Nunavut student travels to Ottawa to push for Inuktitut education back home
GN not meeting own expectations to prioritize language in classrooms, says Ella Estey
Ella Estey, a high school student from Iqaluit, believes Inuktitut courses should be made mandatory in Nunavut to better value Inuit culture and improve graduation rates. Estey spoke on the subject in front of the House of Commons Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee in Ottawa on Monday. (Photo by Madalyn Howitt)
An Iqaluit student says Inuktitut classes should be made mandatory in Nunavut schools in order for high school graduation rates to improve.
Ella Estey is a Grade 12 student at Inuksuk High School. She spoke to a group of MPs in Ottawa Monday on the need to prioritize Inuit language and culture in Nunavut’s education curriculum.
“There are many factors that contribute to the low graduation rates [of] Inuit, but prioritizing the language and the culture of Inuit will raise their chances of graduating,” Estey told the Standing Committee for Indigenous and Northern Affairs, which was discussing ways to improve graduation rates and successful outcomes for Indigenous students.
She cited 2016 data from Statistics Canada that states 48 per cent of people ages 25 to 64 in Nunavut had a high school diploma or equivalency compared to 86 per cent in the rest of Canada.
Much of the blame for that lies with the Government of Nunavut’s failure to meet its own expectations of having a high-quality Inuktitut curriculum, Estey said.
She said students whose first language is Inuktitut have struggled in a system that prioritizes English and French education, This has led to higher dropout rates, particularly in smaller communities.
Nunavut’s curriculum is based off of Alberta’s, which was designed in part to help increase post-secondary options for Nunavut graduates.

Ella Estey, a high school student from Iqaluit, testifies before the House of Commons Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee in Ottawa on Monday. The committee is studying how to improve graduation rates among Indigenous students. (Photo courtesty of ParlVu)
However, the colonial aspects of the education system have made it difficult for Inuit to succeed academically, Estey said, which actually contributes to a lack of confidence.
“The use of Alberta’s curriculum in Nunavut schools is one of the major causes for Inuktitut-speaking students to not learn at an academic level with their language,” she said.
She added that has contributed to Inuit cultural classes being seen as less important.
Estey called Bill 37, which would have rolled out a bilingual education system for grades four to nine by 2029 in Nunavut, part of a pattern of the Department of Education not seeing Inuktitut “as a priority” in schools.
“Inuktitut should be set to an academic standard for graduation. It presents Inuit culture as something valued by students,” she said.
“Instead of having Inuit associated with an education system that does not connect with their loyalties, schools and Nunavut should value Inuktitut language and culture the way they prioritize the academic classes to ensure the success of Inuit students.”
Estey said Inuktitut classes should be mandatory credits in high school required for graduation, rather than just optional courses.
But in order to do that, Inuktitut language teachers need to be better supported by the education system.
Many Inuktitut language teachers do not get their bachelor of education degrees and therefore miss out on benefits like housing and better wages that other teachers receive, she said.
Estey was asked by Nunavut MP Lori Idlout to speak about the territory’s education system after seeing a social studies project Estey had done on creating a Nunavut curriculum and the lack of Inuktitut education.
Past witnesses at the committee’s discussion of Indigenous graduation rates have included people from education departments and school counsellors, but Estey said she wanted to speak from a student’s perspective.
She said she’s seen an uptick in how many of her peers want Inuktitut to become a bigger part of their education and pointed to teachers at her school like Mary Piercey-Lewis, who make teaching Inuit music a primary focus.
“I encourage students all over Nunavut to put up with school and really just to value your education while you can, because it is an incredible resource,” Estey said.
What does she, or anyone who thinks Ottawa can solve this problem, expect to see happen here? Education in Nunavut is the jurisdiction of the GN.
Fold GN Education and go back to the Alberta curriculum.
Problem solved.
Nunavut is following the Alberta curriculum!
As the graduation rate increase, there is only 1 possibility to increase the numbers. GO TO SCHOOL and never mind being taught in a language which will not help you further in your life
Your attitude toward Inuktitut is so condescending and gross. I truly hope you are not an educator in Nunavut.
