Inuit Education And Schools In The Eastern Arctic

Since the mid-twentieth century, sustained contact between Inuit and newcomers has led to profound changes in education in the Eastern Arctic, including the experience of colonization and progress toward the re-establishment of traditional education in schools. Heather McGregor assesses developments in the history of education in four periods � the traditional, the colonial (1945-70), the territorial (1971-81), and the local (1982-99). She concludes that education is most successful when Inuit involvement and local control support a system reflecting Inuit culture and visions.

This unique collection features auto-ethnographical essays by nine Inuit women educators who were part of the inaugural cohort of the University of Prince Edward Island’s Nunavut Master of Education program, which offered Nunavut’s first graduate-level degree for Inuit educators. These essays provide important first-hand perspectives on Inuit education, reflecting upon the dramatic changes that have taken place in the Eastern Arctic over the past fifty years. The chapters offer insight into both the effects of colonialism and the efforts to build a new educational system grounded in Inuit culture, values, and traditions. Inuit voices have yet to be heard within education scholarship in Canada, making this volume a significant contribution to the literature. This anthology will also be of interest to students of Indigenous and Arctic studies, sociology, and anthropology.

In 1987 Joanne Tompkins travelled to the Baffin Island community of Anurapaqtuq to take on the job of principal at the local school. This is the story of the four years she spent there and the many challenges she faced.

Between 1867 and 2000, the Canadian government sent over 150,000 Aboriginal children to residential schools across the country. Government officials and missionaries agreed that in order to “civilize and Christianize” Aboriginal children, it was necessary to separate them from their parents and their home communities. For children, life in these schools was lonely and alien. Discipline was harsh, and daily life was highly regimented. Aboriginal languages and cultures were denigrated and suppressed. Education and technical training too often gave way to the drudgery of doing the chores necessary to make the schools self-sustaining. Child neglect was institutionalized, and the lack of supervision created situations where students were prey to sexual and physical abusers. Legal action by the schools’ former students led to the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in 2008. The product of over six years of research, the Commission’s final report outlines the history and legacy of the schools, and charts a pathway towards reconciliation. Canada’s Residential Schools: The Inuit and Northern Experience demonstrates that residential schooling followed a unique trajectory in the North. As late as 1950 there were only six residential schools and one hostel north of the sixtieth parallel. Prior to the 1950s, the federal government left northern residential schools in the hands of the missionary societies that operated largely in the Mackenzie Valley and the Yukon. It was only in the 1950s that Inuit children began attending residential schools in large numbers. The tremendous distances that Inuit children had to travel to school meant that, in some cases, they were separated from their parents for years. The establishment of day schools and what were termed small hostels in over a dozen communities in the eastern Arctic led many Inuit parents to settle in those communities on a year-round basis so as not to be separated from their children, contributing to a dramatic transformation of the Inuit economy and way of life. Not all the northern institutions are remembered similarly. The staff at Grandin College in Fort Smith and the Churchill Vocational Centre in northern Manitoba were often cited for the positive roles that they played in developing and encouraging a new generation of Aboriginal leadership. The legacy of other schools, particularly Grollier Hall in Inuvik and Turquetil Hall in Igluligaarjuk (Chesterfield Inlet), is far darker. These schools were marked by prolonged regimes of sexual abuse and harsh discipline that scarred more than one generation of children for life. Since Aboriginal people make up a large proportion of the population in Canada’s northern territories, the impact of the schools has been felt intensely through the region. And because the history of these schools is so recent, the intergenerational impacts and the legacy of the schools are strongly felt in the North.

"In the pages of this book, you will read of the efforts of many to fearlessly audit the state of education in Nunavik. To diligently seek improvement of an already good system. To fix what is not necessarily broken so that those who come after us will have it even better than we did. The various tensions and differences of opinion are, to me, not contentious at all. The status quo, however good or excellent, is no place to stay. I think all recognize this." - Zebedee Nungak, from the Foreword As a history of the development of self-government in education, Nunavik: Inuit-Controlled Education in Arctic Quebec provides Native perspectives on formal education in Nunavik while offering readers a unique view into contemporary Inuit society. This book documents the development of education from the arrival of the first traders and missionaries in the mid-nineteenth century through the creation of the Kativik School Board and the evaluation of its operations by the Nunavik Education Task Force in the 1990s. Nunavik takes a detailed look at the complex debate of the Inuit of Northern Quebec about the purposes, achievements, and failures of the public schools in their communities, the first Inuit-controlled school district in Canada. Participants in these debates included elders who were educated traditionally, their children with a few years of education in mission and government schools, their grandchildren who attended southern high schools or residential schools, and current students and recent graduates of the Kativik schools. Qallunaat (non-Inuit) were also participants, as residents of Nunavik communities, parents of Inuit children, teachers, administrators, and expert consultants. Illustrated with rich historical photographs (many in colour) and maps from the collections of the Avataq Cultural Institute and the Makivik Corporation, Nunavik provides a uniquely Native perspective on school change in indigenous communities.

