Kangirsuk textile artist Winifred Nungak has been awarded the Artist of the Year prize by the Quebec Council of Arts and Letters.

“I’m very honoured. I did not expect this at all. It’s very rewarding, [after] doing this for such a long time,” she said Tuesday in an interview.

Nungak learned to sew as a young girl and later studied design at LaSalle College Montreal, a skill she would eventually turn into a career.

“When I was still in college, I was making parkas and people started ordering them from me,” she said.

Soon after finishing college, she opened a small clothing business, Winifred Designs, selling her work primarily on Instagram and Facebook.

Since then, her fashions have toured the U.S. as part of a museum exhibit called Native Fashion Now. In 2019, she was chosen for Canada Goose’s Project Atigi which showcased the work of 14 Inuit seamstresses.

The award comes with a $10,000 prize.

A news release from the Quebec arts council called Nungak “a leader in the field of textile arts and a key figure in Indigenous fashion” who work “combines traditional and contemporary techniques with exceptional quality.”

Nungak’s parkas are inspired by styles from the 1950s and 1960s, but with her own colourful flourishes.

In addition to her one-woman operation at Winifred Designs, Nungak is deeply engaged with her community. In 2022, she was elected as a hamlet councillor for Kangirsuk.

She said passing on her knowledge to the next generation is important to her. Since 2014, she has travelled to different communities in Nunavik teaching young women how to make parkas.