For the next two weeks we showcase work done by and about Inuit folks in the Arctic. Today our guest is author Kenn Harper, a settler researcher and educator who lived in the North for 50 years. We talk about his newest book Thou Shalt Do No Murder: Inuit, Injustice and the Canadian Arctic. Harper tells the story of Nuqallaq, an Inuk hunter, who out of anxiety and self-defence staged the ensnarment and murder of fur trader Robert Janes who was threatening the safety and well-being of an Inuk family hunting encampment up in Pond Inlet in the early part of the 20th century. When the Canadian Mounted Police were informed, they investigated and staged a trial in an area with no Canadian influence by way of asserting sovereignty over the North. Nuqallaq was convicted of homicide and sent to prison in Edmonton. Harper’s book deals with a series of cultural and sub-cultural collisions from Euro-Canadian notions of promises and negotiation to Inuk epistemologies of social order and economic credit. The show trial itself, like it was cut out of an episode of North of 60, is a touchstone of Canadian authority in the North. Harper and I discuss the political outcomes of the trial, Nuqallaq’s legacy, and the Inuk cultural values. Next week, Inuk graphic artist Aviaq Johnson, whom coincidentally enoguh is named after Harper’s daughter.