Audiobooks by Norma Dunning

Kinauvit?: What's Your Name? The Eskimo Disc System and a Daughter's Search for her Grandmother

"'From the winner of the 2021 Governor General's Award for literature, a revelatory look into an obscured piece of Canadian history: what was then called the Eskimo Identification Tag System In 2001, Dr. Norma Dunning applied to the Nunavut Beneficiary program, requesting enrolment to legally solidify her existence as an Inuk woman. But in the process, she was faced with a question she could not answer, tied to a colonial institution retired decades ago: 'What was your disc number?' 'Still haunted by this question years later, Dunning took it upon herself to reach out to Inuit community members who experienced the Eskimo Identification Tag System first-hand, providing vital perspective and nuance to the scant records available on the subject. Written with incisive detail and passion, Dunning provides readers with a comprehensive look into a bureaucracy sustained by the Canadian government for over thirty years, neglected by history books but with lasting echoes revealed in Dunning's intimate interviews with affected community members. Not one government has taken responsibility or apologized for the E-number system to date - a symbol of the blatant dehumanizing treatment of the smallest Indigenous population in Canada. A necessary and timely offering, Kinauvit? provides a critical record and response to a significant piece of Canadian history, collecting years of research, interviews and personal stories from an important voice in Canadian literature.' - Douglas & McIntyre"

Norma Dunning (Author), Norma Dunning (Narrator)

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Tainna

"Drawing on both lived experience and cultural memory, Norma Dunning brings together six powerful short stories centered on modern-day Inuk characters in Tainna. Ranging from homeless to extravagantly wealthy, from spiritual to jaded, from young to elderly, and even from alive to deceased, Dunning’s characters are united by shared feelings of alienation, displacement, and loneliness resulting from their experiences in southern Canada. In Tainna?meaning “the unseen ones” and pronounced Da?e?nn?a?a fraught reunion between sisters Sila and Amak ends in an uneasy understanding. From the spirit realm, Chevy Bass watches over his imperiled grandson, Kunak. And in the title story, the broken-hearted Bunny wanders during a freezing night onto a golf course, where, later, a flock of geese stand vigil until her body is discovered by a kind stranger. Norma Dunning’s masterful storytelling uses humor and incisive detail to create compelling characters who discover themselves in a hostile land where prejudice, misogyny, and inequity are most often found hidden in plain sight. There, they must rely on their wits, artistic talent, senses of humor, and spirituality­ for survival, and there, too, they find solace in shining moments of reconnection with their families and communities."

Norma Dunning (Author), Eric Schweig, Tanis Parenteau (Narrator)

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