Monica Ittusardjuat

Monica Ittusardjuat is a survivor in every sense of the word. She was born in a winter camp called Akkimaniq seven months premature in an igloo in the dead of winter. She went to three residential schools, one in Chesterfield Inlet, Northwest Territories (at the time which is now Nunavut) Churchill, Manitoba and St. Norbert, Manitoba.

She is an educator who taught in elementary, high school and now at Nunavut Arctic College. She has a Master’s Degree and is now working at the Nunavut Teacher Education Program as Language & Culture Instructor. She took several years off from the education field to work for Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated as a Wellness Coordinator where she submitted a proposal to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation for a Nunavut-wide healing initiative which was approved. She also sat on two panels with the Law Commission of Canada, one with residential school abuse and the other with institutional abuse.

Monica has twenty-five grand-children and two great-grand-children. She has recently reclaimed the traditional sewing techniques of making caribou and seal-skin clothing along with the more contemporary styles of parka and amauti-making. She also has mastered the art of drum-dancing.