We were always raised out on the land’; Helen Klengenberg still embraces Inuit culture after years of business and administrative roles – Nunavut News
Feb 13,2024
Helen Kimnik Klengenberg has lived in two worlds over the past 70 years, but she held tightly to the one that gave her a foundation as a child.
She has worked for government administration, fought for language representation and preservation, and, based on the the knowledge gained from past generations, she embodies qaujimajatuqangit.
Klengenberg was born in September 1956 while visiting her maternal grandparents in Tahiapik, almost 100 km south of Kugluktuk.
Tahiapik translates to “the small lakes, but it doesn’t mean that,” says Klengenberg. “Some clever individual who probably got stuck there named it that,” she laughs. “A white man.”
