Norway visit turns Nunavut elder into literacy advocate

Nina Hermansen, an instructor at Finnmark University College, at the left, hosted Cambridge Bay elder and Nunavut Arctic College student Annie Neglak, right, during Neglak’s recent one-month stay at the college in Alta, Norway. Last year, Hermansen and a colleague visited Cambridge Bay. (PHOTO COURTESY OF A.NEGLAK)

Annie Neglak, 64, didn’t get a chance to go to school until 1959, when she was taken from her home in Bathurst Inlet to attend residential school in Inuvik.

Neglak didn’t speak a word of English when she arrived there.

So, as she tells it, she’d just follow the other kids around to see whether it was time to eat or bathe or go to class.

That’s how Neglak, who now lives in Cambridge Bay, first learned English.

But after a recent trip to Norway, she sees there’s a different way to learn a language.

There, she saw educated indigenous people — the Saami — passing on their own language and culture as teachers in daycare centres, schools and colleges.

Neglak now has a new mission, she told Nunatsiaq News: to encourage her fellow Inuit to read and write well.

Neglak, a graduate of adult basic education and social services worker diploma programs at Cambridge Bay’s Nunavut Arctic College, returned June 12 from Alta, Norway, where she studied — and attended — literacy programs for new immigrants and refugees.

Neglak’s one-month-long stay at Finnmark University College in Alta was her first time outside Canada.

The scenery she saw in the far north of Norway resembled the lush, treed and rocky landscape of her beloved Bathurst Inlet.

And salmon and reindeer — the preferred diet of her Saami hosts — also suited her fine.

There, she says she met “wonderful people — just like Inuit— who like meat, fish and the outdoors.”

But those were the similarities.

As for the differences, what struck Annie the most was high educational level of the Saami professionals she met.

Neglak saw how Saami — the indigenous people of northern Europe, who number about 75,000 in Norway— teach Saami and promote education, starting with children as young as one year old.

Even childcare workers must earn degrees to work with these young children — “not just anyone willing to work Monday to Friday,” Neglak found.

Her experiences in Norway made Neglak determined to go back home and encourage people in her community to improve their literacy and that of their children.

“How are we going to improve if we are struggling with reading and writing?”

Here answer to that is Inuit — of every age— have to “come back to school.”

“I find none of us are willing to go back to live in the old days on the land. We’re too spoiled by everything. So we have to educate our people.”

But many students lack the support at home which they need to succeed when they’re at school, Neglak said.

Some have been adopted by elders who never had any experience with school themselves and can’t help them or encourage them to stay in school. Others have parents who are illiterate, she said.

As part of her personal campaign to improve literacy, Neglak plans to talk about the importance of school and literacy to everyone in Cambridge Bay.

Neglak’s eye-opening trip to Norway grew out of the links between Nunavut Arctic College and Finnmark University College.

For the last few years, the two institutions have been sending and receiving students and staff through exchange agreements and participation in the University of the Arctic’s North2North student mobility program.

To make her trip, Neglak also received money from the Kitikmeot Inuit Association., Nunasi Corp., the Ikalututiak Elks Club, and Nunavut’s Department of Culture, Elders, Language and Youth.