Hot Docs '23: Twice Colonized Aaju Peter on Defending the Seal Hunt and Being an Unwilling Dane
By Jim Slotek
Aaju Peter professes pride in the letters “CM” after her name, signifying the Order of Canada. Her law degree is a different matter.
“When I would advocate against banning sealing, I was really nobody,” says the Inuit activist, who’s the subject of Lin Alluna’s Twice Colonized, the opening night film Thursday at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.
“A mother of five who sits at home and sews has really no voice,” she says in a zoom interview. “Then I got the law degree that white people understand, and that the Western culture understands, and I got the Order of Canada, which is highly esteemed.
“Once you have those initials behind your name, it is part of what people call ‘accomplishments.’ Then you’re taken seriously.”
“But I would never practice law, it’s very adversarial and contrary to the Inuit way of being. What I learned in law school was that what is legal is not necessarily just.”
Peter earned her law degree in Iqaluit through an outreach program, studying in what she calls her “fourth language.” How she ended up speaking four languages speaks to her remarkable story.
She was born in Greenland, a colony of Denmark, and was uprooted as a child to foster care in Denmark and schooling in Danish. When she returned, she had effectively lost her original language.
At 18, she married an Inuit from Nunavut and became de facto Canadian. “I learned Greenlandic first, then I learned Danish, then I learned Inuktituk at the same time I learned English.
“Even though Greenlandic and Inuktituk are the same, they are different dialects. But it’s easier to say I speak four languages as opposed to three-and-a-half,” she says with a grin. She says she is only now coming to terms with her long-time hatred of Denmark and all things Danish.
“That’s why it was so important to make this film, because (the Danes) are in deep denial. They don’t want to admit that they are a colonizing country. And they don’t want to admit that they’re just as bad.”
Vivacious, a fighter, and a survivor, Peter allowed Alluna and her crew to spend “five years in my face,” as she taught, spoke to diplomatic audiences, and lived a life of triumph and pain. The worst pain involved the suicide death of her youngest son, a tragedy that would cause many to pull the plug on their participation.
How did she go on? “Suicide has become so part of our everyday life,” she says, “the story had to continue. I really wanted to show as colonized people and Indigenous peoples, we go through a hard life. But that doesn’t mean we sit down and give up. It is our duty and responsibility to move forward.”
A high point? As we spoke, she had just heard the Movies That Matter festival in The Hague had awarded Twice Colonized its Justitia Award.
“My first trip there, in 2007, I was advocating against anti-sealers and against the legislation that Holland was trying to pass banning the import of seal. They were totally against seal hunting. Nobody wanted to listen to us, everybody wanted me to be quiet.
“And now with this film, they gave us the Documentary Justice Prize. That was a big, big victory for me personally. I just danced. And you know, I want them to invite me to go to speak, because I’m going to wear seal skin from top to bottom.”
Between the seal campaign, advocating for Indigenous representation in the European Union, and teaching Inuktituk to Inuit who’ve forgotten it or never learned it, Peter seems constantly on the move.
“I’ve always traveled a lot, and my kids have said that I traveled so much when they were small. But I sacrificed my own life and my own comfort. I would love to just be sitting at home sewing and just be a granny. But I have a responsibility that is much bigger than that. We can’t just sit and sleep on our rights. We have to get up and fight for them.
“This particular (seal ban) legislation, and the fact that we don’t have Indigenous representation at the European Parliament is a much higher calling. I’m willing sacrifice my sitting at home smoking a pipe.”
CLICK HERE to read Original-Cin’s advance roundup of Hot Docs films.