Indigenous Film Series:"Experimental Eskimos" (2009, Greenwald & Arnaquq-Baril)

This week is the first of a series of productions by Inuk filmmaker. Alethea Arnaquq-Baril that will be shown over the next few weeks.

Since 2009, Arnaquq-Baril has consistently worked as producer, screenwriter and director of films that examine Inuit culture. Most recently, in her film, Angry Inuk (2016) she became an out-spoken critic of NGOs such as Greenpeace and the International Fund for Animal Welfare  for ignoring the needs of vulnerable northern communities who depend on hunt for their livelihoods as she defends the Inuit seal hunt as a vital means of Innu sustainability.

The Experimental Eskimos (2009) Barry Greenwald (Dir.)/ Alethea Arnaquq-Baril (co-producer) White Pine Pictures and Paunna Productions (42 min.)

The Experimental Eskimos documents an extraordinary attempt at social engineering. The film follows Peter Ittinuar, Zebedee Nungak and Eric Tagoona, who, as 12-year-old boys, were shipped South in the early 1960s from their homes in the Canadian Arctic to attend public schools in Ottawa. All three went on to become activists and leaders, paving the way for aboriginal rights in Canada and around the world. However the social experiment deprived the children of home, family, language and culture.

McGill's Faculty of Education and The P. Lantz Initiative for Excellence in Education and the Arts present the 2018 season of the Weekly Indigenous Film Series, facilitated by Lori Beavis and supported by McGill's Department of Integrated Studies in Education and the Institute for Human Development and Well-Being (IHDW).