narrator does a great job.
I will have to Google to see what became of Mini Aodla Freeman.
I think she has lived a good life and has wisdom galore.
Worth reading or listening to.
November 22, 2020
I loved this book - definitely recommend!! The way that Mini Aodla Freeman describes her life and her position as an Inuk woman living up North with her family and negotiating Qallunaat (white) communities is so interesting. She herself is shy, determined, full of character, and her Inuk humour is imbedded throughout the memoir.
April 30, 2022
I have to admit I didn't finish this book, but the half I did read was really thought-provoking. I enjoyed how the language and first-person narrative feels like the author is adrift in a land not her own. She is caught between homelands, languages and peoples and navigates in a sincere and humble way. An important book to be sure.
June 7, 2025
Freeman has a pleasant author's voice and describes her experiences at school and work with sensitivity and caring.
I would compare it favorably to Ella Cara Deloria's Waterlily for the balance of entertainment and education, but written as a memoir instead of as fiction.
Despite her training being in nursing, there are ways in which Freeman has a kind of anthropological approach.
I would compare it favorably to Ella Cara Deloria's Waterlily for the balance of entertainment and education, but written as a memoir instead of as fiction.
Despite her training being in nursing, there are ways in which Freeman has a kind of anthropological approach.
January 31, 2020
I really enjoyed this book because it gave me new insight into the Inuit way of life and way of thinking about issues in Canada. It was very frank, with happy and sad moments. It jumps around a bit, but is easy to understand once each section gets under way.
August 1, 2019
Autobiographical account of day to day intuit life in the 1950s + observations on first encounter with modern life in Ontario. A very long book, and detailed observations.
July 28, 2021
I felt this was a pretty good book.
Not my favorite Indigenous read, but still pretty good.
3.3/5
Not my favorite Indigenous read, but still pretty good.
3.3/5
November 2, 2021
What a wonderful read! If you are interested in other societies and anthropology, I think you will love this work by Mini.
March 22, 2022
Excellent memoir from the perspective of an Inuit woman of her life growing up in the James Bay area and her observations on the non Inuit people she meets in the Ontario south.
June 18, 2022
I loved this book. Simple and true.
January 6, 2023
A narrative which could have been reordered to better inform the reader. While informative about Inuit life, the text can sometimes be scattered and challenging to discern meaning from.
November 18, 2024
Essential reading for all Canadians. Powerful and touching storytelling about a part of our history very few Canadians understand.
February 4, 2017
I really enjoyed this book! I loved hearing the realities behind the nomadic lifestyle of the Inuit people, how at that time things were changing, and how people were coping with those changes. Mini told her life story in excellent episodes spanning from childhood until her move to Ottawa to work as a translator.
December 30, 2013
I have to say.. the descriptions of her experiences from when she first arrived in Ottawa are incredible! To experience for the first time, an elevator or other modern conveniences we take for-granted! Even restaurants stymied her. She couldn't comprehend that someone would cook what she picked from the list. The culture shock is breathtaking!
It's been a while since i read this, so i can't give a better review other than i LOVED it! I think this is a must read for ALL CANADIANS and other people interested in Inuit culture!
It's been a while since i read this, so i can't give a better review other than i LOVED it! I think this is a must read for ALL CANADIANS and other people interested in Inuit culture!
July 4, 2016
This book is a memoir of an Inuit woman (about 19 years old) who was hired to be a translator in Ottawa. She was put on a train and given instructions and then was on her own. Her simple descriptions of her days trying to figure out traffic lights, elevators, escalators and city buses are a fascinating glimpse into a culture I knew very little about.
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