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PANNIQTUUQ/PANGNIRTUNG
In a classroom in Pangnirtung, eight Inuit women are busy becoming the next generation of Inuit fashion designers. Tina Aningmiuq, 33, is one of them.

Students in the fur design program offered by Nunavut Arctic College in Pangnirtung used scrap fur pieces to make sealskin masks. Student Geela Evic, left, and adult educator Marlene Angnakak show off some of these masks; Evic designed the mask second in the centre, second from the bottom. - photo courtesy of Brian Manning

"I wanted to learn more about skin preparation from raw skin to making clothing and kamiks," said Aningmiuq, a student in Nunavut Arctic College's fur production and design program. "This program was offered in our community this fall and I applied while I had the chance."

Pangnirtung is one of five communities offering the first semester of the program this year – alongside Rankin Inlet, Taloyoak, Cape Dorset and Hall Beach as the second cohort of communities offering the program across Nunavut. Last year, the program was offered in Kugaaruk, Arctic Bay and Arviat. The college has core funding to offer the program, which is now in its sixth year at the Nunatta campus in Iqaluit, in a different community outside the capital each semester. Additional funding from Kakivak means it can be offered in an additional two communities each year.

"In a four- or five-year period, we can deliver it to all communities in Nunavut," said Cindy Cowan, the college's director of community learning. Students then continue the rest of the certificate program in Iqaluit the following September.

"Primarily we're working on developing entrepreneurs who want to work in the design field," Cowan said. "From the first graduates, at least three of the students work with their own equipment at home as producers of sealskin garments. Some have worked on film sets creating traditional clothing."

For Geela Evic, 56, the skills will be helpful for making traditional clothing.

"I wanted to learn more about skin preparation and how to make clothing out of them," she said. "I will be making a pair of kamiks and duffle socks once the skins are dried."

The course is broadening the knowledge base for the students, all of whom are women. For Evic, that meant learning Inuktitut terms for the skins. For Aningmiuq, it has meant learning more about other cultures.

"I have learned that there are many styles of clothing all over the North regions and different cultures," she said, noting it has also helped her learn about herself. "The skills (I'm learning) made me notice that I am able to do things like other women."

In the first semester, which is done in their home community, the women take five classes: traditional design, portfolio, preparation, patterning and sewing. In Iqaluit, the women will focus on commercial courses and then move on to fur machines and contemporary design. Using traditionally tanned skins in their home communities, they will work with commercially tanned skins in Iqaluit.

"Many of them were just learning to clean and scrape skins," said adult educator Marlene Angnakak. "Some of them have some experience with just the basic cleaning of the skins, but they're learning more here to be able to use the skins to make kamiik. With more practise, they're really getting good at it."

The Pangnirtung students have access to harp, ring and bearded seal skins. Each student will make a pair of kamiks with the skins being cleaned, prepared and dried this fall.

"It will be their choice to decide what type of kamik they'd like to make, and for whom," Angnakak said.

Student and graduate work has been recognized from Montreal to Milan, and serves as a home-grown response to the negative attention about the seal hunt.

"It puts Nunavut on the international stage on a file that is of issue," Cowan said. "This is a Nunavut response demonstrating the importance (of the hunt), not only in terms of nutrition, but also in terms of clothing."

Some graduates will pursue fur design, others business for themselves. Regardless, they will now know how to do something Inuit have done for generations.

"I am enjoying the program so far," Aningmiuq said. "I would like to continue preparing and cleaning skins on my own and make kamiks in the future."

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