The Government of Nunavut should come up with a five-year plan to implement Inuktitut instruction from kindergarten to Grade 12, according to Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., which filed a court claim Wednesday alleging the government has failed to provide Inuktitut education. (File photo)
NTI court claim demands 5-year plan to deliver Inuit language education
NTI takes Government of Nunavut to court over alleged failure to provide Inuktitut instruction
Updated Friday, Oct. 15, 2021 at 2 p.m.
Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. has filed a lawsuit against the Government of Nunavut, claiming the government has failed its legal obligations to ensure Inuktitut language education throughout the territory’s public school system.
“This claim is all about discrimination based on race and ethnicity — the fact that we are Inuit,” NTI President Aluki Kotierk said during a news conference in Iqaluit on Wednesday.
Inuit in Nunavut, who form a majority in the territory, have a constitutional right to receive education in all grade levels and subjects in Inuktitut, Kotierk said.
“That would help young Inuit students feel proud of who they are … so that they don’t feel any shame for speaking Inuktitut, for being Inuk, and having their own cultural practices,” she added.
The claim calls for a court order compelling the GN to come up with a five-year plan to deliver Inuit language education from Kindergarten to Grade 12.
The 28-page claim, filed Wednesday at the Nunavut Court of Justice in Iqaluit, outlines NTI’s allegations of the government’s long historical failure to implement its own legislation. These claims have not been proven in court and the government has yet to respond to them in court documents.
NTI claims that shortly after forming, in 2000, the GN dissolved elected Inuit supervision of local education boards set up by the Northwest Territories in the 1970s.
In 2006, retired judge Thomas Berger said the leading cause for the failure of Nunavut’s education system was the failure to provide Inuit language education, NTI pointed out.
In 2008, the Nunavut government confirmed its commitment to that education by amending the Education Act and by passing the Inuit Language Protection Act, NTI said.
Those moves committed the government to rolling out Inuktitut-language instructions by 2019-20, the court document said.
But instead, the number of primary schools that offered Inuit language education dropped to 10 from 16, NTI said.
A report by the auditor general in 2013 found the GN was failing to meet its Inuit language targets, including failing to train enough Inuit teachers.
The government then rolled back its obligations in 2020 through legislative amendments, the court claim said.
Those amendments replaced the government’s obligation to provide Inuit language education in all subjects with a single course called Inuit Language Arts.
It also pushed the government’s deadline to incorporate Inuit languages to some degree in all grade levels by 2039.
Currently, teachers and principals in Nunavut are about 75 per cent non-Inuit-language speakers, NTI said.
And the government has undermined implementing Inuit language education by hiring non-Inuit educators, the organization said.
“Many Inuit employed in the education system are hired as substitute teachers or as relief or casual employees,” the court document said.
The government’s approach perpetuates historical wrongs and stereotypes, including that Inuit language and culture is inferior and less deserving of protection than non-Inuit languages, NTI alleges.
Many Inuit don’t graduate from primary and high schools, have low proficiency in both English and Inuit languages and face significant barriers to employment and cultural connection after school, said NTI.
Kotierk said the current education system in some ways replicates the experience that many Indigenous people faced in residential schools.
“Although it’s our own government, it’s set up in a way that diminishes and degrades who we are as Inuit, and that plays into inter-generational trauma of residential schools,” she said.
The claim asks the court for an order compelling the government to implement Inuit language education throughout the public school system within five years, in consultation with NTI.
Alternatively, the claim asks the court for an order giving the government six months to come up with its own plan.
Correction: This article was altered from a previous version to correct a description of the government’s obligation to provide Inuit language education.
Great work NTI and Kotierk! Hold the government accountable for its legal obligations! Part of the NLCA is includes education in the majority populations language and Inuit are the majority in Nunavut!
I may be missing something, but I don’t see Inuktitut language rights embedded in the NLCA. Can you point me in the right direction?
