For Sharon Angnakak, understanding Inuit history requires more than revisiting what has already been written in the archives. It demands asking whose interpretation of that history has been preserved and whose knowledge may have been misunderstood along the way.
Angnakak — an Inuk from Iqaluit, Nunavut and an assistant professor in the U of M’s Indigenous studies department — researches Inuit history, Inuit philosophy, legal anthropology in the Arctic, cultural exchange between Arctic Indigenous peoples and the state and Arctic sovereignty from Inuit perspectives. Her work examines the intersections of Inuit knowledge, religion, law, colonialism and political development.
A central goal of her research is to challenge narratives that frame Inuit history primarily through cultural loss and adaptation. Instead, Angnakak applies Inuit frameworks to highlight Inuit agency, innovation and continuity.
She emphasized Inuit as “agentic cultural innovators” who have both driven cultural change and maintained cultural traditions.
Angnakak’s current work involves transforming her PhD dissertation into a manuscript. The research asks whose account of Canadian-Inuit history is considered authoritative and how Canada established sovereignty over Inuit and the Arctic. It also inspects how Inuit beliefs and speech were translated into Western categories of knowledge during efforts to establish Canadian sovereignty.
Her PhD research revisited two highly documented criminal cases involving Inuit. These are the 1917 murder trials of Sinnisiak and Uluksuk when Inuit were tried in a Canadian court for the first time, and the 1941 Belcher Island murder trials.
Angnakak’s archival research applied Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit — Inuit philosophy and traditional knowledge — alongside Inuktut — Inuit languages — to reconsider how these cases have been understood. She found inconsistencies in archival records, including records of interpretations between Inuktut and English during investigations and court proceedings.
The historical records contain different interpretations of the same events. Canadian officials understood the killings as “murder,” while Christian missionaries interpreted them through the concept of “martyrdom.” Angnakak’s research introduced another perspective, an interpretation grounded in the Inuit concept of “maligait,” loosely translated as “laws.” By revisiting the case files through Inuit laws, language and philosophy, Angnakak identified motives for the killings that she argued are more consistent with Inuit knowledge and ways of being. This approach created a new interpretation of the history surrounding the cases, she highlighted.
According to Angnakak, the research also demonstrated the challenges of relying on historical records produced by outsiders. “Translation and interpretation between languages always risk the skewing of messages from intended meaning,” she said. This becomes particularly important when the subject involves justice, law, religion, culture and philosophy, where meaning and language are connected to the worldview of the culture in which a message originated.
Because historical records about Inuit were often produced by non-Inuit through interpreters, Angnakak argued that researchers should not automatically take archival accounts of what Inuit supposedly said at face value. Instead, she uses sources such as “Inuktitut Bibles, early dictionaries and oral histories that discuss Inuit philosophy for ways to interpret that history.”
Angnakak’s approach is connected to a broader purpose to ensure that Inuit are understood as active participants in their own history. For her, community impact is particularly important. She sees serving the community as a fundamental Inuit value and hopes her research can help young Inuit.
“If young Inuit can view their history through agency and innovation — rather than narrowly through power and oppression — then I think my work will have made [an] impact,” she said.
She hopes this perspective can also shape how students approach research on Inuit culture and society. While colonial harms must be acknowledged, Angnakak said studying Inuit culture through Inuit frameworks can offer a different and more affirming perspective.
“Studying Inuit culture and society can be freeing and celebratory as it exposes us to [a] worldview that is vastly different from the epistemology that dominates academia,” she said.
Her future research will continue exploring Inuit testimony, interpretation and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, working directly with Inuit communities in Nunavut.
