Inuit Leadership on Arctic Waters

Edited by Dennis Minty based on contributions from Jason Edmunds, Jason Annahatak, Lynda Brown, and Franco Buscemi.

On an Arctic expedition, leadership rarely rests with a single person.

It lives in the person assessing the weather before a landing, the guide helping guests understand where they are, the host making space for a quieter guest to ask a question, the cultural educator offering a word in Inuktut, a song, a story, or a taste of country food. It is found in judgement, hospitality, humour, safety, and relationship.

For National Indigenous Peoples Day, Adventure Canada is celebrating four Inuit expedition team members whose leadership helps guide our Arctic journeys: Jason Edmunds, expedition leader and company director; Jason Annahatak, expedition leader; Lynda Brown, host and cultural educator; and Franco Buscemi, host and cultural educator.

For Jason E., who works with Adventure Canada as director of expedition operations and as an expedition leader, Arctic tourism begins with a simple but essential understanding: the Arctic is not simply a destination. It is home.

A large part of his role is guiding how Adventure Canada travels through Inuit Nunangat and other northern regions in ways that are respectful, safe, educational, and grounded in relationships. That work is closely tied to who he is as an Inuk, and to a broader concern: how tourism and business can support Inuit self-determination rather than simply operate within Inuit homelands.

“Today, business and industry have a major influence within Inuit Nunangat through their own operational decisions,” Jason says. Those decisions include who is hired, who is listened to, how relationships are built, how visitors are prepared, and how northern places are represented. When those decisions are made without Inuit leadership, he says, “the understanding of place and culture can become too narrow or incomplete.”

Participation and employment are essential, but Jason sees a larger responsibility: Inuit helping shape the industries that operate in Inuit homelands, so that culture, knowledge, and ways of life continue to thrive, not simply survive.

Leadership, Jason says, is about “bringing people with you.” It means understanding the purpose of the work, communicating that purpose clearly, and creating enough trust that others are willing to move with you, even when the path is not completely certain. In Arctic tourism, that trust carries real weight. The work involves many people, perspectives, responsibilities, and pressures. As an Inuk working in an industry where Inuit leadership is still underrepresented, Jason feels a responsibility to carry himself carefully and help make more space for others.

“I want people to see that Inuit leadership in tourism, safety, business, health, operations, and many other fields is not only possible, but achievable now,” he says. That kind of leadership requires trust, co-development, and a willingness to challenge southern ways of working when they do not fit northern realities or Inuit cultural perspectives.

“That is easy to say and much harder to do,” he says. “Change asks people to take a leap of faith, and part of leadership is helping people feel ready to take that leap with you.”

If Jason E. speaks to the industry-level responsibility, Jason A. brings that responsibility into the daily realities of expedition leadership.

In the expedition leader role, Inuit leadership carries particular weight. Expedition leaders help set the tone for a voyage, coordinate the many moving parts of ship-based travel, and guide decisions shaped by weather, wildlife, community visits, safety, and guest experience.

Jason A. describes leadership as the willingness to make difficult calls: changing plans, cancelling outings when conditions require it, handling conflict when it arises, and communicating clearly so colleagues and guests understand how they can help make the trip a success.

Jason came to that sense of responsibility through Inuit-led tourism itself. His own path began during and after his university years, when he spent five summer seasons working in the field, much of it between 2006 and 2010. At the time, Makivvik, an Inuit political and economic development organization, owned Cruise North Expeditions and was working to operate an Inuit-led cruise company in the region.

“I was proud that Inuit were trying to take charge of tourism in our region,” Jason A. says, adding that this gave him “sentimental motivation” to contribute to building the company.

That early work included annual Inuit training for youth. Many dozens of Inuit came through the program to become educational team members, drivers, and bear monitors. In that history, Arctic expedition travel becomes a place of training, employment, leadership development, and community presence as much as a visitor experience.

Other forms of leadership unfold less formally, in the social and cultural life of the ship.

Lynda Brown works as a host and cultural educator, sharing Inuit heritage through storytelling and music, including Inuit drum dancing and throat singing. On board, that role is both public and personal. Adventure Canada hosts help guests engage more deeply with place, learning, and one another, often through small acts of attentiveness: a conversation after a landing, an invitation to listen more closely, a moment of humour, a word in Inuktut, or a story that helps the day settle into meaning.

For Lynda, hosting creates space where guests can listen, ask questions, encounter Inuit performing traditions, and better understand the relationships between culture, family, history, land, and sea. Performance may be part of her work, but the heart of hosting is presence: generosity, calmness, and the ability to make cultural learning feel grounded, welcoming, and accessible.

Her path into expedition travel began more than a decade ago, after Alana Bradley-Swan, a managing director with Adventure Canada, attended one of her performances and invited her group to perform on a ship. Lynda accepted immediately. By then, she had already spent years sharing Inuit performing arts. Twenty-five years ago, she co-founded an Inuit performance group in Ottawa. Later, she joined Students on Ice, an organization that brings young people to the Arctic through ship-based expeditions. She continues to travel with Adventure Canada whenever possible.

