Open book: summer literacy camps fan out across Inuit Nunangat

Camp counsellors from Cape Dorset, Arviat and Taloyoak, as well as from the South, visited Iqaluit last week to get ready for Frontier College literacy camps coming up this summer. Piita Jaw of Cape Dorset is pictured on the far right. Training weekends will be held soon in Goose Bay and Kuujjuaq for youth leaders who will work in Nunavik and Nunatsiavut. (PHOTO BY BETH BROWN)

Last summer, children in Cape Dorset avoided losing their reading skills because every elementary school student in the community signed up for book camp.

“Sometimes when you have a summer break you forget things,” said Piita Jaw of Cape Dorset, a counsellor at the free Frontier College literacy camp.

Jaw came to Iqaluit June 23 to June 25 to get this year’s camp curriculum ready, along with other members of her team and youth counsellors who will be working in Arviat and Taloyoak.

For young students to keep their reading level from dropping when school is out in summer, they should read at least five books at their level from spring to fall, said camp training co-ordinator Erin Murray.

“In a lot of our camps, the kids read seven, eight, nine books,” she said—and that’s on top of the books which are read out loud to the children.

Combined, there will be 15 Frontier College literacy camps in Inuit Nunangat this summer: three in Nunavut, 10 in Nunavik and two in Nunatsiavut.

And in Canada, around 8,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children between the ages of five and 12 will crack the spines of hundreds of new books brought to each of their communities.

In Nunavut, as many of those books as possible will be in Inuit languages, or will tell traditional stories. Many books will be sourced through Inhabit Media, an Inuit-owned, Iqaluit-based Nunavut publisher.

“When it comes to working with Inuit communities, we hire people from the communities, so the local language can be used at camp, the story telling can happen in the first language of the children,” said Melanie Valcin, the Frontier College regional manager for Quebec and Nunavut.

She said a parent told her they had never seen their daughter read at home, and after camp the girl was reading to her younger sister.

Last year, 238 Nunavut campers got 723 books, 80 campers at the first camp in Nunatsiavut were given more than 1,000 books and 329 campers in Nunavik received 3,196 books.

“If you bring the books the kids will read,” Valcin said.

But it’s not all about books. Campers will also learn about cooking and nutrition with lessons on how to make bannock, how to work numbers into their outdoor games such as dodge ball, and how to shoot rockets in the name of science.

Elders also visit the camps to share Inuit history, games and stories. Campers can also look forward to presentations by community members such as firefighters, lifeguards, nurses, hockey players, bus drivers—or RCMP officers, like the children in Cape Dorset listened to last summer.

“Every kid had the chance to try on their uniforms, including me, it was so cool,” Jaw said.

For some children it’s the only chance they have to go to camp—either because it’s the only camp in town, or because it’s the only camp that’s free.

“Some people struggle with money. I don’t think it’s fun being a parent when you don’t have the money to let your child do literacy and be part of camp,” Jaw said.

You can learn more about the camps here.