It was late April, 1948, and the temperature was between -25C and -30C when Kusugak and his wife, Kukik, travelled by dog sled to Qatiktalik (Cape Fullerton), NWT (now Nunavut). It was there in a small sod hut, on a beach along the west coast of Hudson Bay, that Kukik bore a baby boy. Shortly after giving birth, the family continued on to Repulse Bay, which is located in the Arctic Circle. Times were hard. At one point, Kukik’s milk even dried up because Kusugak had not had a successful hunt in a long time. The baby cried, until a friend shared his stores with the family and Kukik’s milk returned.Sound like a synopsis for a Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak book? Well, it isn’t. What it is is a recount of his beginnings in the world.
Michael Kusugak spent his first twelve years in Repulse Bay, a community that was home to a Hudson’s Bay Company fur-trading post (where people could trade pelts for supplies like bullets and flour), and that only ran the flag up the pole when an airplane was coming. The people of the community spent their winters in igloos and their summers in tents.
One day, when Michael was seven, an airplane came that would alter his life. The plane would carry off Michael, and the children of Repulse Bay, taking them from their nomadic life of hunting and fishing, to attend residential school. Michael attended school in Chesterfield Inlet, Rankin Inlet, Yellowknife, Churchill and Saskatoon, before becoming one of the first Inuit from the Eastern Arctic to graduate school.
Michael did not take to school, in the beginning. He spoke no English and claims to have cried the entire first year. After his first summer vacation, the resourceful child hid in the hills, until he saw the plane leave- successfully skipping school for an entire year.
Michael did prove to be a good student, though. He showed an ability to command the written word, early on. However, with home calling his heart, he dropped out after his first year of university and returned to Repulse Bay.
But fate had not forgotten Michael. It visited him in the form of Robert Munsch, who stayed with Michael, while touring the North. Michael took the famous author hunting and fishing and entertained him with the stories he had been told by elders, when he was a boy. Robert Munsch asked Michael to write some of these down and send them to him in Guelph.
The rest, as they say, was history. After several drafts, Annick Press finally agreed to publish A Promise is a Promise. It is then that Michael met another important person, Vladyana Krykorka, who would illustrate his many books.
Several books followed A Promise is a Promise (for a list see below), as well as plays. He even received the Ruth Schwartz Award in 1994, for his book Northern Lights.
Michael’s skills as a storyteller are legendary. He blends his ability to tell tales with such traditional Inuit methods for story telling as using string and bones as props for illustration. As the father of four sons and the eldest child of twelve, himself, he no doubt, had a great deal of practice entertaining, long before he found fame.
Michael is in high demand to speak at schools, libraries, museums, and conferences such as the Northern Hearts Festival and the Allainait Festival in Igaluit(where he will be on the 24th of this month, telling stories and teaching string game workshops). His latest book is Igvillu: The Littlest Sled Dog , published by Orca Book Publishers.
For more booking information, or more information on this amazing author, visit his website at http://michaelkusugak.com/ .
*A Promise is a Promise (co-authored w/ Robert Munsch) (Annick Press, 1989)
*Baseball Bats For Christmas (Annick Press, 1990)
*Hide and Sneak (Annick Press, 1992)
*My Arctic 1, 2, 3 (Annick Press, 1996)
*Arctic Stories (Annick Press, 1999)
*The Curse of the Shaman, A Marble Island Story (Harper- Trophy, 2006)
* Igvillu: The Littlest Sled Dog (Orca Book Publishers)
