Language, culture, social issues a focus at Nunavut Inuit org’s AGM

The Cambridge Bay-based Inuinnait drum dancers perform Oct. 6 at the Kitikmeot Inuit Association’s community feast. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Kitikmeot Inuit Association program co-ordinators, Julia Ogina (bottom, second from left) and Sarah Jancke (top, second from left), sing drum dance songs with others Oct. 6 at the KIA’s community feast, which also featured drum dancing. Soon a KIA-produced book on drum dance songs and stories will help preserve these songs, Ogina and Jancke told the KIA AGM last week in Cambridge Bay. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

CAMBRIDGE BAY—Two people can’t do this job alone—but Julia Ogina and Sarah Jancke from the Kitikmeot Inuit Association’s social and cultural development department will continue to urge people in western Nunavut to embrace their language and culture.

That’s despite the erosion of the Inuinnaqtun language, particularly among youth and in Cambridge Bay, where in 2012 only 77 people spoke the language.

But Ogina, the KIA’s program co-ordinator for elders, language and culture, and Jancke, the organization’s program co-ordinator for women and youth, want to change that.

To that end, the two delivered reports to last week’s KIA annual general meeting on what they’ve done—and what they plan to do.

Among their projects: a soon-to-be-published book of drum dance songs, with about a dozen songs and stories, such as the one about a beluga whale hunt and a young girl who always had everything done for her until one day she realized she would have to learn how to hunt beluga.

“If we’re going to get our language back, we’re going to need those tools,” Ogina said of the book.

Among her department’s future plan: to encourage the “young elders,” now in their early 60s, to pass on their knowledge of the language and culture to the region’s youth.

Over the past three years, the KIA has also helped host basic Inuktut—Inuinnaqtun, and the Netsilingmiut dialect of Inuktut—language classes for youth, which Jancke said received “tremendous support” from participants.

Jancke told the KIA delegates about a new round of language classes for the coming year that will partner language-learners with local speakers, rather than with instructors from Iqaluit’s Pirurvik Centre, and move away from a book-oriented approach to teaching Inuktut.

The KIA social and cultural development department also wants to:

• produce a CD of its drum dancing songs;

• continue its sewing and tool-making workshops;

• expand its Inuinnaqtun radio and cable television “channel 51;”

• help families establish “language nests” at home to encourage Inuktut language learning; and,

• start a campaign to make speaking Inuktut “cool” for youth.

While the demand is high for more social and cultural programs, the challenge remains finding money for projects and programs, Ogina and Jancke said, prompting a resolution from the KIA AGM for more cultural and language core funding from governments for these kinds of efforts.

Elders, youth and women delegations, as well as other delegates, also called for action on social problems such elder abuse, poor parenting and suicide.

Elder abuse is heartbreaking said Jimmy Haniliak Sr. of Cambridge Bay.

Haniliak, who said he considers himself a young elder, broke down in tears as he described seeing elders deprived of their pension cheques by their children.

“It hurts me to see that,” he said.

And KIA board member Charlie Lyall of Taloyoak talked about parents who spend tax benefit cheques intended for children on drugs or alcohol.

“We need to teach them to use money on their kids instead of booze,” he said. “It’s a huge problem.”

Kugluktuk delegate Bessie Sitatak led the entire AGM in singing “You are my sunshine” Oct. 6 because the song reminded her of a music-filled dream she had about two young men who recently killed themselves in Gjoa Haven.

After passing the last resolution late Oct. 6—which will be forwarded to governments as a way to lobby for their support—KIA President Stanley Anablak adjourned the AGM for an evening that featured a community feast and Inuinnait drum dancing.