Ethnocentrism? Coming from the person who is only talking about Inuktitut and Inuktut? Nice.
That’s right, ethnocentrism means you are incapable of seeing or measuring cultures outside your own through anything but the lens of your culture. So, when one refers to Inuktitut as “a language which will not help you further in your life” they are advertising an incapacity to see value in anything but that which is valued by their own group. It’s really a form of immaturity, as I see it.
Unfortunately, this is a common reflex for people who are inexperienced in the world. It’s really nothing to be proud of, yet here you are, acting as if it were the supremacy of English and erasure of Inuktitut is an entirely normal thing.
Perhaps it would help for you to remember the context of this discussion, we are speaking about Nunavut and Inuit, not children of English descent living in Ottawa.
If you don’t like the term ‘ethnocentric’ perhaps ‘colonial’ resonates better for you?
Colonial is a term used by those who are unable to have real conversations and feel the need to use microagressions. It shows who they really are – as you have done.
Colonialist is a word those like yourself use to describe people like me, much like settler.
As it is a not a term that my community has used to describe ourselves but was thrust upon us by others, it has no meaning. If you wish to use the word colonialist to describe a people, then in the same vein you have no choice but to accept Indian or Eskimo.
Choice is yours.
If you want to have a “real conversation” go back and address the points made no matter how uncomfortable they make you instead of nit-picking semantics, or throwing a pity party because you think I called you a ‘colonist’ or by proxy a ‘settler’—that didn’t happen (what a strawman).
It’s amusing you assume I’m Indigenous because of my comment, I’m of European descent (just like you?).
Let me know when you’re ready for that “real conversation.”
But you’re wrong. Making Inuktitut the primary language of instruction will actually hurt, not help students in Nunavut. This will almost entirely bar them from good universities in the south, and badly reduce their quality of education in the North. You think it’s bad right now, with the GN never able to recruit teachers as it is? Good luck recruiting any teachers at all when you make the primary language Inuktitut.
I don’t see anyone suggesting Inuktitut be the primary language of instruction. What did I miss?
Amen. ??
Should GN “dummy down” the curriculum some more, as before?
Culture is a parents job, not The Department of Education.
Stay in school. Learn the “3 R’s”.
The best way to teach the people is to teach them in theirs own language. I am sure if they where taught in Inuktituk the result will be different. GN should try new cohorte and educate them in Inuktitut and English or French as minor.
“However, the colonial aspects of the education system have made it difficult for Inuit to succeed academically”
Actually, it’s kind of colonial to be going to the wrong level of government and asking them to impose inuktitut education on your non-colonial inuit-driven government of Nunavut.
Contact your MLAs, they are the ones that can make this happen. It’s complicated though. All the much-loved and demanded colonial support programs, like income support, child benefits, housing subsidies, etc. has taken away people’s incentive to become educated, support themselves, and ultimately, provide the inuktitut education and services that you blame the allegedly colonial outsiders for not providing.
If you are averse to colonialism, why go palms out to Ottawa expecting it to solve a problem that Nunavut has jurisdiction over? Wasn’t the point of the Nunavut Agreement to give power to Nunavut Inuit to address the issues they identified for themselves?
Education, and in particular a lack of Inuktitut educators, is not something that Ottawa has the capacity to address.
Am I missing something?
If I’m not mistaken, the federal MP for Nunavut, Lori Idlout invited this student to speak down in Ottawa. So your comments are basically towards the NU MP
So to put that differently, Lori has no idea what the ‘division of powers’ means?
I find that quite believable.
The only positive thing that I have to say about Lori is that she isn’t Trina.
“She said students whose first language is Inuktitut have struggled in a system that prioritizes English and French education, This has led to higher dropout rates, particularly in smaller communities.”
So, then why is it that students in Cambridge Bay, who’s first language is English, drop out at the same rate as those in, let’s say, pond inlet, who’s first language is inuktitut?
