Captain William Christopher founded Baker Lake in the Canadian province of Nunavut in 1762, when he traveled from Chesterfield Inlet to the Baker Lake area. William named it after a Hudson’s Bay company governor, Sir William Baker. 

Nowadays, Baker Lake is famous for talented printmakers, stone carvers, seamstresses, and jewelers, who produce amazing artworks and handicrafts, including wall hangings, stone cut prints and basalt sculptures by using specialized tools to form a design that has meaning as something related to the culture and tradition, as well as by using caribou skin along with it for the design of the product that’s been made by the Inuit people when creating traditional items. To this day, Inuit people like myself are still making traditional artwork and counting the history of our ancestors through our bloodline when creating.

Baker Lake is a small community in the middle of nowhere; it’s pretty expensive for resources to be shipped up north. Depending on the location you are in Nunavut, there are different prices for different products, from different companies. The Inuit people give up their green card/status card to have Nunavut (Nunavut in English means our land). Basically, we have our own self-government to have our terroir in Canada. Overall, 80% of those who live in Nunavut, Inuit people living in 25 municipalities are distributed in three regions: the Qikiqtani (Baffin), Kivalliq, and Kitikmeot. 

Baker Lake Community. Photo: Ansgar Walk, CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons

My own experience living in Baker Lake Nunavut was difficult because of the situation I was in during the time I was there. Many events happened in my life that weren't good for a young child like me; I have seen many things that a kid should not see while growing up. Throughout the years that I was there, I had to survive by stealing from stores that kicked me out because I was dealing with a parent who was depressed and a drug addict. Most of the time, I have been outside in the community trying to find something that could help me numb the pain that I felt inside. I learned to do drugs and alcohol because of my parents who have done it in the house where I used to live. The town realized that us kids should not be in a place where they are not supervised, and so we signed up for foster care that would take us to Ontario, although we didn’t know where we would go and how far it would be. Overall, my experience being in Baker Lake Nunavut was crap because of the things that happened to me…but I’m here now changing my path so that I won’t end up like my parents. However, it’s a difficult path to go down because of the issues that I had to deal with in my past. I went through so many traumatic events that scared me and made the person who I’m today, so I ended up here in Ontario trying to change who I used to be and help others who went through the same thing that I did.

At the age of four, I started to go to school and I learned many things about my culture and the history of Baker Lake…and how Inuit people survived up north. The town was located near the Lake. There are two mountains, one big one and the other was a smaller version of the big one. I lived in the middle of Baker Lake near the schools. The schools had trips around the area of Baker Lake showing us different parts and teaching us how to fish or go sledding and making the tools the way our ancestors used to survive in the open tundra. Some of the teachers taught the language and culture, trying to reconnect the loss of the traditions of the Inuit people.

Baker Lake is a small community with a rich culture and resources being down to the next generation of younger Inuit children, who are going to pass down the teachings of our elders and our way of life, knowing our tradition is still alive to this day. 

Dominic Iqulik is an Indigenous artist currently attending Canadore College

All photos courtesy and copyright Dominic Iqulik, except where noted. Published with permission.