Aua (also transcribed Awa and Ava) (circa 1870, Igloolik area - after 1922) was an

Inuk Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, and ...

'' angakkuq'' (

medicine man A medicine man or medicine woman is a traditional healer and spiritual leader who serves a community of Indigenous people of the Americas. Individual cultures have their own names, in their respective languages, for spiritual healers and cerem ...

) known for his anthropological input to Greenland anthropologist

Knud Rasmussen Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen (; 7 June 1879 – 21 December 1933) was a Greenlandic–Danish polar explorer and anthropologist. He has been called the "father of Eskimology" (now often known as Inuit Studies or Greenlandic and Arctic Studie ...

. As a spiritual healer practicing into the 1920s, Aua provided perspective on

Inuit mythology Inuit religion is the shared spiritual beliefs and practices of the Inuit, an Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous people from Alaska, northern Canada, parts of Siberia and Greenland. Their religion shares many similarities with some Al ...

at a time when it was being subsumed by the introduction of Christianity. Aua told the story of his cousin's mother

Uvavnuk Uvavnuk was an Inuk woman born in the 19th century, now considered an oral poet. The story of how she became an '' angakkuq'' (spiritual healer), and the song that came to her, were collected by European explorers of Arctic Canada in the early 192 ...

, whose song "The Great Earth" is still popular. Aua was married to Orulo and they had four children.Shamanism As a Spiritual Practice for Daily Life
/ref> His encounters with the Danish explorer were fictionalised in the 2006 film ''

The Journals of Knud Rasmussen ''The Journals of Knud Rasmussen'' is a 2006 Canadian-Danish film directed by Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn. The film is about the pressures on traditional Inuit shamanistic beliefs as documented by Knud Rasmussen during his travels across the C ...

'', by the Inuit team who had produced '' Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner''.

Sources

* Penny Petrone. ''Northern Voices: Inuit Writing in English''. University of Toronto Press, 1992. . Pg 21. Inuit spiritual healers Inuit from the Northwest Territories Canadian animists Religious figures of the indigenous peoples of North America People from Igloolik {{nunavut-stub