Inuktitut literacy initiative gets nearly $500,000 in funding

A new Inuktitut literacy initiative in Nunavut aims to boost student success and support Inuit educators across the territory.

With $479,000 in funding from the Rideau Hall Foundation’s Indigenous Teacher Education Initiative, the Nunavut Bilingual Education Society and Inhabit Education have launched the Inuktitut Literacy Sequence Resource Package.

Designed by Inuit educators, the packages include a teachers’ manual and more than 50 literacy tools, such as sound wall cards that display individual sounds and the letters associated with them, to help students with their Inuktitut phonics.

They also come with at least 40 reading materials to help build students’ fluency, a July 17 news release said.

“This is an exciting step forward in literacy education and actively works toward language revitalization in the territory,” Jaypeetee Arnakak, executive director of the Nunavut Bilingual Education Society, said in the news release.

“[This project] is about creating Inuit-designed and developed language resources that are available to teachers in classrooms across the territory,” Teresa Marques, president and CEO of the Rideau Hall Foundation, said in an interview.

This initiative is one of 12 projects sharing nearly $9 million in funding through the Rideau Hall Foundation this year to support recruitment and retention of 10,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis teachers.

On its website, the Rideau Hall Foundation describes itself as a nation-building charity connecting people, organizations and causes that share a commitment to helping Canada reach its potential.