Inuit elder, author, and seamstress born in Tasiujaq (Nunavik) in 1932 – died in 2024.
Dorothy Mesher was born in 1932 in Tasiujaq, a small village on the coast of Ungava Bay in northeastern Nunavik. Her biological mother was Mice Berthe, a devout Inuk woman from Tasiujaq who only spoke Inuktitut; her biological father was a Norwegian, Arthur Karlsen. She was raised in Kuujjuaq by Bill and Susan Edmunds. Her adoptive and biological fathers both worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company.
As a young adult, Dorothy Mesher moved to Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador, where she lived for 29 years and raised 14 children. When she returned to Kuujjuaq in the 1980s, she noticed many changes in the Inuit lifestyle, but found that some cultural traits persisted. These observations and childhood memories are the subject of her autobiography, Kuujjuaq: Memories and Musings, written with the assistance of Ray Woollam and published by Unica in 1995. She hoped that these memories of her childhood would help young Inuit understand the rapid changes their parents and grandparents had experienced.
In 2018, Dorothy Mesher directed a short documentary, A Way of Life, in which she shares her memories surrounding ten photographs taken in Kuujjuaq in the 1930s and 1940s. The film was produced by Wapikoni. The Dorothy Mesher Collection has been donated to the Avataq Cultural Institute.
As an Inuit Elder, Dorothy Mesher was proud to sew traditional clothing for her many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. One of her grandchildren, Bob Mesher, was a journalist and photographer.
Dorothy Mesher died in 2024 at the age of ninety-one.