Poet and community worker born in Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit; Nunavut) in 1951 – died in 1979.
Kowmageak Arnakalak, also known as Anakalak, was born in 1951 in Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit), a city then located in the Northwest Territories and which became the capital of Nunavut when the territory was established in 1999.
Kowmageak Arnakalak attended high school in Frobisher Bay before pursuing his post-secondary studies at the Churchill Vocational Centre, a school located on the premises of a former military base in Churchill, Manitoba. This school operated from 1964 to 1973 and was intended for Inuit youth from the Eastern Arctic. Kowmageak Arnakalak likely attended at the end of the 1960s. He then worked for the Baffin Region Inuit Association. This organisation represented the 14,000 Inuit from 13 communities in the Baffin region (now the Qikiqtaaluk or Qikiqtani region) and promoted regional socioeconomic development. The organization, renamed the Qikiqtani Inuit Association (QIA) in 1996, was an important advocate for Inuit land claims in Nunavut as well as an important promoter of the history and culture of this territory.
Kowmageak Arnakalak published five bilingual (English, Inuktitut) poems between 1975 and 1976: “Prayer” (1975), “A Song for My Dogs” (1975), “My Teacher” (1975), “Northern Lights” (1975), and “The Message came in Human Form” (1976). The poems were published in Inuit Monthly / Inuit Uplumi, a periodical run by the the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (literally: “Inuit Brotherhood of Canada”; now Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, literally: “Inuit are united in Canada”). Inuit Monthly / Inuit Uplumi was renamed Inuit Today in 1975, between the publication of Kowmageak Arnakalak’s first two poems. His poem “Northern Lights” is the most well-known, as it was reprinted in the periodical Bulletin in 1977 and in Penny Petrone’s Canadian Inuit literature anthology Northern Voices: Inuit Writings in English (1988, 1992). In this poem, Kowmageak Arnakalak compares and contrasts legends about and scientific explanations for the northern lights and celebrates their beauty. Another author and artist from Nunavut, Alootook Ipellie, who was also interested in the northern lights, illustrated Kowmageak Arnakalak’s poem “A Song for My Dogs.” Kowmageak Arnakalak’s poetry promotes the transmission of his community’s cultural heritage and history.
Kowmageak Arnakalak in 1979 at the age of twenty-eight.