Author, publisher, teacher, and politician born in 1969 in Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit; Nunavut).
Louise Flaherty, née Joanas, was born in 1969 on an airplane bound for Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit). She grew up in Clyde River, an Inuit hamlet on Baffin Island, in present-day Nunavut. She was raised by her parents Johnny and Leah Joanas and her grandparents Natanine and Mary Kautuq. Her grandparents taught her Inuktitut and passed on their passion for this language. As a teenager, she travelled to Iqaluit and met English-speaking Inuit for the first time; this experience made her aware of the importance of preserving and transmitting her native tongue. Louise Flaherty is married and has two children, Kenny and Andrea. Her husband, William Flaherty, is the grandson of filmmaker Robert Flaherty, director of Nanook of the North (1922), the first documentary film in the history of cinema, shot in present-day Nunavik.
In 1990, Louise Flaherty moved to Iqaluit, where she studied to become a teacher. In 1993, she received a Bachelor of Education from McGill University through the Nunavut Arctic College. After graduation, Louise Flaherty taught at several Nunavut schools. During the 2010s, she was vice-president of the Nunavut Bilingual Education Society.
In 2005, she founded Inhabit Media with Neil and Danny Christopher. Inhabit Media is the only literary publishing house in the Canadian Arctic; its mission is to publish the stories and knowledge of Inuit and non-Inuit authors from the Arctic. Its publications include oral histories and it works with Elders, storytellers, and hunters. Inhabit Media publishes in Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, French, and English.
In addition to her work as an editor, Louise Flaherty has written several books for children, in both Inuktitut and English. In 2011, she, Noel McDermott, and Neil Christopher published a collection of traditional myths and legends entitled Unikkaaqtuat: An Introduction to Inuit Myths and Legends. With the help of Pelagie Owlijoot, she wrote a book on the traditional Inuit sysem of kinship terms, Inuit Kinship and Naming Customs. Inuit ilagiigusinggit amma attiqtuijjusinggit (2013). She then wrote a children's graphic novel inspired by an Inuit legend. The book was first released in English and Inuktitut in 2017, under the respective titles The Gnawer of Rocks and ᒪᖕᒋᑦᑕᑐᐊᕐᔪᒃ ᐅᔭᕋᖕᒥ ᒪᖕᒋᑦᑎ, then in French in 2020 under the title La croqueuse de pierre. With Inhabit Education, Louise Flaherty has also authored educational books for children, such as Things That Keep Us Warm (2016; English, Inuktitut, French) and At the Playground (2020; English, Inuktitut). For her work as an editor and an author, Louise Flaherty received the Council of the Federation Literacy Award in 2011.
In 2011, Louise Flaherty and Neil Christopher founded the production company Taqqut Productions, which creates animated films for children. In an interview with Windspeaker News in 2016, Flaherty explained: "I am a grandmother, and growing up we had very limited books and resources that showed our identity. So for my granddaughter's generation, I wanted to make sure they had more of us in the books they would be reading, and also in what she was going to be watching.” Louise Flaherty has produced several films, including the short film The Country of Wolves (2011). Also in 2011, she produced the film The Orphan and the Polar Bear, which was directed by Neil Christopher and is an adaptation of Sakiasi Qaunaq's book of the same name. In 2019, Louise Flaherty produced the animated film The Giant Bear, and, in 2020, the animated series Emotional Literacy, which is geared towards young children.
Louise Flaherty has also been invovled in politics: within the Government of Nunavut, she held the positions of Deputy Minister of Culture and Heritage from 2017 to 2018 and of Deputy Minister of Education from 2018 to 2019.
Today, Louise Flaherty continues her work with Inhabit Media and Taqqut Productions.