It is a collection of six short stories based on the tales and experiences of modern day Inuit characters living outside their home territories in Southern Canada.

Dunning wrote Tainna while working on her PhD dissertation at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

[2] Written by drawing from her life experiences and cultural memory, Dunning compiled a collection of six short stories based on modern-day Inuk characters that contrast each other remarkably well.

Robert J. Wiersema at the Canadian magazine Quill & Quire writes, "Tainna is less a collection of stories than it is the parts of a world, fragile and broken but powerful and dazzling all the same.

"[5] Ciana Hamilton at the Canadian quarterly literary journal Room Magazine publishes, "The characters may be fabricated but the stories are undoubtedly ones of many truths.