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Aaju Peter named to Order of Canada
Tireless seal hunt promoter continues to fight European banCasey Lessard Northern News Services Published Friday, January 6, 2012
"I'm very amazed that I would have even been considered because what I do is just what I do," Peter said from her Iqaluit home on her 52nd birthday. "I didn't realize it would get me to become a member of the Order of Canada. It's very humbling. "The membership draws attention to the issue that was about to fall asleep," she said of her work against the European Union's ban on seal product imports. "I'm really hoping that we will make it possible to make a living again." Born in Greenland and educated in Denmark, where she was taught in Danish, Peter returned to Nuuk without the ability to understand her native language. "At the time, in the (1960s), there was an assimilation process against aboriginal peoples around the world," she said. "I was assimilated so well I couldn't even fit in with my own people." When the Danish government realized the error of its assimilation policies, she said, it reversed directions, pushing all Greenlanders to speak Greenlandic. Then she met her now ex-husband Saali Peter, an Iqalummiut visiting the Inuit Circumpolar Conference in Nuuk in 1979. "The first Inuk guy that walked down the street, I took him. That was the end of that," she laughed. "Looking back at it, that was my salvation. It gave me an opportunity to relearn what I had lost, and learn it in a good way." Moving to Canada, she arrived to find a culture very similar to the one she left as a child, but more welcoming than the one she left because the expectations on her were lower. "I was allowed to be different because I was from a different country. My in-laws and the people I came to be with here didn't blame me for my inability to speak Inuktitut or my not knowing the culture. The encouragement, the joy I was getting from trying to learn the language and culture is what is needed." She is also a recorded singer-songwriter, playing traditional Inuit and Greenlandic folk songs. In particular, she embraced the hunting heritage, and has spent a great deal of the last three decades as a seal skin clothing designer, and, as a lawyer, working as an activist to end Europe's ban on seal product imports. Only hours after speaking with Nunavut News/North, Peter was en route to Denmark and Sweden for three events addressing the importance of the seal hunt, and to make a documentary on the effects the ban has had on Inuit. "You cannot make legislation based on emotion," she said, noting there is an over-abundance of harp seals. "It's not based on anything other than it's wrong to kill seals. Our communities are covered in snow. We're not about to grow potatoes and vegetables and have animal farming to provide for our citizens. These people can go to any store and buy chicken, pork, fish. They have the right to eat force-fed animals (foie gras from ducks), but we don't have the right to make an existence. In my book, that's wrong." In a statement, the Fur Institute of Canada praised the announcement, calling Peter "one of the world's foremost advocates for the rights of Canada's Northern indigenous people". "With or without the Order of Canada," Peter said, "I'm still trying to figure out how I can get to talk about what the legislation is doing to our people. I am so honoured to be able to address that because I can speak the language, I've studied law, and I can address and voice that concern." By naming Peter to the Order of Canada, David Johnston is the third Governor General to recognize the ban on seal products; Adrienne Clarkson owns one of her coats, Peter told This Magazine in 2010, and Michaelle Jean ate seal during a visit to Rankin Inlet in 2010. Other than to say she was being recognized for her contributions to the preservation and promotion of Inuit culture and language, Rideau Hall declined to comment about Peter's selection until the investiture ceremony, for which a date has not been set. Looking forward, Peter already knows what she will wear: a sealskin vest. "It depicts the amauti tail on the back and the amauti front," she said, describing her design. "It shows the long heritage we have and the ingenious invention the Inuit have of carrying a baby that made it possible for them to keep moving and not have their babies freeze to death. I want my granddaughter, who is two, to wear the same. "I am very proud of wearing seal to any occasion," she said. "We are a multi-cultural country, but we cannot forget about the first peoples. We are still alive; we are not dead yet. We have to fight for and safeguard our rights. Anything less is unacceptable." -- with files from Nicole Garbutt
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