An Inuit author and storyteller visited Sundre last week to tell traditional Inuit stories and share his culture with residents.
Michael Kusugak was born in Repulse Bay, N.W.T. (now Nunavut) 65 years ago and enjoys writing children's books and sharing his culture with people across the country.
“I wrote my first book about 26 years ago called A Promise is a Promise and ever since then I've been touring around telling stories in schools and talking about the North, because a lot of kids in schools study the North and Inuit and native peoples,” he said.
“It's great fun.”
He brought artefacts with him to the Sundre library on March 19, including an Inuit drum, clothing, and seal, caribou, fox and rabbit skins and fur.
It is important to him to share his culture because he believes there are a lot of common misconceptions.
“For a long time our people, the Inuit, were not very well known around the world. People had this idea that we lived in snow houses and we went hunting and then we'd eat whatever we hunted and get all full and just lay around until we were hungry again and we'd go hunting,” he said.
“But that's not really true. So I try to tell people the real story about our people.”
He has 10 books published, all of which are children's books.
When he was in school in Yellowknife he read a book about Inuit culture called The Top of the World, which was one of the reasons he decided to tour the country.
“It was probably the worst book I have ever read about Inuit, because there was absolutely nothing in it that was true and yet people said it was the true story of Inuit,” he said.
“It was really embarrassing.”
Years later, he received a message from someone in Ontario encouraging him to read it and that it was the best book they have read about the Inuit culture, he said.
“Those are all the misconceptions about Inuit that I've been trying to correct all these years because I think it's important that people know who you are and what your real culture is,” he said.
“All these years I've just been telling traditional Inuit legends and talking about what it was like to be a little kid growing up living in igloos and travelling around by dogsled, and talking about my books.”
For more information, visit www.michaelkusugak.com.
