Projects

Arctic Bay

Program Name: Innuqatigiitiarpalianiq Literacy Program

Community: Arctic Bay

Program Delivery: Arctic Bay Community Learning Centre, NAC

Program Funders:

GN Department of Education
Nunavut Arctic College
Nunavut Youth Consulting

Program Partners:

This is a collaborative project with cooperation from community groups such as Arctic Bay Search & Rescue, Inuujaq School, Recreation Committee, Economic Development Committee, Arctic Bay Youth Justice, and Health & Social Services.

Goals of the Program:

To increase participants’ Inuktitut skills and cultural literacy skills, thereby encouraging wellness and strengthening the individual’s sense of self-worth and identity.

Length of Program: 25 weeks

Description of Program:

Innuqatigiitiarpalianiq Literacy Program is an open, informal, drop-in program. People participate in the sessions that most interest them. The program collaborates with Elders, who share their knowledge and expertise and help facilitate healing and community building. Here is a brief description of some of the activities that happened in the first year of the program:

• Community/Team Building & Traditional Knowledge: The group used cooperative & Inuit games, story sharing and writing, books, computers and Internet to explore traditional knowledge, career & life planning and community history. Activities included mapping of traditional camps with visits to the camps, exploring family relationships and creating family trees, making traditional tools, building a qamutik, building iglus, and making sinew.
• Inuktitut Language Development: Because the Inuktitut language must be used to explore traditional knowledge, students practiced and built their Inuktitut oral language skills. Participants used oral skills, reading and writing to develop CDs, puzzles, newspaper articles and a calendar.
• Inuit Art: The male participants worked on carving, crafting ulus and harpoon heads while the female participants worked on sewing and designing their own products.
• Traditional Navigation: Participants researched traditional place names with Elders, and then put the names on maps which were later distributed to the community. They learned traditional navigation techniques while out on land trips with Elders.
• Traditional Stories & Myths: Elders shared stories which the participants video-taped. The students learned how to save the images they collected to the computer and to DVDs.

Highlights & Reflections:

During the first year of the Innuqatigiitiarpalianiq Literacy Program the organizers noticed that the open environment encouraged many people in the community to participate. An average of 14 attended daily, with as many as 32 people joining the activities at times. Even after the program ended, up to 10 people continued to come to the Community Learning Centre each day to work on reading, computers or just to meet & discuss issues they are dealing with in their lives.

The Innuqatigiitiarpalianiq Literacy Program addressed wellness and personal development directly through program content and indirectly through social interactions and spin-offs that occurred through the program. An important outcome that was not expected or planned for was noticed as the program progressed:

“Many of the Elders commented that it was a great benefit to them that they were able to share their knowledge and expertise. For the map-making exercise all of the Elders felt this was a part of a healing exercise as it brought them back to their traditional roots.”¹

This was a project that promoted and enhanced community wellness and continuous adult learning through language, culture and traditional knowledge. This was the first formally funded Inuktitut language and culture program – despite the obvious links to community wellness – that responded to the challenges of substance abuse, violence and loss of individuals, families and community. The program met with tremendous success and the community rallied behind the project by offering many in-kind contributions of time, resources and materials.
- Ron Elliott Community Adult Educator

1. From Nunavut Arctic College IQ Literacy 2002-2003 Final Report

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Designed and hosted by in collaboration with The Nunavut Literacy Council