A new plan aims to boost Inuttitut-language television

Sammy Duncan, vice-president of Taqramiut Nipingat Inc. and owner of Kuujjuaq’s Nunavik Communications cable company, and Claude Grenier, TNI’s executive director, promoted their plan to bring more Inuttitut-language shows to Nunavimmiut Sept. 15 at the Kativik Regional Government council meeting in Kuujjuaq. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

KUUJJUAQ — Nunavik’s Taqramiut Nipingat Inc. network has come up with an ingenious, low-cost way to fulfill its mandate as an Inuttitut-language broadcaster and to promote Inuttitut.

TNI has plans to install special receivers in all Nunavik communities, starting with Kuujjuaq and Quaqtaq, TNI vice-president and cable-company owner Sammy Duncan told the meeting of the Kativik Regional Government Council on Sept. 15.

The receivers will be programmed with some of TNI’s thousands of Inuttitut-language programs, shows and interviews produced over the past 35 years.

By 2011, the receivers should be up and running in seven more communities.

Nunavimmiut will be able to see TNI’s broadcasts—like the popular children’s Nanook cartoon series— through their cable network at no extra cost, every weekday night from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 12 noon, and on Sunday from 10 a.m. to noon.

TNI also hopes to show programs made by the Kativik School Board and the Inuit Broadcasting Corp..

The Inuit language is the strongest of all aboriginal languages in Canada, Duncan told the KRG council.

So maintaining Inuttitut-language programming on television in Nunavik is “very important for our identity and our language,” Duncan said.

But Duncan, who also sits on the board of the national aboriginal television network APTN, said APTN doesn’t offer much programming specifically for Inuit because there are so fewer Inuit nationally First Nations peoples.

Besides meeting the need for more Inuttitut-language television in Nunavik, TNI’s new service should also encourage local businesses which offer cable connections to attract more clients, said TNI’s executive director Claude Grenier.

And it’s expected to earn advertising money for TNI, which is investing $100,000 in the project.

TNI’s longer-term plan involves re-building Nunavik’s television network, which faded away when TNI phased out television production at its Salluit and Kuujjuaq studios, starting in 1999.

Puvirnituq is the only community with a functional TNI television studio, but TNI wants to build a new teams in Salluit and Kuujjuaq which could eventually produce new programs, Grenier said.

For now, anything filmed in Nunavik must be sent to Montreal before it can be uploaded for broadcast in Nunavik due to the capacity of TNI’s uplink.

This could change if a fibreoptic cable for internet connects all Nunavik communities— one of the ideas now being tossed around as part of Quebec’s new “plan nord” development scheme.

As it stands now, Nunavimmiut who have their own satellite dishes to receive television signals won’t be able to see the TNI broadcasts.