Peter Freuchen K. Ittinuar was born in Chesterfield Inlet, Northwest Territories (now Nunavut) and is currently living on Richmond Organic Acres, raising organic beef cattle.
For the first ten years of his life, Peter grew up on the land -with dog teams, he went hunting, trapping, and fishing. He spent part of his youth and adolescence being educated in Ottawa, Ontario, with two childhood friends. Unbeknownst to them, they had been relocated to Ottawa by federal government authorities, as part of an experiment in cultural assimilation. These actions and their consequences formed the subject of the documentary “The Experimental Eskimos” (2009).
Peter worked as a hospital social worker and interpreter/translator in Winnipeg and Churchill in the early 1970s, and taught a northern social orientation course for nurses going north at the University of Manitoba. In the mid 1970s, Peter was an Announcer and Operator with CBC Iqaluit (Frobisher Bay) and Churchill. From 1976 to 1978, Peter held the position of Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa, teaching the Inuktitut language and ‘northern society in change’ course. Peter became the first Inuk in Canada to be elected as an MP, and represented the electoral district of Nunatsiaq in the House of Commons of Canada from 1979 to 1984. Over the past four decades, Peter has continued to be involved in politics, film, media, and teaching. He has a private business (Rankin File), offering services in translation, interpreting, lectures/talks, workshop facilitation, and report writing. He enjoys coaching hockey, and is working on updating his pilot’s license.
Peter Ittinuar works with Isaruit Inuit Arts occasionally as a consultant and will be offering Inuktitut language courses digitally when funding permits.