b'CHAMPIONING INUIT RIGHTSA CHAMPION By Matthew BradfordFORINUIT WOMENRebecca Kudloo, President, Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada (centre), with the Honourable Maryam Monsef (left) and the Honourable Carolyn Bennett (right). Photo courtesy of PauktuutitRebecca KudlooR ebecca Kudloo has spent decades raising a voice for Inuit women and their families across Canada and worldwide. Today, as President of Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, her efforts continue to bring deserved attention to makes her case for thecritical issues impacting her community and help Inuit families find healing rights of Inuit womenand support from past traumas.Rebeccas passion for advocacy comes from personal experience. She was born on a beach on in Canada and on thethe mainland of Baffin Island near the present-day community of Iglulik, Nunavut. There, she lived off the land with her family for seven years until both she and her younger brother were taken to a sanatorium in the south. That was a dramatic experience, Kudloo recalls. I had global stage never been south, and my parents didnt know where we were going or for how long.At age nine she went to residential school in Iglulik, and Kudloo recalls going to school wearing the caribou pants she left her home with and soon being given clothes to blend in. Years later, I realized that was when I started hiding my culture and traditions and slowly moving away from the practices and languages I had known. It didnt hit me until years later when I realized how much Id been away from my parents, especially after my father passed away, she says somberly, adding that, even now, Were still trying to get it back. Following this experience, Kudloo was enrolled in a vocational school. Several years later, she won a scholarship to attend Ridgemont High School in Ottawa where she met her future husband, Thomas Kudloo, an Inuk from Baker Lake, Nunavut, who was studying to become a meteorologist. The pair married in Toronto and moved to Fort Smith, NT, when Thomas received his first posting. After having their first child, the family moved to Thomass home hamlet in Baker Lake, where they welcomed their second.18Fall/Winter 2021'