The Scarf and the Butterfly

Monica Ittusardjuat was taken from her parents and sent to residential school at the age of seven, at a time when Inuit lived a subsistence way of life in winter camps and roamed around in spring and summer, following animals when they were plentiful. She went to three residential schools: Chesterfield Inlet, NWT (now Nunavut), for primary school, Churchill, Manitoba, for junior high, and St. Norbert, Manitoba, for high school. Monica graduated from McGill University in 1987. While teaching Community NTEP (Nunavut Teacher Education Program) in Nunavut, she earned her M.Ed. through the University of Prince Edward Island. She was the honour student for Baffin Island. She taught for many years in elementary schools, high schools, and teacher education programs, as well as in the Interpreter/Translator Program at Nunavut Arctic College. Monica tried to retire at the age of 60, but the habit of going to work was hard to break. She was the National Inuit Language Coordinator at Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami from 2016 to 2018 and is now Senior Inuktitut Editor at Inhabit Education, which she describes as her dream job.

"'There's an opening above me, but it's far, and I have to stack up rocks to jump up, and it's almost impossible to get out.' That's when I realized that I was stripped of my identity, and there was nothing of my culture left in me. It was like I wasn't in my body anymore. It was bare and desolate and empty and cold, lifeless in my body. Where was I? Where had I gone?"