Bingo. Also, pushing Inuktitut as the primary language of instruction is absurd. There are many different dialects, and two of Nunavut’s larger communities (Cambridge Bay and Kugluktuk) have never spoken Inuktitut at all. That’s without even noting how badly this would impact the GN’s recruitment efforts. If I were a southerner with children, I 100% would never consider moving my kids to a jurisdiction where the primary language in school is anything but English, as my kids would badly struggle and have their education completely derailed.
Ms. Estey, will you become one of those Inuktitut speaking teachers you want for Nunavut? Are you preparing yourself to teach math and science in Inuktitut? Nunavut needs you and about 1500 of your classmates to do so.
Taima.
Whatever happened to that nunavut arctic college that was supposed to pump out a bunch of qualified inuktitut teachers? Would be great to know how many dropped out or how many are moving on to becoming teachers.
Our campus held the class for a few weeks and realized it wasn’t working so went back to the old curriculum: basic cooking classes and budgeting courses.
A deep dive into the dysfunction of the College would make for some useful journalism, if not a book. It would also be very enlightening to the public. The complete gong show of unqualifiied instructors would be a good start.
Almost all MLAs since 1999 have been Inuit. The GN is an Inuit government and a public government at the same time with a population of 85% Inuit. Inuit have not finished teaching programs. Inuit who do finish programs are lured to bureaucratic jobs in government and NTI. So when you say the GN fails, what you mean is Inuit are failing to prioritize their own language. Nunavut is afforded the largest budget per capita in Canada. It is not a money problem. It is not a political problem. It is an Inuit problem. If I had a time machine I would go back and give any southern student all expenses paid tuition for a BEd if they agreed to become fluent in Inuktitut and teach in Nunavut for three years. That would have been more successful than what Inuit have decided on with their government. Take responsibility and go to university.
Takukulugit! Piuttiaqtuq! We’ll done.
The graduation rate will only go up when the K to Grade 4 system has qualified ESL teachers. Further, in order to maintain Inuktitut you need ISL teachers because parents are not speaking the language at home. If the GN and the Inuit people want their children to be educated and compete with everyone in Canada then let them be taught in English and have ISL teachers.
Nunavut graduates rarely go on to higher learning because they lack the basics from K to 4. Remember as well the grade 12 English course is a literature coured not a second language course.
Not teachers who barely show up or show up unprepared and give out word searches in English
and when they do, they’ll usually offer sewing classes or show students how to fillet a fish in lieu of teaching the language.
Congratulations Ms Estey for bringing this up. However this is merely lip service. What are the solutions? Until there are qualified Inuktitut teachers who show up to work, this will forever be a pipe dream. As the other post mentioned, are you prepared to be an Inuktitut teacher once you graduate or the lure of the south is too great? I went to school in a different country, we were taught English as a 2nd language, difference was we had teachers who were qualified to teach us English and it was part of the school curriculum from K-12. In my home country, everyone can speak a minimum of 2 languages, the main national language and English. So… Inuit, you want to preserve your language, start taking actions and not just lip service.
Bravo Ella! Be proud of this accomplishment. Good for you to take your thoughts and concerns to a federal committee. Not many of us get to do that. Keep it up!
Why does Nunatsiaq News continue to leave comments open when stories about the accomplishments of youth, specifically Inuit youth are consistently trolled by racists? This isn’t helping anyone. As the parent of two teens, at this time I would be concerned about seeing my child’s accomplishments highlighted and celebrated in this public forum; knowing that an onslaught of racist and harmful commentary was impending.
Shame on all of these trollbot racists for constantly using this forum to spout their vitriol and hate towards Inuit and Nunavut.
Shame on Nunatsiaq for continuing to leave these toxic and racist comments unmoderated and/or open. The comments sections for some stories should be handled with sensitivity. This is not a good look.
When my ‘Inuit’ child grows up I hope he does something noteworthy enough to make a little ink. If so, I will expect him to face whatever non-sense gets thrown at him in a forum like this.
