A Woman With Two Names in an on going project exploring the identity of the Inuit community.

Everything started when I met Asena, she was drunk and told me: "I drink because I don't know where my father is." She has been raised by foster parents and owns two identity cards with two different names. The city of Iqaluit also has two names. It was known as Frobisher Bay before the independence of the Nunavut territories, a large region in the Canadian Arctic.

Iqaluit is a city of 7000 people, surrounded by tundra and the sea. There are no streets that connect with any other Canadian cities to the South. The only way to get in or out is from the air. I was interested in the cultural identity shift the Inuit community is experiencing and its consequences. The community, especially its younger members, are trapped between two worlds; they are losing touch with their past and are headed towards an uncertain future.

At the beginning of the 20th century the Inuit in Nunavut were still nomads; hunting, fishing, and living off the land. Gradually the Canadian government and the Church began a process of forced assimilation, through permanent settlements and Residential schools. This deprived the Inuit of their social and spiritual customs. The transition away from their nomadic roots to modernized living has led to alcoholism, domestic violence and unemployment, symptoms of a society that is floating between the past and present. 

In 1999 the Canadian Government officially recognized the independence of the Nunavut Territories. The Native Inuit are now asked to speak for themselves and participate to the development of their own communities. In this post-colonialist atmosphere, I was driven by the desire to understand the conflict between Western society's push to develop and the natives' desire to return to the past. Photographing off-moments of everyday life, I was looking to depict the sense of isolation, their ancestral connection to a harsh land, and the feeling of not belonging to "The South", the way Inuit refers to the rest of the world.