Franco Buscemi serves as a host and cultural educator, helping guests connect more deeply with Inuit culture and life in the North. His presence on board combines cultural sharing, hospitality, and a welcoming sense of humour that helps guests feel comfortable and engaged throughout the voyage. In the rhythm of expedition life, that might mean supporting a conversation at a meal, helping guests feel at ease during changing conditions, sharing knowledge from lived experience, or bringing warmth and steadiness to the shared life of the ship.

Franco joined Adventure Canada’s expedition team after being introduced to the Nalunaiqsijiit cruise ship training program by Jason E. in 2023. Since then, he has contributed in a variety of expedition roles while sharing his knowledge, experiences, and, as he puts it, “good vibes.”

Across these roles, Inuit leadership moves through the whole life of an expedition: planning, operations, cultural education, safety, guest care, community visits, informal conversation, and the shared rhythm of the ship. It can mean shaping industry practice, holding cultural knowledge, keeping people safe, reading a landing site carefully, helping guests feel welcome, creating room for laughter, or knowing when to step forward and when to leave space for others.

Taken together, those roles change not only how an expedition feels, but how travellers understand where they are.

Jason E. says that with Inuit engagement the experience becomes “more grounded, more accurate, and more connected to the place itself.” The focus shifts away from simply looking at the North and toward learning from the people who know it as home. Travellers begin to understand that the Arctic is lived in, cared for, remembered, adapted to, and loved.

Inuit leadership also changes who holds narrative authority: how the story is told, what responsibilities come with visiting, and how benefits are shared. Tourism has influence, Jason says. It shapes how people understand a place and how they speak about it when they leave.

“Travelling with Inuit guides in Nunavut and Greenland changes the nature of discussions and experience,” Franco says. It moves the voyage from “talking about Inuit culture and community” toward active engagement with Inuit community and opportunities to participate in Inuit culture.

Jason A. adds that when Inuit are involved in Arctic travel, they offer guests “lived experience and wisdom of the land” and of communities. Their presence also lends credibility to the respect a tourism operator shows toward Inuit communities, especially during visits to villages and hamlets.

Lynda sees the value of Inuit leadership reflected in the diversity of knowledge Inuit team members bring to the expedition. One of her favourite parts of travelling with Adventure Canada is collaborating with other Inuit. Each person carries individual experiences alongside shared collective knowledge. Together, they help guests encounter Inuit culture in many ways: through food, games, Inuktut words, stories, music, and time spent on the land and sea.

These moments can change the scale of a guest’s understanding: the Arctic becomes less a place on a map than a homeland of languages, relationships, decisions, humour, food, and care.

For Jason E., cultural heritage is active rather than static: visible, lived, and strong in the present. When travellers encounter Inuit knowledge and leadership directly, he says, it can create deeper understanding and empathy. That kind of learning matters beyond tourism; it affects how people relate to one another more broadly.

Sometimes that understanding begins with food. Franco describes the pleasure of watching guests enjoy country food and connect with Inuit community through foods that, as he says, “have bonded Inuit for a millennium.” A small taste can carry a larger lesson: food as hospitality, continuity, and belonging.

Culture is not separate from those wider experiences of land, water, wildlife, and return. For Jason A., the lasting moments can also come from the land and animals themselves. He recalls a journey through “picturesque fjords,” where polar bears and walrus appeared within the span of a couple of days. He remembers thinking that these were among the most magnificent sights and wildlife in the region, and that he was able to take them in every few days. It was, as he describes it, “the best of Arctic nature all wrapped up into one”: heading out in small boats and on walks, then returning to the warmth of the mother ship to share stories of what others had experienced.

For Lynda, one moment from her work with travellers remains especially vivid. On her first expedition, she performed with her drum on board the ship. On her second, several guests asked if she would bring her drum ashore during a landing. She did.

“I will never forget the feeling of connection to the land and my ancestors,” she says, “while celebrating a tradition that was almost lost to assimilation and residential schools.”

That moment holds much of what Inuit leadership brings to Arctic travel. It is cultural expression, cultural continuity, education, remembrance, and return: a drum, a voice, a homeland, and a tradition carried forward.

On National Indigenous Peoples Day, the work comes back to people: the person making the difficult weather call, the person guiding a community visit with care, the person welcoming a question during a gathering, the person offering a word in Inuktut, the person carrying a drum ashore.

Through them, Arctic travel becomes more accountable, more human, and more deeply rooted in Inuit voices, knowledge, and leadership.

With gratitude to Jason Edmunds, Jason Annahatak, Lynda Brown, and Franco Buscemi for sharing their leadership, knowledge, and reflections for National Indigenous Peoples Day.

Journeys for the Curious