Between 1867 and 2000, the Canadian government sent over 150,000 Aboriginal children to residential schools across the country. Government officials and missionaries agreed that in order to “civilize and Christianize” Aboriginal children, it was necessary to separate them from their parents and their home communities. For children, life in these schools was lonely and alien. Discipline was harsh, and daily life was highly regimented. Aboriginal languages and cultures were denigrated and suppressed. Education and technical training too often gave way to the drudgery of doing the chores necessary to make the schools self-sustaining. Child neglect was institutionalized, and the lack of supervision created situations where students were prey to sexual and physical abusers. Legal action by the schools’ former students led to the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in 2008. The product of over six years of research, the Commission’s final report outlines the history and legacy of the schools, and charts a pathway towards reconciliation. Canada’s Residential Schools: The Inuit and Northern Experience demonstrates that residential schooling followed a unique trajectory in the North. As late as 1950 there were only six residential schools and one hostel north of the sixtieth parallel. Prior to the 1950s, the federal government left northern residential schools in the hands of the missionary societies that operated largely in the Mackenzie Valley and the Yukon. It was only in the 1950s that Inuit children began attending residential schools in large numbers. The tremendous distances that Inuit children had to travel to school meant that, in some cases, they were separated from their parents for years. The establishment of day schools and what were termed small hostels in over a dozen communities in the eastern Arctic led many Inuit parents to settle in those communities on a year-round basis so as not to be separated from their children, contributing to a dramatic transformation of the Inuit economy and way of life. Not all the northern institutions are remembered similarly. The staff at Grandin College in Fort Smith and the Churchill Vocational Centre in northern Manitoba were often cited for the positive roles that they played in developing and encouraging a new generation of Aboriginal leadership. The legacy of other schools, particularly Grollier Hall in Inuvik and Turquetil Hall in Igluligaarjuk (Chesterfield Inlet), is far darker. These schools were marked by prolonged regimes of sexual abuse and harsh discipline that scarred more than one generation of children for life. Since Aboriginal people make up a large proportion of the population in Canada’s northern territories, the impact of the schools has been felt intensely through the region. And because the history of these schools is so recent, the intergenerational impacts and the legacy of the schools are strongly felt in the North.

We travel to India to see the Taj Mahal, Egypt to see Pyramids, Turkey to see Blue Mosque, Italy to see Colosseum, South America in quest of Inca civilization, and so on. But very few travel to Nunavut – A Land of Inuit. Md Abdus Salam – the author, had a chance to travel, live, and work in Arctic Bay – a small Nunavut community, for 12 years. Not many people in the world know about life in Nunavut. Many people in the southern part of Canada have no idea where and what Nunavut is, no question to speak about Arctic Bay, where Salam landed to teach in 2007. As he learned to survive the harsh winters and other challenges unique to the North, the Arctic also provided him amazing experiences, from polar bears to the aurora borealis, snowmobiles, and potable water problems. Used to living in a large community with many amenities, Salam faced some unique predicaments while living and teaching in the land of Inuit. In the North, he learned of Inuit culture, heritage, and hunting practices while learning to live in a land of extremes—including -60C cold, three months of complete darkness in the winter, and 24/7 daylight for three months in the summer. The memoir Highlights Md Abdus Salam’s experiences first as an immigrant teacher and then as a principal in the community of Arctic Bay. Ikpiarjuk: My Challenges Teaching in a Land of Inuit speaks to the experiences of a talented educator’s time spent living and teaching in a place that was utterly unknown to him.

Between its creation in 1985 and the creation of Nunavut in 1999, the Baffin Divisional Board of Education (BDBE) worked to create an Inuit system of education in the fifteen eastern arctic communities that made up the Baffin region of the Northwest Territories. As a part of this effort to create a school environment that built on Inuit language and culture while preparing students to participate in an increasingly global context, CSILE/Knowledge Forum, a collaborative, network-based computer supported knowledge building environment, was implemented in a number of Baffin schools between 1992 and 2000. This implementation process brings together initiatives that juxtapose two theoretical frameworks. The first, Cummins' intervention for collaborative empowerment, underlies the BDBE's bilingual program development; the second, Bereiter and Scardamalia's emerging knowledge building framework, underlies the design of CSILE/Knowledge Forum. This thesis explores the intersection between these two frameworks through the implementation of CSILE/Knowledge Forum in Baffin schools. Through a combination of personal narrative and examination of CSILE/Knowledge Forum databases, the thesis argues that the intervention for collaborative empowerment brings to knowledge building a focus on the role that power structures play in classrooms such as those in the Baffin where representatives of a dominant minority teach a majority of students from a different cultural and linguistic background. For its part, through its emphasis on collective cognitive responsibility, knowledge building brings a framework for educator self-examination and transformation that is critical to and lacking in the intervention for collaborative empowerment.