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In this interview, we (three graduate students and one lecturer at the University of Alberta) discuss the republication of Mini Aodla Freeman's memoir Life Among the Qallunaat with the author and the editors of the recently revised edition. Aodla Freeman is a poet, playwright, and short story and nonfiction writer who has worked as a cultural advisor, broadcaster, producer, and editor. Born in 1(*) on Cape Hope Island in James Bay, Nunavik (Inuit territory in northern Québec), Aodla Freeman grew up on the land, raised by her father and grandparents. She began training as a nurse at Ste. Therese School in Fort George, Québec, at the age of sixteen.1 It was at Ste. Therese that Aodla Freeman contracted tuberculosis and was subsequently sent to a sanatorium in Hamilton, Ontario. During the three years that she spent in this sanatorium, Aodla Freeman worked as a nurse and translator for patients and sta', which led to a job with the federal government. At the age of twenty, she moved to Ottawa, where she was immersed in the unfamiliar world of "the South." In the context of the memoir, "the South" is a geographic location below the treeline, where nonfiInuit modes of perception and action create unfamiliar codes and rules of decorum. Aodla Freeman continues to live in the South and is now a prominent elder in the Edmonton Inuit community.
The four interviewers joined Aodla Freeman and the editors of the new critical edition on June 9, 2015 to discuss the 2015 republication of Life Among the Qallunaat. The interview was initiated by the International Auto/Biography Association Students and New Scholars network (IABA SNS) as part of their Public Dialogues interview series, which shares conversations between scholars, artists, pedagogues, and writers. Public Dialogues explores cuttingfiedge approaches to research of life narratives, alongside the ethical and political questions that surround them. In the spirit of collaborative research in the Humanities, "From Qallunaat to James Bay" brings together the author and editorial team for a conversation with four researchers from diverse fields: Katherine Meloche studies contemporary Indigenous genre fiction in Canada; Brandon Kerfoot engages with Inuit literature and animal studies; Rebecca Fredrickson focuses on the land and literature of the North; and Orly Lael Netzer studies life narratives. In...