Aaju Peter

Early Years

Aaju Peter was born to an Inuit family in Arkisserniaq, Greenland. Her family moved often, as her father was a pastor and teacher and posted to different communities on Greenland’s west coast. When she was 11, her parents sent her to school in Denmark. For the seven years she attended school, she lived with different White families and was immersed in Danish culture.

Peter had an aptitude for language, learning Danish, English, German, French and Latin. However, by the time she returned to Greenland at 18, she had nearly lost her native Kalallisut language. She was ridiculed and humiliated for losing her language and culture.

A year after returning home, Peter attended a meeting of the Inuit Circumpolar Council. The council represents Inuit in Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Chukotka in Northern Russia. The meeting had a profound impact on her. She realized she didn’t know about her own culture and was deeply inspired to learn.

Embracing culture

In 1981, Aaju Peter married an Inuk from Canada. They moved to Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit, Nunavut) in the Canadian Arctic. Living with her husband’s parents gave her an opportunity to reconnect with Inuit culture. She focussed on learning Inuit stories, traditions, language, values and culture (see also Inuit Traditional Stories). Peter became fluent in English and Inuktitut and worked as a translator. She got involved in the community, working with cultural organizations and women's groups. She also helped establish a women's shelter and food bank.

In the 1980s, Peter began making clothes for her five children and discovered she had a talent. She began a home-based clothing design business that combined Inuit tradition with contemporary style and incorporated sealskin. Her innovative take on sealskin amautiit (parkas), vests, handbags and neckties drew attention. She made a sealskin coat for former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson. Her clothing designs have been displayed internationally. Peter was also one of the designers featured in the Vestnorden Arts and Crafts Symposium in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 2004.

Defending cultural rights

In the 1990s, Aaju Peter took Inuit studies at Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit. In 2001, she enrolled in the four-year Akitsiraq Law School Program at the college that was affiliated with the University of Victoria. Peter graduated with a Bachelor of Law degree in 2005. She articled at the Ottawa law firm, Nelligan, O’Brien and Payne, and was called to the bar in 2007.

Being a lawyer gave Peter a solid legal footing to advocate for rights of Inuit communities, particularly the right to hunt seals as part of their socio-economic development (see Sealing). In 2007, she went to The Hague, Netherlands, to protest legislation banning sealskin and sealskin products. In 2009, she addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, prior to its ban on importation of seal products.

In 2015, Peter was part of a delegation that appeared before the European Parliament to defend the Inuit community’s right to harvest seals. However, the ban was not repealed but updated to exempt, “Inuit or other Indigenous communities.” She continues to speak at conferences around the world to promote sealing and the issues of sustainability and resources that impact Inuit traditional ways of life. Peter was featured in the 2016 film Angry Inuk for her work on seal harvesting and Inuit rights.

Peter has also spoken at conferences about Inuit customary law, which she learned from Elders, and how it differs from Western law. Peter was a cultural adviser and lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan's Nunavut Law Program.

She has travelled to communities across the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, working as a cultural educator in the Arctic tourism industry. She performs lamp lighting ceremonies, traditional Inuit songs and shares her knowledge of Inuit culture. Peter has released an album of Inuit songs and Greenlandic classics.

In 2011, Peter was inducted into the Order of Canada as a member by Governor General David Johnston for preserving and promoting Inuit culture and practices.

Documentary Films

In 2011, Aaju Peter was featured in the movie Tunniit: Retracing the Lines of Inuit Tattoos, directed by Alethea Arnaquq-Baril. The documentary traced the director as she learns about traditional Inuit women’s tattoos. Both Peter and Arnaquq-Baril got traditional tunniit (tattoos) during the filming.

Peter was also in Arctic Defenders, directed by John Walker in 2013. In 2016, she was featured in Angry Inuk, directed by Arnaquq-Baril. In this documentary, Peter and others strive to raise awareness of the negative impact the North American and European Union anti-seal hunt stance and sealskin bans has had on Inuit ways of life.

The 2023 documentary, Twice Colonized (2023), directed by Lin Alluna, follows Peter as she attempts to establish an Indigenous forum at the European Union. It looks at the social and cultural trauma caused by colonization (see Colonialism in Canada). Peter was writer and executive producer on the film. In it, she says, "I was born in Greenland and colonized by the Danes, and then I moved to the Canadian Arctic, then being colonized by Southern Canada.”