Film to be shown across Europe as part of Native Spirit exhibit

It's a long trip from Nunavut, to Botswana in southern Africa, no matter how you measure it.

For Vicki Gibbons from Coral Harbour, her 2004 trip with five other Nunavut teens to the Botswana village of Otse on the other side of the world was a life-changing experience.

"I really did love it there in Africa," says Gibbons, who was 17 when she made the trip.

The six Inuit teens on the Northern Youth Abroad-sponsored trip to Botswana, spent part of their summer in Otse volunteering at an orphan care centre.

They also met Botswana President Festus Mogae, demonstrated Inuit throat singing and drum dancing, painted signs and murals around the village, and went on safari to the Kalahari Desert.

A true Inuk, Gibbons says it was the land and the wildlife that engaged her the most. "The best part of the trip was the safari in the Kalahari Desert," she says. "We saw giraffes, and wart hogs, but the very best part of the safari was that I got to pet two cheetahs."

Also in true Inuit tradition, Gibbons says they all struggled with homesickness, "until we talked about it together and I started to get over it."

The orphanage experience was also sobering as it brought the Inuit students face to face with the consequences of Africa's AIDS pandemic. More than three quarters of Botswana's orphans lost their parents to the disease.

Gibbons says the trip helped her get over being camera shy, as the group-which included Nathan Amarudjuak and Eric Okatsiak from Arviat, Simon Hiqiniq from Gjoa Haven, Charlene Mannik from Baker Lake and Norman Qavvik from Kugaaruk – was accompanied much of the way by a video documentary crew.

Now the Inuit youth are on their way to becoming international stars. This month, the documentary Inuit Adventure Africa, that Amberlight Productions produced about the Botswana trip, will be featured at the Native Spirit Film and Video Festival, running Oct. 19-28 in London, England.

The film will then go on tour across Britain, Spain, Belgium and France as part of the Native Spirit exhibit.

The aim, say festival organizers, is to introduce Europeans to the history, culture, daily lives and issues of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.

The trip itself was the initiative of a unique organization originally known as Nunavut Youth Abroad but now called Northern Youth Abroad (NYA) because it has expanded to serve youth in the Northwest Territories as well as Nunavut.

Concerned educators established NYA in 1996 after finding that "many successful northern youth shared the common experience of traveling and encountering life outside their communities."

Last summer, it had over 150 applicants from Nunavut and the NWT, and was able to take 48 participants out for summer experiences in either southern Canada or abroad.

The program offers young people aged 15-21 a cross-cultural experience either in southern Canada or further afield, where they can develop skills and work experience, plus earn high school credits.

Gibbons spent one summer in Calgary with NYA, working at a summer day camp for local kids. "After I completed the Canadian experience I could apply for the international phase," she explains.

Since then, she has graduated high school and spent another year in Ottawa with the Nunavut Sivuniksavut program, spent a summer as an interviewer with the Inuit Health Survey on the ship Amundsen, and worked at the local police station in hometown Coral Harbour.

Now she's working at a pre-school while she prepares to apply to become an RCMP officer.

Already, by age 21, Gibbons' life sounds like a full, rich one. And she's just getting started. "I'd recommend to all youth in the north to try for the NYA program if they have the opportunity," she says.

Inuit Adventure Africa originally aired on the Road Scholars series on APTN, and will be rebroadcast there next Feb. 19 at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.