GN never gives information to DEAs

I can see that the District Education Authorities have their work cut out for them (school daze). More than anything else, the Department of Education has its work cut out for it.

Your editorial asked a lot of specific questions that no one seems able to answer, but this extreme lack of awareness is illustrative of how alienated Inuit communities feel from a government that consistently spurns their efforts to engage in any meaningful way.

The main problem, as I see it – and I’m supposedly one of those people, “in the know” – is that the communities, or more specifically, the DEAs, lack political presence in the regional and territorial levels so no critical information is getting through to the DEAs.

In every “consultation”exercise that I’ve attended, we’ve had to start all over again in explaining what the current and critical issues are because they’ve no one body to brief them. This is extremely frustrating, as no consensus can be built around the central issues of language and cultural policies and programs to which Article 32 of the land claims agreement guarantees Inuit input and ownership.

Anywhere else but Nunavut this would be called “dumping.”

Perhaps you’re asking the wrong questions by focusing on managerial and administrative issues as opposed to whether the DEAs are given the proper and timely information that is utterly critical to making informed decisions as good government is supposed to do.

Jay Arnakak
Iqaluit