John MacDonald spent most of his working life in the Canadian Arctic, including twenty-five years as co-ordinator of the Igloolik Research Centre in Igloolik, Nunavut, where he worked closely with Inuit elders participating in the community's oral history project. He is the author of The Arctic Sky and co-editor of The Hands' Measure (Nunavut Arctic College Media), a work highlighting the urgency of recording and documenting Indigenous oral histories and traditional knowledge.