It’s not. The Nunavut Agreement sets a requirement for each of the IPGs (Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, etc…) to provide information in Inuktitut on request, and stipulates that language of the workplace is an item that may be negotiated as part of an Inuit Impact Agreement, but it doesn’t speak any further to language rights. The right to government services in Inuktitut stems from the Inuit Language Protection Act, which was enacted, and subsequently amended, by the Legislative Assembly of Nunavut. NTI is challenging the 2020 amendments as discrimination on the basis of ethnicity or place of origin, in contravention of s. 15 of the Charter. The chances of success seem very slim, as this section has never been found to ground the right to schooling in one’s language of choice. Will be interesting to watch.
Typical NTI – instead of actually delivering on YOUR mandate you point fingers, you sue somebody, you cry and whine about what another organization isn’t doing right. Never mind the fact that they do a S&$% ton more than you. Never mind that their policy changes are based on facts and reality. It is SO frustrating that we don’t hold NTI accountable for being so useless and literally doing almost ZERO to help us. #timesup
The Canadian taxpayer pays almost $40 million bucks a year to help Inuit people with their
language.
The worst thing that happened to Inuktitut is that Inuit were put in charge instead of
qualified teachers !
Get your act together N.T.I.
Are you stupid or plain daft ?
that’s the way adversarial systems work: constitutional development only proceeds by court decisions and precedence
Finally about time!
Send all the NTI staff who took inuit language training instructor courses into the schools. Help the GN to increase and enhance Inuit pride in the Territory and stop the angry attitude. Work toward pride and justice for our people who are clearly suffering from many ills caused by trauma from many historical wrongs by our own people. Work together, not against each other. So qallunaaq way by going to court.
Just get the GN to do their job instead of wasting our time and money, more lawsuits need to happen in order for the gong show at the GN to change, so much money is wasted annually with no oversight even with all the recommendations that are given to the GN for changes to be done but never implemented.
It’s really getting embarrassing for the GN, and we are suffering because of their incompetence.
Maybe both NTI and the GN should have a campaign drive and visit all the communities to encourage inuit to take teacher training rather than trying to increase inuit employment numbers in the public service. Either way GN will always look bad due to lack of Inuit in our population. The west also requires a different approach as there are no inuinaqtut speakers who can take over the teaching positions in their language. Revitalization in that regional will not happen in 10 years without substantial resources. Inuit are going against inuit, bill 25 was approved by majority Inuit in the legislative assembly. Something wrong with this discrimination case.
I see no reason why NTI can’t provide funding for a baseline curriculum that the org would find acceptable to teach across each region and/or provide shared funding to implement Inuktut language education as NTI has well over a billion dollars in a trust to help implement the work required.
They sure do like to point fingers at others to do work without having to risk any work themselves. The last time they joined in anything, they jumped out of the Uranium pool pretty quick
That’s the GNs mandate, GN is responsible to provide a curriculum not NTI, if this was for English and there was no curriculum, teaching materials would you be demanding another organization to do the work for the GN? While the GN receives hundreds of millions on what it’s supposed to be doing? I don’t think so.
GN will lose this fight. They don’t have a leg to stand on when it’s 2021 and still no curriculum for Inuktut. No standards in place and the list goes on.
“Inuit in Nunavut, who form a majority in the territory, have a constitutional right to receive education in all grade levels and subjects in Inuktitut.”
However, there’s no constitutional obligation for inuktitut speakers to get university degrees and be capable of teaching all grade levels and subjects.
Nobody is holding inuit back. Support and opportunities for university education and jobs has been there for decades, but there are not enough people who want to take advantage of it. If Inuit wanted inuktitut schools, they would get the qualifications, take the jobs, and teach the kids. They don’t want it badly enough to actually make it happen.
No amount of lawsuits will force people to get qualifications and provide services in inuktitut. Even if they win the lawsuit, then what? How do you force inuktitut speakers to get the training and do the jobs that need to be done for an inuktitut speaking society?
Plans are easy, but implementation can be impossible if the thing everyone says they want isn’t something they actually want badly enough to shape their lives around.
Maybe residential school all in inuktut to create qualified inuktitut speaking teachers. Need to get creative somehow as we have too much influence from the dominate language. Pirurvik and piqqusilirivvik should partner on this initiative. But piqqusilirivvik maybe too small to create 300 teachers in the next 5 years. I think that’s how many Inuit teacher we need at this time.
