Mini Aodla Freeman

Mini Aodla Freeman is an Inuk playwright, writer, poet and essayist.[1]

Mini Aodla Freeman
Born1936 (age 84–85)
Cape Hope Island, James Bay
NationalityInuk
OccupationAuthor, Translator
Notable work
Life Among the Qallunaat

Early life

Mini Aodla Freeman was born in 1936 on Cape Hope Island in James Bay, Canada. During the 1950s, she spent her teens training as a nurse in Fort George, now Chisasibi, Quebec.

Career

In 1957, Freeman worked as an Inuktitut translator for the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada in Ottawa.[2]

Memoir

Her best-known work is Life Among the Qallunaat. First published in 1978, then translated into French in 1990, this memoir details her life living in Inuit communities, her journey of learning while living outside those communities, and the rapid changes that Inuit faced during the 1940s and 1950s.[3] The book had a rough initial release when the Indian and Northern Affairs attempted to suppress it by hiding 3,000 copies in their basement. It took three years before her work started being distributed in the north and was not widely known until it University of Manitoba Press republished it.[4]

Awards

In 2016, her book won the Electa Quinney Award for Published Stories[5] and the Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba publisher.[6]

References
  1. "Freeman, Minnie Aodla | Inuit Literatures ᐃᓄᐃᑦ ᐊᓪᓚᒍᓯᖏᑦ Littératures inuites". inuit.uqam.ca. Retrieved 2021-06-03.
  2. "InFocus: Life Among the Qallunaat - APTN National News". APTN National News. 2015-10-23. Retrieved 2016-06-20.
  3. "Life Among the Qallunaat | University of Manitoba Press". uofmpress.ca. Retrieved 2016-06-20.
  4. "Culture shock: Mini Aodla Freeman recalls moving from James Bay to Ottawa in the 1950s". www.cbc.ca. Retrieved 2016-06-20.
  5. Carnes, J (4 October 2016). "Announcing the Winners of the 2016 Beatrice Medicine Awards and the Electa Quinney Award for Published Stories and Call for 2017 Nominations". Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures.
  6. "2016 MANITOBA BOOK AWARDS WINNERS". September 2018.
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