Robert (Robbie) Watt

As elected President of the Avataq Cultural Institute from 1998 to 2001, Robert (Robbie) Watt facilitated the first ever national gathering of Canadian Inuit throat singers organized by the Avataq Cultural Institute. This event paved the way to the provincial government granting throat singing as a special cultural heritage status in Quebec. Then, as Co-Director of the Inuit Sub-Commission at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Mr. Watt visited numerous Canadian communities, collecting almost 800 statements from residential school and intergenerational trauma survivors. Hearing the hurts and hopes conveyed by these testimonies has increased his own sense of heritage and identity.

More recently, Mr. Watt was President and Commissioner of Kativik Ilisarniliriniq school board. In this role, he actively supported initiatives to advance the protection, strengthening and development of the Inuktitut language through educational programming rooted in the Inuit identity and worldview. Lastly, Robbie was just appointed as Director to the new office of the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages of Canada. He now resides in Ottawa.