“ Nobody is holding inuit back” no, there’s just no Inuktitut education, curriculum or teaching standards and materials for Inuktut, since Nunavut became to today more than 20 years ago nothing has happened on the GN side to incorporate Inuktut in the school system but the very minimum. For all these years.
You are right in a way but the system in place is stacked against having Inuktitut in the school system with such little support and lack of priority for it in the GN.
The way it is going it will never happen unless it’s forced.
How is it stacked against Inuktitut in school, please explain ?
In my opinion, most people grossly underestimate how difficult this job is, how long it will take and the qualifications you need to do it. At the very least, you would need a Masters in Curriculum Development. How many bilingual people in Nunavut can say they have that? The NTEP program emphasizes elementary programming to begin with, so numbers of specialist teachers are low. As well, NTEP really doesn’t prepare you for any Masters Program. I really think people need to be more realistic about this.
Five years??? It’s destined to failure.
It’s only been 22 years since the GN became to be, GNWT seemed to have done more at the time than that of the GN today.
Yes it’s complicated and not easy, but the way the GN has been procrastinating for 22 years, there’s really no more excuses and it’s time they actually start prioritizing this and start working towards it.
And what exactly had NTI done to help ensure that there are qualified teachers to teach advanced mathematics in inuktitut across all 26 communities? Absolutely nothing is my guess, so let’s just blame the GN and waste NTI funds on a lawsuit that won’t go anywhere.
NTI is not a service provider but that is an area that they are approaching. Soon they will get funds allocated to them for public housing, they are now in the business of healthcare re Covid vaccine roll out. They should take on Education and Justice as well. Time to review the land claims
I could not agree more Uvanga – let’s re-open the land claim and give NTI jurisdiction over Education. Then they can try their hands at creating an Inuit Language school system! No Inuit with teaching certification? No problem! NTI can just change the laws to eliminate educational requirements for teachers, and hire anyone who speaks Inuktitut. If no Inuit apply for the jobs, NTI staff can fill vacancies themselves!
One problem though. NTI doesn’t want to take over Education because they know full well what the barriers are. Much easier to be in the reactive/critic mode than to have to get something done.
This already happens, the number of teachers that do not have any training is crazy. to become a teacher you dont need training, only need to be on the sub list for a few years and show up consistently (and subs dont teach they baby sit) then you can become a full time teacher where they stop trying to fill the position with qualified Inuit.
NTI needs to get involved in training teachers and keeping those that get training to stay teachers. maybe find ways to support those with training.
Every Inuk teacher that has training get a bonus from NTI. and also pay Inuit to get training. maybe those that want to be teachers but are not trained will go back and get the training.
“This claim is all about discrimination based on race and ethnicity — the fact that we are Inuit,” NTI President Aluki Kotierk said during a news conference in Iqaluit on Wednesday.
.
Aluki, you used to be an Assistant Deputy Minister in the GN. Did you discriminate against Inuit based on race and ethnicity?
.
Aluki, why did you, as an Assistant Deputy Minister, not make Inuit education a reality in Nunavut?
.
Education in Inuktitut requires educated, Inuktitut speakers in the classrooms. How about NTI identify those available to be Inuktitut teachers and send them to the GN to be hired?.
.
How about NTI use the training money it got from the federal government to train the needed teachers, so the GN could hire them?
All well and good, but it still does nothing to answer where the instructors will come from.
NTI have so much money that they just don’t know how to spend it. Hey they found the way, spend it on lawyers! Or give 80k as first prize for writing a poem!
Hey NTI how about you use the money you have to work with GN and address issues? Homelessness, mental health, lack of kid/youth friendly programs, etc. List can go on and on.
One of the “projects” of NTI’s was mass vaccination clinic… Well it seemed like it was ran by GN not NTI.
Get it together and work for Inuit not against them.
So many of the statements in this article are distorted and hyperbolic.
