Colonization of My Family in the Last Fifty Years

Peesee Pitsiulak-Stephens

In her autoethnography, Peesee Pitsiulak traces her family’s journey from a seminomadic way of life with a father who was a traditional hunter and “part of the land as the rocks belong to the land” to life in a settlement. The older Inuit regularly said to them, “Do not go against the Qallunaat. They know a lot more than us.” School imposed a foreign language and culture, a place where living by a clock as opposed to the traditional daylight and seasonal rhythms symbolized the drastic change between life on the land and life in the settlement. Peesee reflects, “I am grateful that I have been educated both by my traditional parents and the formal education system. We will never go back to the way our grandparents lived but we still have to live according to their values and belief systems.”