Tusaayaksat Magazine
2019-2024
designing & publishing stories that need to be heard in the inuvialuit settlement region
Awards:
best magazine finalist — National Magazine Awards 2021 & 2022
portrait photography finalist — national magazine Awards 2023
role:
editor-in-chief, 2019-2024
editorial production
non-profit arts management
creative & art DIRECTION
Print & layout DESIGN
branding
community engagement
grant writing
I was honoured to serve the Inuvialuit (Western Arctic Inuit) communities as Editor-in-Chief of Tusaayaksat for over five years. Under my leadership, the publication has been nationally and internationally recognized at the National Magazine Awards and RGD.
Tusaayaksat is a bi-annual print magazine focused specifically on the stories and voices of Inuvialuit, operated out of the non-profit Inuvialuit Communications Society (ICS), Inuuvik (Inuvik), NT. All content published in the magazine is either created by Inuvialuit, Indigenous people, or Northerners, and stories are centered around the stories of Inuvialuit inside and outside the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (ISR).
Tusaayaksat employs design elements such as more boutique paper size, uncoated paper stock, and specific colour palettes inspired by local landscapes and/or art in order to ensure that each individual issue has its own elaborate visual brand while still staying cohesive to the overall Tusaayaksat brand. Tusaayaksat benefits from multiple rounds of participatory and inclusive editing stages with contributors, writers, and artists who submit their work, from original submissions, up to the very final completed layout draft. By doing this, the magazine ensures that the contributors’ work is exactly as they would like to be represented on the page.
Under my leadership, Tusaayaksat has transformed completely from an internally Editor-produced publication to a 100% contributor-based, Inuvialuit-centered platform that is more than just a bi-annual publication. Content contribution and production are no longer mainly done by “outsourced” writers and designers in Southern Canada (as it was before 2019), but instead, kept as much as possible within the Inuvialuit Settlement Region and the Inuvialuit community.
Thus, the experience of our publication is one that brings together Inuvialuit to hear each other’s stories, celebrate the accomplishments of each other, and foster understanding and unity in navigating through life together. This platform of storytelling is also extended onto social media, where most if not all posts are centered around Inuvialuit-created public posts, their stories, their words, and their images. For non-Inuvialuit, our print and online platforms act as spaces to educate Southerners and Canadian settlers about Inuvialuit culture, tradition, art and lifestyles that span from time immemorial to modern culture.
See more on Issuu.