This one stands out to me: “the government has undermined implementing Inuit language education by hiring non-Inuit educators…”
A statement like this is meaningless unless in each case the alternative—hiring an Inuit language speaking educator—was a possibility and not just some far off ideal.
If it were possible the GN would hire an Inuk every time it could (frankly, it would have no choice). We all know this. That it hasn’t done so does not indicate a conspiracy, to pretend otherwise is to mislead the public and act in bad faith, which appears to be the route NTI has chosen.
Thank you for speaking the truth so well. Shame on you NTI. This lawsuit will accomplish nothing except funnel needed money away from Nunavut towards lawyers in the south. Why don’t you get out of your offices and endless coffee-slurping meetings and actually do something productive and positive to help GN solve the problem!
How about a link to the notice of action so I can have a good laugh?
At least now Inuit are starting to understand what North Baffin goes through.
QIA and NTI doesn’t answer to Inuit, they just have their little Executive Committee meetings and that’s it. If you have any input then you become an enemy to Executive Committee.
Slowly but surely QIA and NTI’s time is up.
My recollection is that a great deal of energy, time, and effort were put into developing a made in Nunavut Curriculum. Then sometime in 2013-2014, the territorial government changed, and much of that project was shelved. At the same time, initiatives to increase Inuktitut in schools seemed to fade away. This raises some questions – Why did the GN change directions in education? – and is there another way to recruit, train, and retain Inuktitut speaking teachers – seeing as a 5 year program isn’t practical for many students because of family obligations? I have heard feedback from community members both for increasing Inuktitut and Culture education, and also those who want their children to graduate with the skills they need to succeed in college and university in the south – important if we want Nunavummiut who are teachers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, engineers, tradespeople, social workers, counsellors, civil servants, and leaders. If the answer was easy, they’d have done it already. But, at this point, I think it is clear that they need a new plan and they will need to think outside the box of western education to make it work.
I think we should stop western style education at grade 10. The only students who would go on would be the ones that can pass the grade 9 exit exam and have strong family commitments and attendance rules. The communities can take control of the students after that point, develop Job training and function. Why are we constantly expecting a colonial outcome without the colonial control to produce it? The kids and families are voting with their feet, kids are not attending, school is a mesh of uninterested participants who can sew. This is crazy funding this, let the learning return to the families and decolonize education and language instruction. There are only so many college graduates we need in small communities and most of those produced don’t move home anyway.
Vive Nunavumiut libre!
So, only those with a successful family life move on past grade 9, eh? So after grade 9 everyone should do family learning.
Think about it; only those kids with successful family lives will get any “decolonizing” education after that.
Now, please tell me what this “traditional” learning would be? Men get to go use colonial rifles and engines to go chase animals while Women get stuck using colonial beads and needles to do some beadwork?
I hear you and I am not arguing.
I will point out though, if your reading level is 3 ish grade levels lower than the grade you are in, you really aren’t learning very much. So it is more complicated that that. Not suggesting a solution though.
The reality is, the families are not sending their children to school, why are we continually supporting a system that sets the idea of failing in grade 10 because of decisions made in grade 1? Traditionally the community and family were responsible for raising the children, why are we expecting schools, with non-Inuit teachers to do this and then we are angry when the children learn English and are expected to excel in systemic structures that do not match traditional functions. Hand the raising back to the families, by grade 9 all the functions needed to survive have been taught. You don’t need more than this to do most jobs. There willl be a few that are academically strong, let them continue on if that is what the families want, not what the system wants.
In my community kids have Inuktitut class from grade 4 to 12 and k-3 is ALL inuktitut. Isn’t it like this across Nunavut (but with the proper dialects being taught in each community)
And yeah, Inuit get hired mostly as subs. The article follows up on WHY that is not two paragraphs later. BECAUSE THE VAST MAJORITY OF INUIT ARENT EDUCATED TO BE TEACHERS.
They are suppose to be getting this but not all schools are doing it yet because no one’s watching the store and some places do whatever they feel like without following departmental directives,
Want to know how to throw away millions of dollars for while the people you represent are suffering? Do they expect anything to change after this scare tactic?