It would be a terrible waste of opportunity to hide him away in a little safe space, coddled and made to believe his every word was sacred.
Better get a dictionary and look up racist cause there is none in these comments.
It is a thesaurus entry now that colonial and racist are synonymous with “I don’t like what I am hearing and I cannot argue in rebuttal”
Miss Estes, please get a grip on the realities of Nunavut, please realize that teaching of
the Inuit has been up to themselves for the past 40 years or so.
This is what happens when you hire relatives who cannot do the job,
You might try asking NTI, ITK, MLA, or MP.
TAI MUK.
Unpopular opinion: There is nothing to gain from making Inuktitut the primary language in Nunavut. It will only hurt the territory’s opportunities to do business and grow the economy.
I don’t think anyone here is trying to make that point, though I’m sure many people would.
Would you agree it is possible for Inuit to be proficient in both languages, and that is a desirable goal? To give up on its place in the education system is really to agree to let it wither and die.
A blanket comment like umingmak doesn’t help, without truly understanding the language context especially for Inuit it’s so easy to say something like that, we need to look further and educate ourselves more about the importance of why we need our language and by having our language preserved and prosperous it only helps with learning English and/or French.
Take places suck as Greenland where they are doing very well with their language at the same time being more of the world economy than Nunavut. Work very well over there, we don’t wanna become like Alaska were majority of the indigenous people have lost so much.
I had the pleasure of teaching Ella when she was in 5th grade. She has always shown a strong sense of advocacy and I’m so happy to see her continuing to stand up for what she believes in. Very proud to have known her 🙂
Yes AW that is good for Ella, but should she not be directing her comments to the Inuit
teachers who are not doing their jobs ?
Our previous elected MP complained about messy and damaged housing, but people are
doing that themselves, or their children !
I am fluent in more than one language. My parents emigrated to an English-language country when I was a baby and stopped speaking their mother tongue to us at home. They sent us to schools where English only was spoken although we were all immigrants. We all spoke English at home. When I was still a child, we returned to my birth country. My parents stopped speaking to us in English and sent us to schools that taught English as well as other languages, including our mother tongue. We became fluently bilingual. From pre-K to Grace 13, I missed less than 10 days in total of school. I had great, good, bad, and awful teachers. At age 3, knew I wanted to become a teacher. There was a massive teacher shortage in my country at the time. Teachers were underpaid and not considered professionals. When the 2 year trading program became a 5 year university program for less pay than all other program graduates received, my father was unimpressed that I wanted to spend 5 years in a program that didn’t make me a professional at the end of it. Due to the teacher shortage, practicing we’re changed to 5.5 months per year and courses were condensed into the remaining 5.5 months of the year. We had no cooperating teachers – there wasn’t capacity for that. We were underpaid student teachers on our own in public schools but we had to turn in our lesson plans weekly and the principal and our university professors made unannounced support visits regularly and gave feedback. I had good to bad practical supervisors but the principals monitored and guided me and I learned most of what I learned on site. Of course the principals had no secretaries but there were janitors who did their job. Schools were clean if run down. Classrooms had blackboards and kids sat in rows. All teaching aids were made out of recycled materials. No SSAs, no counsellors, no SSTs or Learning Coaches. Many classes were staffed by 2 student teachers per year. I was paid minimum wage for the months that I taught which the government paid out to me over 12 months. I graduated without debt and I knew how to teach. We had no substitute teachers and sick leave was frowned upon because your students were divided among other teachers during your sick days and you returned to your colleagues’ averted eyes. I taught in my country’s public schools for 10 years and no one ever left my grade 3 class without knowing how to read and write in 2 languages. Lessons learned: (1) You can’t learn if you don’t go to school and you must do so no matter what. School is tough, it prepares you for life which is tough for everyone and tougher for some. (2) There are all kinds of teachers and you must learn from all of them. Bad and lazy teachers prepare you to survive bad and lazy colleagues later in life.(3) The most important impact on any students life comes from good teachers. You can have the fanciest school, tools, supports but it’s down to good teachers. Treasure a good teacher, always. (4) Governments spend millions on everything except good teacher education programs and investing in producing home-grown teachers capable of teaching well and supported to do so (child care facilities on site at universities, at public schools etc.,) (5) Teaching language is everyone’s responsibility- parents, grandparents, schools, political organisations – invest funds in teaching language instead of fighting for someone else to do it, especially when so done else isn’t supported to do it (6) Bilingualism matters: Inuktitut matters because it is fires up the soul of Inuit identity and English matters because it allows freedom and mobility within the world. You can only use Inuktitut in some places but you can use English almost anywhere. Mobility equals opportunity. If I had my way I’d do everything in my power to fix Arctic College and the teaching program. It must graduate teachers who can teach and who can be supported and have housing. Turn education around and you will turn Nunavut around. Inuit have shown what they can do in the most challenging place on earth. Unite to teach, put the focus on teaching bit fighting. On teachers not lawyers.
