Inuit studies program must be continued

On behalf of the Association Inuksiutiit Katimajiit Inc., a non-profit Canadian corporation that publishes the international scholarly journal Etudes Inuit Studies and organizes the biennial Inuit studies conferences, I would like to express our distress at hearing that Nunavut Arctic College’s Inuit studies program will be suspended.

This is the only academic program in Canada specifically devoted to teaching Inuit culture and language.

Over the years, it has enabled a large number of young Inuit to get better knowledge of their culture and history, particularly through interaction with elders who come to the classroom as professors.

Much of these elders’ knowledge has been made accessible to the general public by way of a series of remarkable books in Inuktitut and English. If Nunavut is to abide by its stated goal of having both Inuktitut and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit become prominent, the college cannot do without this unique program, which is essential to the development of Inuit language and traditional knowledge.

Is there not a social and political willingness to know and teach about Inuktitut and Inuit culture in a land where 85 per cent of the population are Inuit?

Or are all those discourses about the prominence of Inuit ways in Nunavut just empty words? NAC’s Inuit studies program must be continued by all means.

Louis-Jacques Dorais
Quebec City
louis-jacques.dorais@ant.ulaval.ca