Yip, give it to lawyers and get more partners from southern law firms
I can’t recall when Inuktitut was 1st taught in school, then it seem to dissolve slowly, typical GN. Kids & youth today rarely talk in their mother-tongue or should I say don’t speak in their mother-tongue. Yes, teaching inuktitut should be taught in schools, that is if they have inuktitut teachers available. More so, GN tends to hire non-inuit in work places where there needs to be an interpreter -I see that alot in health centres, especially at Continuing Care facilities. Just putting in my 2 cents.
NTI barking, but definitely on the wrong aspects of education. We did learn the basics of reading and writing in Inuktitut as children and it has carried us all throughout, and today still able. The lawsuit should be based on the GN not providing proper education with their social passing system. Which unfortunately has led to more Nunavummiun uneducated and unemployed while skilled Canadians or of other national origins, who have semblance of education, come up and take over the jobs, while Inuit youth with their young on tow, line up the welfare lines.
This is all completely meaningless until the Inuit Orgs start prioritizing Inuinnaqtun on the same level as Inuktitut. Inuinnaqtun has been completely ignored by NTI and ITK forever.
This litigation addresses symptoms, not causation.
The sad reality is that Inuktitut is the language of second class citizenship. That’s because Nunavut delivers education so inadequately that outsiders have to fill almost all professional and managerial jobs.
As just one example of the inadequacy, a mother who moved from Rankin Inlet to Ottawa told me her son was to go into Grade 7. However, he tested at Grade 3 level in Ontario.
Reality has long been that many Inuit have a poor knowledge of either Inuktitut or English. Few Inuit can tell me the Inuktitut word for a plumber. And they also dolt know the reverse translation.
Enabled by sufficiently intensive education for the modern world, there’s a long list of societies where local languages thrive alongside the dominant language of business and commerce: e.g. the creoles in the Caribbean, Ladino (Romansh) in Italy and Switzerland, Welsh in Britain … the list goes on.
Have you ever noticed that most of the teachers are non-inuit? This means that they are the ones that are teaching these kids that are grade 7 but are grade 3 when they move down south. So stop saying that its the Inuit teachers that are teaching them. As well the Inuit teachers are mostly subs “babysitting” was the term used, meaning they don’t get to teach the students, but stand by for the teachers… huh.
He did not say that it was Inuit teaching kids. And it has nothing to do with teachers’ ethnic background.
Teachers follow curriculum that’s setup by the government. Teachers can only do so much.
In Nunavut, If students are not doing well in their grade and fail, they still move on to the next grade. Hence, if you didn’t progress from grade 3 to 7, you will stay at grade 3 level. Not teachers’ fault, not students’ fault, it’s how the system is. There are no afterschool programs in place to help those who are behind. There are no special ed classes for those with learning disabilities.
And at the end of the day… Where else could you make almost 100k straight out of high school? With basic math and English skills? I’ve met 18 year old HR and Finance officers who cannot multiply 5 by 15 without calculator or spell Government without making at least 1 mistake…
Further to my previous posting, NTI should sue itself! Why didn’t they standardize the writing across the arctic? Why after all these years don’t we have two-way pocket dictionary, using the writing necessarily accepted by everyone? Why isn’t there a grammar book like ones for learning French or German?
Standardization would be a great start, NTI has the funds to do it…
Can’t wait to see these grade 12 chemistry and grade 12 calculus textbooks in Inuktitut. Wow they must have so many qualified Inuktitut speaking teachers who will show up to work 5 days a week to fill these positions. its a wonder why any southerner is still coming to the north to teach – What a great initiative ITK
Those are numbers and will remain numbers. Greenland has done it why not us??? But it will take time as we need Inuit teachers to create them with help from greenland perhaps
The fact that you’ve described Chemistry and Calculus textbooks as being only numbers is a shining example of the state of the GN’s education system.
Teachers won’t be doing this, building and creating curriculum is a couple of pay grades above a teacher. That’s the first problem, there really aren’t a lot of people qualified, so this is really tough. I would also argue, a really boring job as well. That is just as big a problem in my mind. In Nunavut, the people qualified to do this job, likely hold much more interesting job that pays a lot more.
