Towards Home / ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui - Inuit and Sámi Placemaking

Towards Home / ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui, an Indigenous-led publication, explores how Inuit, Sámi, and other communities across the Arctic are creating self-determined spaces. It is informed by the perspectives of a group of Inuit, Sámi, and settler co-editors who share the ambition to promote northern Indigenous forms of sovereignty shaped by an understanding of the land as home. The project emphasizes caring for and living on the land as a way of being, and celebrates practices of spacemaking and placemaking that empower Indigenous communities. It contains essays, artworks, photographs, personal narratives, and other forms that express Indigenous notions of home, land, future, kinship, design, and memory. 

ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ (angirramut) in Inuktitut, or ruovttu guvlui in Sámi, can be translated as ‘towards home’. To move towards home is to reflect on where northern Indigenous people find home, on what their connections to their land means, and on what these relationships could look like into the future. The publication is framed by these three concepts: Home, Land, and Future. It contains essays, artworks, photographs, personal narratives, and other forms that express Indigenous notions of home, land, kinship, design, and memory. The publication ultimately asks: What could home become across Inuit Nunangat, Sápmi, and the North more generally when defined by Indigenous architects and designers? Where do homelands begin?

This publication was conceived in parallel to research, workshops, and an exhibition at the CCA, Montréal.

Editors: Joar Nango (Sámi architect), Taqralik Partridge (Associate Curator of Indigenous Art, Art Gallery of Ontario), Jocelyn Piirainen (Associate Curator, National Gallery of Canada’s Indigenous Ways and Decolonization department), Rafico Ruiz (Associate Director Research, CCA)

Contributors: Robyn Adams, Ella den Elzen, Liisa- Rávná Finbog, Napatsi Folger, Carola Grahn, Jenni Hakovirta, Elin Kristine Haugdal, Geronimo Inutiq, Ellen Marie Jensen, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Nicole Luke, Reanna Merasty, Johanna Minde, Joar Nango, Taqralik Partridge, Jocelyn Piirainen, Naomi Ratte, Tiffany Shaw, Sunniva Skålnes, Jen Rose Smith, Olivia Lya Thomassie 

Design: OTAMI-ᐅᑕᒥ, www.otami.ca