Storyteller born in Harvaqtuurmiut territory (Nunavut) in the early 1900s.
Michel Kanajuk, also known as Michel Kanajuq, was a member of the Harvaqtuurmiut, one of the communities which made up what anthropologists in the first half of the 20th century called the “Caribou Inuit.” These communities live in the Kivalliq region, in present-day Nunavut. Originally from Baker Lake (Inuktitut: Qamani’tuaq), Michel Kanajuk was most likely born in the early 1900s. In March 1969, as an Elder of his community, Michel Kanajuk told anthropologist Eugene Y. Arima the true story of the murder of Saqpi, which likely occurred in the 1890s. Eugene Y. Arima recorded the story on a cassette before transcribing it; it was then published in Inuktitut and in English in Inuktitut Magazine in 1977. Saqpi was the husband of Kibgaarjuk, an Inuit woman that Greenlander Knud Rasmussen met in 1922, during the Fifth Thule Expedition.
This is the only written account of Michel Kanajuk’s existence and of the stories he told.