I wonder how they are able to do it in Greenland, having the curriculum and textbooks in their language?
Having a University and trades schools. Maybe we should be looking at how they were capable of doing it and incorporate here. Get some of their top government guys to come over and help make it happen for Nunavut.
I had to Google to be certain:
“The linguistic shortcomings are also their doing. Schools have gradually incorporated more Greenlandic, to the point where, today, it is the primarily language of instruction during the early years of school. Danish is still required, but perhaps not for long: There is a movement to make English the first foreign language children learn.”
https://www.arctictoday.com/greenlandic-students-denmark-making-easier-make-grade/
That’s from 2018. That said, this is a complicated topic, as little is written and most recent news involves the move to more English and less Danish,
Yes but it seems to be so much more than what we have here, math science test books in the higher grades, everyone speaking reading and writing in their language.
A library with all their books translated into their language, books like Harry Potter.
From school test books to bank statements and income tax forms in their language, even their bank cards are in their language not Danish or English.
Their first priority is their language and then Danish and now moving towards English more but most speak three languages.
A university in Nuuk that produces Greenlandic teachers, having more local teachers seem to work much better.
I should just point out that the gn recently advertised for subject specialists that would work on curriculum and subject supports, the positions were only open for Inuit people living in Arviat or Baker lake, depending on the job, and the pay scale was less than a fully yeared and double degreed teacher would make. So the limits on hiring options would be very connected to the limits in developing anything new in the subject areas, So, the hiring supports unqualified people who will not have the knowledge or experience or education to creatively produce anything and they must already live in those two communities which narrows the hiring pool even more. The positions have also been empty for years. I think the gn deserves some heat for some of this.
This is a vastly underappreciated and under-reported variable in all this that deserves a discussion all of its own. Thanks for pointing this out.
I’ve said this before, but it seems worth repeating here. At least one of the major deficiencies we live with in Nunavut is the lack of a truly robust and informative information eco-system where discussions like this can thrive. Add to that the burden of our many “sacred cows” that are out of bounds to speak of.
I have long noticed that jobs or careers in the GN or Nunavut more broadly are often seen to serve the purpose of a proxy welfare (in some cases). In other words, priority is placed on ensuring that Inuit, or even more specifically, people local to a specific place, are given employment as a means to sustain them, while the goals of any specific position take on a secondary roll, or are of lessen importance. This of course is not admitted. The almost religious devotion to the fantasy that Inuit possess intrinsic, almost magical sociological insights prevents serious discussion about these issues and blinds us to the reality that someone in Arviat, or any other community, who is anything less than a well educated expert and who is surrounded by a pool of other well educated professionals and experts is simply not going to accomplish the larger goals set out here.
If we really care about the goals, we need to talk much more honestly, and robustly, about the process as well.
Under some of the early premiers, and to this day, the GN has a policy of being decentralized. Yes most positions are in Iqaluit, but they house many positions in these far-flung communities and never fill them. It is for optics and to give constituents jobs “to survive” as you’ve suggested, not so much to improve anything or fill positions with qualified people. No one will talk about eliminating that, but it is not helpful to the GN at all to have unqualified people doing any type of policy work.
Ummm actually, Greenland do not have the whole curriculum in Greenlandic. They also do not have enough Inuit teachers. And a lot of textbooks are only in Danish.
They’re actually trying to promote English in schools over Greenlandic and Danish.
No not all of it but a lot of it, we don’t even have any Inuktitut curriculum what’s so ever over here in Nunavut. Zero.
Fact – Greenland has over 700 Inuit teachers.
Reading all the comments on here you get a sense of why there is very little support for Inuktitut in the school system and in the GN.
You would think Inuktitut would also be part of the Nunavut education system within the government, instead of asking a nongovernmental organization to do it. Very strange way of thinking.
And just wait and see: NTI’s team of lawyers will all be Inuit and their adviser and/or consultants will also all be Inuit.
In another 30 years.