Researcher explores post-secondary options for Nunavik students

College students Minnie Molly Snowball and her sister Saladie Snowball, from Kangiqsualujjuaq, are pictured here at the campus of John Abbott College near Montreal. That’s the likely home of a new post-secondary program being developed for Nunavimmiut students. (FILE PHOTO)

A newly-awarded federal research grant will help a Quebec researcher look at post-secondary education and how it can be better designed for Nunavik Inuit.

Mylène Jubinville, a masters student at the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT), was recently awarded a $17,500 grant from a federal research council.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council funding will allow Jubinville to look at how post-secondary programs have been tailored to Inuit in other regions in Canada and throughout the world.

The goal is to highlight practices that could be implemented for Nunavik students.

“In terms of post-secondary education, Nunavut Inuit have Nunavut Sivuniksavut, Quebec’s First Nations have Kiuna, but the Nunavik Inuit have no post-secondary institution of their own,” Jubinville said in an Oct. 5 UQAT release.

“Those who want to pursue post-secondary studies have to go to Montreal, where they can study in French or English in programs run by the Kativik School Board.”

Every year, roughly 100 Nunavik students move to Montreal to pursue post-secondary programs at institutions, the majority of them at John Abbott College and Cégep Marie-Victorin.

“However, they take courses in programs that are not exclusive to Inuit,” Jubinville said.

To bridge that gap, the KSB plans to establish a Montreal-based program modeled after Nunavut Sivuniksavut, which would cater to Nunavik students.

The program could now take off in Montreal as soon as August 2016, the school board has said.

School board officials are still working out details on where the program would be based, but have been in discussion with John Abbott college in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, where KSB’s administrative offices are already based.

Jubinville’s project, called Nunavik Inuit at school, from 1939 to 2015, hopes to gather a better understanding of the region’s past education experiences.

Then she’ll look at different programs offered to Inuit in Greenland, Alaska, Norway and elsewhere in Canada.

Finally, Jubinville will meet with Nunavimmiut post-secondary students in Montreal to hear their own perceptions on education.

“Do they prefer to move south or stay in the North?” Jubinville said. “This is one question that has not been directly put to them until now.”