Nunavut community celebrates first grad in three years

Lindsay Joy Evaloajuk, 20, is the first high school graduates in Qikiqtarjuaq since 2013. She hopes to attend Nunavut Sivuniksavut in September. (PHOTO COURTESY OF A. SLOBOGIAN)

The class of 2016 photo will be a small one on the walls of Inuksuit school in Qikiqtarjuaq — just one student graduated this year.

But Lindsay Joy Evaloajuk has become a model for educational success, as the first high school graduate the Baffin community has produced in three years.

The 20-year-old student received her diploma at Inuksuit school June 2 during a small ceremony attended by school staff, family and friends.

“It was fun,” she said.

The soft-spoken student admits that finishing high school wasn’t easy. There were subjects Evaloajuk struggled with — mathematics was one — and she said she didn’t always get along with her teachers.

But Evaloajuk said that the subjects she did well in, like English, gave her the confidence to keep at it.

Evaloajuk’s English teacher, Amalia Slobogian called her a “hardworking, academically-strong student” and “a passionate, dynamic individual.”

Slobogian said Evaloajuk also enriched her learning through extracurricular activities, like competing in the Arctic Winter Games and taking part in Students on Ice and the recent Nunavut Suicide Prevention Summit.

But Evaloajuk said she gives most of the credit to her mother for encouraging her to stay in school.

During her teenage years, Evaloajuk saw many of her friends decide to drop out of school, for different reasons — some couldn’t keep up with the work, others had young children to care for or opted to work instead.

“My mom really pushed me, and I always listened to her,” she said. “There are lots of people who don’t listen to their parents and dropped out, but I didn’t want to be like that.”

The young woman had the ear of the Nunavut Legislative Assembly June 6 when her MLA, Pauloosie Keyootak, used his member’s statement to recognize her achievements.

“We are very proud of Lindsay because she has worked hard on so many things as a student. Especially, she has done work learning about the sea ice. She is very committed to what she is doing in trying to complete her Grade 12 education,” said Keyootak, who represents the communities of Clyde River and Qikiqtarjuaq.

“For a number of years we have not had a high school graduate,” he added. “Even though it is just one student coming out of the Inuksuit High School, I would like to express my pride in Lindsay Evaloajuk.”

Evaloajuk is hoping to attend the Nunavut Sivuniksavut in September and is currently waiting to see if her application will be accepted.

She said only one other student from her community has ever attended the Ottawa-based post-secondary program.

Afterwards, Evaloajuk said she’d like to study to be a teacher.

“I want to be a lot of things,” she said. “But a lot of people here don’t go to school, and I want to encourage them.”

“There aren’t a lot of Inuit teachers here, so maybe students would like to see an Inuk doing that job. Maybe they’d be more motivated.”

From 2001 to 2014, the average attendance rate among high school-age youth in Nunavut stood at about 60 per cent.

Over that same period, only a third of 18-year-olds graduated from school in the territory.

Nunavut’s department of education hasn’t yet released statistics on its number of graduates territory-wide for 2016.

But it’s not unusual for smaller Nunavut communities to see no graduates in a given year. In 2015 and 2014, neither Qikiqtarjuaq nor Resolute Bay saw any high school graduates.

The previous year, in 2013, Qikiqtarjuaq’s Inuksuit school graduated six students.

Overall in 2015, the territory saw 208 high school students graduate. See Nunavut’s graduation statistics since 2010 in the table below.

Nunavut high school graduates by community between 2010 and 2015. The department of education has yet to release graduate statistics for 2016. (COURTESY OF THE GOVERNMENT OF NUNAVUT)