Inexperienced southerners are dangerous

Go back to southern Canada, Mr Biggs. (“Nunavut’s trainee-led government is facing collapse,” March 5) I can challenge your assumptions because I have an education I earned and I also have some land skills.

This is exactly what Inuit did not want. Those of us who have fought for Inuit rights would counter with this: Can you eat your degrees when you are starving? If you think that by offering your stereotypical slant that you will cause changes, you are delusional. Inuit have a unique perspective and knowledge base that is holistic, not categorical.

I would not want to go to a doctor who has never undertaken certain surgical procedures, even if they are the most qualified, because if you have never practiced what you are taught, that is as bad as not having the education. Education as defined by southern Canadians is not the be-all and end-all of the definition. Just because you have paper skills, it does not mean you know how to administer a program either.

I would trust a hunter who knows how to handle a team of vicious dogs to manage a petty bureaucracy or a program that is slanted towards our southern practices anyday.

I have seen many doctors and people with a multitude of degrees who could not even butcher an animal properly. In your mindset, you have exposed your own biases towards only southern values.

That is just as bad as what you are insinuating. I pity your narrow focus and you should try being out on the land with some elders who do not have any degrees, but who are more professorial then any professors in any university.

If anything, it is the Liberal government’s attitude and lack of commitment that is responsible for the lack of plausible and proper training of Inuit for the bureaucracy.

We Inuit are just as ashamed to see “non-experienced” southerners being hired to deal with issues that they do not have any clues about, never mind their paper credentials. They are more dangerous then Inuit who have lived their whole lives under the stewardship of an uncaring southern government.

Malachi Arreak
Pond Inlet