Putting faces and names to education in Nunavik

Lydia Audlaluk, a Montreal-based college student from Ivujivik, is one of many Nunavimmiut students featured on the Facebook page Inuit College Students. It’s a model one Nunavik group hopes to grow on, as youth travel the region to interview Nunavimmiut on their perceptions of success in education. (FACEBOOK IMAGE)

It all started when a New York City blog post began spreading across social media, from the giant United States metropolis to the northern reaches of Quebec.

Humans of New York, a photoblog that collects and publishes street portraits and interviews, asked a young boy named Vidal who has influenced him most in his life.

He responded “My principal, Ms, Lopez.”

When asked how, Vidal explained: “When we get in trouble, she doesn’t suspend us. She calls us to her office and explains to us how society was built down around us.

“And she tells us that each time somebody fails out of school, a new jail cell gets built. And one time she made every student stand up, one at a time, and she told each one of us that we matter.”

Vidal’s words hit a chord with more than a quarter million of the blog’s followers, including Gilliam Warner, a pedagogical counsellor based at Ulluriaq school in Kangiqsualujjuaq.

“It really got me thinking of students in Nunavik, and how we need to start getting some of those positive stories out there,” Warner said.

One of Warner’s former students and Ulluriaq graduate, Julia St. Aubin, has already launched a similar kind of project: a Facebook page called Inuit College Students.

St. Aubin, who just finished her first year of studies at Montreal’s John Abbott College, has posted photos and short interviews from fellow Nunavimmiut students who are also studying in Montreal.

On the page, smiling young students pose on campus and tell stories about how they ended up in their programs.

‘’I saw my mom go to college, and ever since then, I’ve just always wanted to try it,” says Lydia Audlaluk, a social science student at John Abbott, who is originally from Ivujivik.

“I remember in high school, in Secondary 5, thinking I couldn’t do it. I even doubted I’d graduate high school,” Audlaluk said.

“I didn’t speak English on a daily basis in Ivujivik — heck I rarely spoke English at all — so I was so nervous when I came here… but I just wanted to give it a shot, and here I am now, my last semester.’’

Audlaluk’s story is just one of many explaining how Nunavimmiut were inspired to pursue higher studies, and about the challenges they’ve faced doing it.

And, like the Humans of New York interviews, these are the kind of stories that reach Nunavimmiut at home, from the screens of their smart phones.

The stories are exactly those which Warner thought should be collected from Inuit across the region — not just those enrolled in college, but those still in high school, professionals now working, drop-outs or even elders who attended residential school.

So working with St. Aubin and another of her former students, Samuel Lagacé, the group will travel to Kuujjuaraapik next week (May 18), the first stop in an eight community tour called Nunavik Speaks… about Education.

Nunavik’s Esuma school perseverance project has given the group $50,000 to launch the project which will arm St. Aubin and Lagacé with cameras, recording equipment and questions for the communities in order to gauge their thoughts on learning, achievement and perseverance.

“It’s really going to make people see the reality,” said Lagacé, who graduated from Ulluriaq school before moving to southern Quebec to study film.

“I think it will make people see why they should pursue education, and what they can do with it.”

Some of their questions will look at how the relationship between teachers and students impacts on learning; other questions will ask parents, teachers and leaders for their vision for education in Nunavik.

The photography, interviews and footage St. Aubin and Lagacé collect will eventually be distributed through social media — although they’ve yet to decide on their medium.

With eight communities targeted in this first tour, Warner hopes the initiative will be popular enough to make it to each of Nunavik’s 14 villages.

And, if successful, Warner said the project could be applied to a number of other social issues in the region.

“This time it’s going to be about education, but it could about anything,” she said.