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Alethea Arnaquq-Baril

Iqaluit · Nunavut

Iqaluit · Nunavut

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril is an Inuk filmmaker whose 2010 documentary Tunniit: Retracing the Lines of Inuit Tattoos helped start the wider revival of traditional Inuit tattooing. She works from Iqaluit, Nunavut.

Archive Note

Arnaquq-Baril's film Tunniit: Retracing the Lines of Inuit Tattoos (2010) followed her own path to receiving her tunniit while interviewing elders across the Arctic who still bore or remembered the markings before they were suppressed under missionary pressure, turning the revival into an oral-history project as much as a visual one. The film helped catalyze a broad reclamation of Inuit face and body tattooing among Arctic women as a visible symbol of cultural pride and decolonization, and she has continued to document, speak, and advocate for Inuit cultural sovereignty, working alongside contemporary tattooists including Angela Hovak Johnston. She received the Meritorious Service Cross in 2017.

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