Animals Illustrated: Raven

About Monica Ittusardjuat

Monica Ittusardjuat was taken from her parents and sent to residential school at the age of seven at a time when Inuit lived a subsistence way of life in winter camps and roamed around in spring and summer following animals when they were plentiful. She went to three residential schools: Chesterfield Inlet NWT (now Nunavut) for primary school Churchill Manitoba for junior high and St. Norbert Manitoba for high school. Monica graduated from McGill University in 1987. While teaching Community NTEP (Nunavut Teacher Education Program) in Nunavut she earned her M.Ed. through the University of Prince Edward Island. She was the honour student for Baffin Island. She taught for many years in elementary schools high schools and teacher education programs as well as in the Interpreter/Translator Program at Nunavut Arctic College. Monica tried to retire at the age of 60 but the habit of going to work was hard to break. She was the National Inuit Language Coordinator at Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami from 2016 to 2018 and is now Senior Inuktitut Editor at Inhabit Education which she describes as her dream job. Kagan McLeod has been illustrating for magazines newspapers and design firms since 1999 after graduating from Sheridan Colleges illustration program. He began work as a staff artist for the National Post newspaper and has had illustration work published recently in Entertainment Weekly Readers Digest The Walrus The Wall Street Journal Toronto Life The Boston Globe and Popular Mechanics. His first graphic novel Infinite Kung-Fu was published in 2012. He lives in Toronto with his wife two daughters and a hound dog.