Credit: Brian Adams

Cora Ablowaluk

Brian Adams

“I am the tribal coordinator; I have been doing that for eight and a half years.

I am a volunteer for the Teller Culture Festival. We have been working on the Festival for 12 years; it took a whole year just to get it started, and it’s just been myself and Shareleen getting it together. We organize, we shop, we cook, everything! It’s one of the biggest events we have here in Teller—it is “the” big event I should say. We have seven villages here, eight including Teller. The first year we had two festivals. One at the end of September because the Russian group couldn’t make it—they got weathered in—but we had paid so much money for them to come that we had to reschedule for a week or two later. So the first year we had two festivals within two weeks, and everyone that came the first time, came back the second time to see the Russian group. Our goal is to just keep it going—I don’t know how long Sharleen and I can do this {Laughs}.

—Cora Ablowaluk, Teller I Am Inuit Gallery