Last Friday night, Staff Writer Jasmine Wright attended the documentary “Twice Colonized”, screened at the Athena Film Festival, and witnessed Aaju Peter’s ferocity and charisma be broadcast in equal measure. Warning: this film contains themes relating to suicide, domestic violence, intergenerational trauma and abuse.

Last Friday night I attended the Athena Film Festival’s screening of the brilliant documentary “Twice Colonized.” The Athena Film Festival is held annually at Barnard College and features a wealth of films centered around female empowerment and leadership. 

Billed as “the first Inuit film across colonial borders” having been a co-production of companies from Canada, Denmark, and Greenland, the film was first presented back at Sundance 2023 to critical praise. The documentary took 7 years to film and tells the tale of Aaju Peter, a resilient member of the Inuk people who takes us on a journey from her native Greenland to modern-day Canada, highlighting the impact of colonization on the livelihoods of Indigenous peoples in both places. It was an exercise in compassion and empathy and shed light on a region that I am ashamed to say I knew almost nothing about coming into the film. 

Aaju Peter is an Inuk lawyer and activist born in Arkisserniaq, in the north of Kalaallit Nunaat (also known as Greenland). She currently resides in Nunangat (or the Canadian Arctic) and has been for more than four decades. She is also known as a designer of Inuit attire made through traditional methods from sealskins. She states how the Greenlandic Inuit “grew up like we were born into straight jackets,” and we see her self-reclamation after being sent to Denmark—as was the custom for many academically gifted young Inuit children—and having to live with several white families from the ages of 11-18 to complete her schooling. Her main activist efforts surround the overturning of the ban on hunting seals, she makes the distinction clear between the Inuit’s subsistence-driven hunting for seals for their livelihoods and profit-driven commercial hunting. She also is attempting to establish an Indigenous forum at the European Union to give them a real voice in the creation of these policies and a way to protect their way of life in an official capacity.

Growing up in Australia, the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were always at the forefront of the cultural debate. There were constant initiatives to try to create equity to right the wrongs of our past misdoings in regard to the government’s treatment of them historically. However, at the same time, the facts were awful. As part of the “stolen generation,” aboriginal children were forcibly removed (essentially kidnapped) from their homes and families and had to undergo this kind of institutionalized forced assimilation. Inuk youths of Greenland suffered a similar fate, and representation like this film is vital to show the devastating effects these colonial governments have on indigenous people.

There are several quiet scenes of personal realisation where Peter is detailing challenging aspects of her personal life such as the heartbreaking suicide of her youngest son, who took his own life over the course of filming, from a fall from the 10 stories up. When traveling for work she always requests a room with a balcony on the 10th floor if she is able in a bid to feel closer to her son and attempt to understand what he must have been feeling to throw himself from such a height, an example of her macabre brand of humor. As Peter says to Director Lin Alluna concerning these painful scenes, “You have to film this. You can’t just film me on the stage being successful; you have to film how I’m fighting the effects of colonization in my private life.”

Her ability to hold both the mind-numbingly tragic and the wonderfully life-affirming within her in the same moment is incredible. She never succumbs to the trauma she has faced, rather she uses it to fuel her and propel her forward with a singular purpose—which is advocating for these voiceless people. As she states on her decision to train as a lawyer and pass the bar in 2007—“law is the language they speak” and hence is the only way to garner respect from white society to be able to advocate for these issues. 

Another central aspect of her personal life which is woven into Twice Colonized is the relationship riddled with domestic abuse that she is just coming out of with a white man. We see the emotionally loaded scene of her collecting her things from his cabin which she is deeply mournful to leave, as it is her home too. This is a powerful metaphor for how she is always being ripped away from the places that she feels most connected to due to colonial forces. The fact that in this interpersonal relationship, the mechanisms behind colonialism became personal is very incisive. 

These scenes which are hard to watch though are mixed in with other scenes that are brimming with radical hope. My favorites included when she plays dress up with her beaming granddaughters and they go through her clothing. Another is a delightful visit when she is visiting the Danish government and she visits the house of a dear friend, Aleqa Hammond, the former premier of Greenland. They stop becoming the fierce activists that they are for a moment and instead, we feel as if we are almost intrusively observing an intimate conversation between two good friends where they discuss Peter’s sub-optimal relationship and Hammond vehemently states to Peter “You have to decide how you want to live your life. How you want your life to be. Don’t give that away. You’re the one who has to choose.” She humorously tells her that she “needs to leave this man and find a good Inuk man” (something that I’m sure many of us have said in some variation to our own friends who have been stuck in bad relationships!). Another aspect of the film which I found fascinating was when Peter traveled to Sweden and interacted with the Indigenous people there, the Sami, which like the Inuk of Greenland and the other Inuit people of the Canadian Arctic, I knew nothing about coming into the film. The connections and parallels drawn between these two disparate indigenous groups were powerful, and the Sami she spoke to all had a cheeky disdain for authority which I think Peter appreciated as she too exhibited. 

A particularly poignant scene was towards the end of the film where the camera shows the barren tundra of the landscape outside Peter’s home in Iqaluit, it pans from white crosses in a makeshift graveyard in through the window and the warm, yellow glow of Peter’s kitchen window and inside the home she has created for herself. Both a literal and metaphorical refuge from the harsh outside forces—both environmental and colonial. 

These deep moments of humanity served to balance out some of the harder-to-watch and process aspects of the film and offered it a wonderful quality where it leaves you completely in awe of Peter and this resilient Inuit community, yet crucially not pitying them. There is a lot of respect here and nothing is a bid to draw tears, rather it is a bid to spark connection, and solidarity and ultimately leave you with a burning desire to help right these injustices immediately. 

This made me think back to how my Critical Approaches professor, Professor Jakobsen, was telling us about her work organizing back in the 80s for the AIDS crisis and the necessity for these quiet, yet vital moments of levity which are needed in any movement in order to retain your humanity and the purpose of the activist work you are undertaking. She spoke about how she arrived early to a fundraising party and there was just one young man dancing solo under the disco ball having the absolute time of his life. The final shot of Peter exuberantly dancing around her empty hotel room, blasting Inuit music made me think back to this. Her spirit and humor permeate the film, leaving us with an overwhelming feeling of just how strong these people are in the face of all they have had to live through. 

The main takeaway of the film was that despite the immense trauma that Peter had endured that wasn’t what drove her, rather it was her indomitable spirit and crucially her sense of humor. It was how she won over the Akitsiraq Law School faculty, the UN, the EU, how she raised 5 kids independently, how she became proficient in a multitude of languages, and how she contended with being at the mercy of not one but two colonial governments. Her humor was what spurred her to effect lasting change and overcome the odds of her circumstances of being an Inuit woman forced to be violently thrust from place to place. “Our lives and language became controlled by others, but we’re still here” Peter boldly explains. Through the law, her activism and the creation of this documentary she shines an unwavering light on the people of the Arctic and forces us to engage with their plight and understand just how destructive this kind of forced assimilation truly is to these largely forgotten communities. 

Directed by Danish filmmaker Lin Alluna, “Twice Colonized” both contends with the personal circumstances of the incredible life of Aaju Peter and the overall injustices faced by the Inuit peoples of the Arctic. If you want to learn more about the film, Peter, or the region as a whole. I implore you to check out the film’s website here, featuring a wealth of information, or a more detailed bio of Peter here. She’s a fascinating lady and you should all read up on her!

A shot of Greenland via Athena Film Festival