Lucy Tulugarjuk

Lucy Tulugarjuk (born February 28, 1975) is an Inuk actress, throat singer, and director. She is the executive director of the Nunavut Independent Television Network.

Tulugarjuk is from Igloolik, Nunavut.

Tulugarjuk is known for starring in the 2001 film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, for which she won the award for Best Actress at the American Indian Film Festival. In 2015, she acted in the film Maliglutit.

In 2017, she directed her first feature-length film, Tia and Piujuq (Inuktitut: ᑏᐊ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᐱᐅᔪᖅ). The film featured Marie-Hélène Cousineau as producer and Tulugarjuk’s daughter in the lead role as Piujuq.

With Carol Kunnuk, she was co-director, co-writer and co-star of Tautuktavuk (What We See), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023 and won the Amplify Voices Award for Best First Film.

She performs as a throat singer, but in 2014, declined to perform for Nunavut MP Leona Aglukkaq in protest of the government’s seismic testing. That year, she wore seal skin at the Gone Wild show in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, to support Inuit culture. In 2016, she also called for the resignation of Aglukkaq’s successor as MP, Hunter Tootoo.

She is the executive director for Nunavut Independent Television Network, a service of Isumabased in Igloolik. In 2021, Isuma launched Uvagut TV, a 24/7 online channel devoted to Inuktitut language programming, for which Tulugarjuk is the managing director. Tulugarjuk reported seeing the channel as “a tool for preserving and revitalizing the Inuit people’s language and culture.”

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