What drew Rannva Erlingsdottir Simonsen to Nunavut almost 30 years ago was a love for the Arctic and the spirit of Northerners.
From the Faroe Islands, which along with Greenland are colonies of Denmark, Erlingsdottir Simonsen is a small business owner who manufactures clothing and other items made from seal pelts, a venture she started in 1999, two years after she moved to Iqaluit.
Her business in Apex, Rannva Designs, is a small shop and bed and breakfast showcasing her many, primarily sealskin fur-based goods. Some of these are her own design, others are the products of the local women’s shelter, located right across the street.
“Sewing for Survival” is the name Erlingsdottir Simonsen eventually gave to what began as an informal arrangement to sell the small items women had made who were residents of Kimaarvik Women’s Shelter. Sewing for Survival provides “sustainable and respectful employment for marginalized Inuit women and men in the making of culturally-inspired crafts from Indigenous food byproducts” using traditional skills.
Erlingsdottir Simonsen estimates about half of the products in her shop, especially the smaller-ticket items, to be manufactured by Inuit. She views the practice as a continuation of what Inuit and her own people have been doing since time immemorial. Her mission is to organize the greater initiative, which is “to buy things, promote things, and to try reaching the museums down south, with access to the bigger market.”
Working personally with the Inuit involved, Erlingsdottir Simonsen helps to ensure that the end products are the desired quality, colours, and sizes for the desired market, helping with “the little things that make the big difference... to get hard cash for themselves — so empowering, culturally, spiritually, economically. To have money from their own hands to spend... instant cash is the only thing that works... it’s a go-with-the-flow kind of mentality, which is the way to go with these things, I found out through trial and error.”
Culturally appropriate and respectful trade
Some of the Nunavummiut craftsmakers she works with embark on their own start-ups, “which is ideal... really encouraging, everybody [is] happy. In my world, there’s nothing better than respectful trade.”
Erlingsdottir Simonsen pays a minimum of $25 an hour, "because you can’t live for less here.” She also purchases some of the materials, or helps supply certain things.
Since coming to Nunavut, Erlingsdottir Simonsen’s been actively involved in the production and distribution of seal pelts, insisting on policy change at the Department of the Environment.
“When I started, it was impossible to buy tanned, local skins. So I did a lot of lobbying... so I know how it changed from the government only buying raw skins... I even said to them, ‘You are mingling with private business already when you are buying skins with the hunters, and maybe you are thinking that’s OK because they are men... and you don’t think about the women who do the next part. Think about the women!... And now they have tanned skins that come back and circulate in the community... so that was part of pushing it in that direction, making that demand.”
The change from auctioning off raw pelts to buying raw skins from hunters and returning finished pelts from the south to be fashioned into goods by Nunavummiut women for added value is intended to boost Nunavut’s economy.
“My argument was, bring it back, give employment to the women too, and make more money with added value. Plus, satisfy the cultural need... and the desire from tourists to get things made [from] local materials and local skills.”
Something to teach industry
“My mission was to bring Northern resources to the mainstream, to counter the '70s Brigitte Bardot disaster for the local economy, and also to bring pride and joy back into local materials," she says, noting that the people in her homeland were also "demoralized by put-downs" and being undervalued in numerous ways, "where it still taint[s] the feeling of self, that we’re not good enough... that we have to go down south to get the right things, which is a bunch of baloney!
“My people live in the North... we are people with self-respect, and I would say more respect for the environment and animals than people around us, and we should be proud of that, and not try to adopt the industrial way of torturing everything living from cradle to grave.”
Erlingsdottir Simonsen says it took over 20 years of lobbying to get her products carried in museums in Ottawa and more mainstream acceptance of Northern goods, which has been aided by certain concessions from the environmental movement. She even took part in the L’Oreal Fashion Show in Toronto in 2006, and international figures and politicians specially order and wear her products.
The change in perception is slow, however.
“There’s been a lot of harassment... projection of people coming from big cities and pointing fingers [at] small communities instead of looking in their own backyard, which is finally starting to happen... hunter societies like Faroese and Inuit and many others, we know it, and respect it, and we have gratitude to the animals. We are very kind and sophisticated people, so it’s from us that the industry should learn.”
