From coding to making chocolate and community art projects, Inuit youth are demonstrating Qanuqtuurniq every day. They are finding creative solutions to modern challenges. Their ingenuity and determination are inspiring.
Values

ᖃᓄᖅᑑᕐᓂᖅ – Qanuqtuurniq

By Tony Eetak
From coding to making chocolate and community art projects, Inuit youth are demonstrating Qanuqtuurniq every day. They are finding creative solutions to modern challenges. Their ingenuity and determination are inspiring.
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The Art of Making Magic with What You Have

Qanuqtuurniq is the creative spark that lights the way when there’s no clear path forward. Rooted in Inuit knowledge, it’s the art of making something out of what’s around you—of meeting challenge with curiosity, and turning limitation into inspiration. In the North, it meant survival. In the arts, it means reinvention.

For young creators, Qanuqtuurniq is the freedom to experiment—to remix tradition, bend the rules, and find beauty in the unexpected. It’s sculpting meaning from scrap, stitching stories with what you have, and trusting that innovation doesn’t require perfection—just courage and play. It lives in DIY spaces, community collaborations, and wild ideas that just might work.

Being resourceful isn’t just a skill—it’s a way of seeing the world as full of creative possibility. Qanuqtuurniq reminds us that artists are problem-solvers, shapeshifters, and world-builders. When we tap into that energy, we don’t just make art—we make change.

Filed Under: 2024-5782, Manitoba, SDG 11, Winnipeg
Picture of Tony Eetak

Tony Eetak

Tony Eetak is an emerging artist, musician and culture connector from Arviat, Nunavut, now exploring the arts in Winnipeg, Manitoba. A founding member of the Art Borups Corners, Tony has a demonstrated passion for photography, music, composition, and visual arts. With over five years of experience as a dedicated volunteer, collaborator and co-funder of several arts projects, Tony has been involved in various participatory arts events through organizations like the Arviat Film Society, Global Dignity Canada, Inclusion in Northern Research, and Our People, Our Climate. His contributions earned him recognition as a National Role Model by Global Dignity Canada in 2023. His work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Manitoba Arts Council and the OpenAI Researcher Access Program.

This project was supported by:

Values

Traditional values are the quiet architecture behind our lives—the steady lines that shape how we see, speak, and care for one another. They hold the weight of generations, carried not in grand declarations, but in small, intentional acts: the way we greet our elders, the stories we pass down at the table, the silence we keep in moments of reverence. In a world that moves fast and forgets easily, traditional values ask us to pause, to remember what matters. They are not rules, but rhythms—a kind of cultural heartbeat that reminds us who we are, and who we’re responsible to. Holding onto them isn’t about staying still; it’s about moving forward with depth, connection, and meaning.