I’m sorry your parents felt they had to stop using their language because of colonial way it’s done in Canada, even our own indigenous languages have suffered because of this.
How do they do it in Europe where they learn other languages and keep their own indigenous language at the same time? Even in one part of France they can learn Inuktitut, Greenland has done an amazing job in keeping their language alive and it’s prosperous. The Danes have done a wonderful job supporting this.
Unfortunately here in Canada it’s a lot like the US and UK. A little narrow minded and expect everyone to just learn one language. Very unfortunate.
Just to make it clear for some of us, we are not saying to stop using English but to start using our own language more on par with English here in Nunavut.
Not taking anything away from English.
I think some of you are a little defensive about having Inuktitut being just as import in Nunavut, hopefully we can move past this and be more inclusive and progressive.
Ella’s insight and future thinking is very profound. We also very much agree that the first language strong support and nurture is the biggest asset to learn a second language and to excel in academics. We are so proud of what you did Ella.
I think it’s going to take this younger generation to make the major changes our GN requires to fully implement and support the Nunavut Agreement and the spirit of Nunavut.
Not the cut and paste job the GN does right now.
Hats off to you for having the courage to bring this to the Federal Government, maybe taking this further the the UN would help make the changes required.
It’s strange that lobbying the UN is seen as the appropriate response. What do you think the UN can do, or will do? It has no capacity to do anything.
Here’s a serious question for you, or anyone else who wants to take it on, why aren’t you lobbying the only level of government capable of effecting the change you want, the Government o Nunavut?
Because Polique it doesn’t work, for the last 24 years our government has looked the other way and have made it nearly impossible to have Inuktitut
In our schools, have watered down the education act twice, never used the education act in the beginning.
It would take another lawsuit to make any meaningful change in our government.
Canada like to portray itself as a nice prosperous friendly country but when we really dig down and see how it treats the indigenous people that far from the narrative, maybe taking this to the UN it would embarrass our governments to finally start making the improvements and changes needed.
Didn’t Canada agree to create and fund an entire territory, allowing Inuktitut to become an official language within it? Doesn’t it fund about 90% of its budget, including education, to the cost of billions? The idea that this is evidence of mistreatment by Canada isn’t compelling to me.
What am I missing?
So, is more funding the answer? If so, what will be done with that funding that is not being done now?
Yes Polique, Canada wanted Nunavut to be part of Canada and provides the GN with most of its budget, to have our GN work the same way as all the other southern governments.
Let me ask you some questions, does the GN education department have a Inuktitut curriculum?
Is Inuktitut part of the teaching language for all grades K-12?
Has the teacher education program been reviewed and changes made to improve it?
Is Inuktitut degrading in Nunavut?
I wonder how we can help improve, maintain and use our language in our homes? We use it at home but everywhere else we don’t.
Let’s see how NTIs lawsuit goes against the GN, I have a feeling it won’t be in GNs favour like the other lawsuits that NTI won.
French language education money comes ear-marked from the national government. Fair to ask about Inuktitut education money.