Monica Ittusardjuat

Monica Ittusardjuat was taken from her parents and sent to residential school at the age of seven, at a time when Inuit lived a subsistence way of life in winter camps and roamed around in spring and summer, following animals when they were plentiful. She went to three residential schools: Chesterfield Inlet, NWT (now Nunavut), for primary school, Churchill, Manitoba, for junior high, and St. Norbert, Manitoba, for high school. Monica graduated from McGill University in 1987. While teaching Community NTEP (Nunavut Teacher Education Program) in Nunavut, she earned her M.Ed. through the University of Prince Edward Island. She was the honour student for Baffin Island. She taught for many years in elementary schools, high schools, and teacher education programs, as well as in the Interpreter/Translator Program at Nunavut Arctic College. Monica tried to retire at the age of 60, but the habit of going to work was hard to break. She was the National Inuit Language Coordinator at Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami from 2016 to 2018 and is now Senior Inuktitut Editor at Inhabit Education, which she describes as her dream job.

Books by Monica Ittusardjuat

If You're Happy and You Know It

Making a Whole Person (English)

Making a Aalliak

Making a Whole Person (Inuktitut)

Life Cycles of Caribou

Lighting the Qulliq

Sounds of nngi, nngu, nnga, nng

Going to the Library

What We Like to Do

More sounds of i, pi, ti, si

Sounds of gi, gu, ga, g

Sounds of ji, ju, ja, j

Sounds of ri, ru, ra, r

Sounds of ngi, ngu, nga, ng

Fishing in the Summertime

Making a Qamutiik