Planners face criticism over process studying Iqaluit schools
Public consultation hears feedback on 3 proposed locations for a new school build
Grade 5 student Sianna Enuaraq, centre, turns to listen to a comment during a public meeting at Nakasuk Elementary School, on Tuesday. Government of Nunavut facility planner Jason Gautreau, left, and Marilee Sulewski, right, also listen in. (Photo by Daron Letts)
A public meeting on the future of Iqaluit’s three elementary schools went sideways Tuesday as some participants questioned what they called the “colonial” structure of the consultation process itself.
About 20 Iqalummiut attended the two-hour meeting at Nakasuk Elementary School, the first of three this week. Several noted that Inuit were under-represented in the room.
A map of Iqaluit shows three potential sites for a new school. They include: 1. The current location of Nakasuk Elementary School in the city core; 2. The new development area in the Upper Plateau neighbourhood; 3. The Road to Nowhere. (Photo by Daron Letts)
“We have to do more” to include Inuit in the process, conceded Jason Gautreau, senior facility planner for the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure.
“I already have a list of lessons learned, and it’s lengthy.”
That was after he and three consultants with Ottawa-based Colliers Project Leaders outlined proposed scenarios for replacing or renovating the schools, including revealing three potential locations for a possible new school.
The presenters downplayed one option, which is that Nakasuk School and Joamie School, plus Nanook School in Apex, might be merged into one large school.
“Amalgamation is not necessarily the way we want to go — or the way the community wants to go,” Gautreau said, adding the one-school solution was panned during consultations held in September 2024.
Two other options that got a more positive response last year were renovating and expanding an existing school, or replacing one school outright at either the same location or a new one.
They debuted another option that would see a new, fourth school built in addition to maintaining the existing three. That could also include one of the existing schools being replaced.
The consultants asked the audience what criteria planners should use in assessing the three proposed sites:
- The current location of Nakasuk School in the city core;
- The new development area in the Upper Plateau neighbourhood; or
- Near the Road to Nowhere.
Gautreau darted into the audience to deliver the microphone to commenters eager to share their views. They did not hold back.
Several expressed the need for the schools to include families from various social and economic backgrounds.
Nakasuk Elementary School principal Leeveena Nuyalia shares insights with Jason Gautreau, senior facility planner for Nunavut’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, following a public consultation at the school Tuesday. (Photo by Daron Letts)
Speaking mostly in Inuktitut, Nakasuk Elementary School principal Leeveena Nuyalia emphasized the need to engage more deeply with Inuit. She rebuked Gautreau for neglecting to include an Inuk or an Inuktitut speaker among the presenters, before wrapping with a positive note.
“I’m happy you guys are here,” she said. “It’s a start.”
Other sharp critiques softened into constructive criticism.
“Ultimately, we made a lot of progress,” said Stephen Branston, a Grade 5 teacher at Nakasuk school, who was among numerous professional educators in the room.
“There were a lot of effective suggestions made as to how to get more perspectives and opinions and Inuit participation in this process, because right now we’re not seeing it.”
More consultation sessions are scheduled for Wednesday at Joamie school, and Thursday at Nanook school. Both run from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Simultaneous translation is provided by a translator at the meetings.
Following this week’s consultations, the plan is to finalize a report for the Government of Nunavut. A preferred option is expected to be presented to the Education Department by March.
Since the principal speaks inuktutut and has an important role with the department, maybe she can volunteer to present next time? Or maybe she knows some inuk project managers that could help out?
That’s not her job. It’s the department’s job to ensure those they contract to do work do it inclusively and respectfully.
For goodness sakes, GN education heads and staff are clueless, let alone the whole GN… since when do you not provide bilingual facilitators, in 2025! Not just translators. Wake up MLAs, shake up the GN communication process and address the issues!
Correcting typo: “How snarky a comment”
It is the Government of Nunavut issuing the contract for the Consultations and Report. Surely Inuktitut was supposed to be provided in interpretation and translation of results in report! Treatment of Principal to volunteer herself into this process is a mistake ignorant comment. How snarky is that! Colonial attitude and racist thinking is my thought on this terrible comment!
Interpretation was provided.
Sorry, public consultation is at least a $100 gift card.
Maloyville is expected to add about 400 homes near the RCMP building in Iqaluit within the next few years. Perhaps a new school should be part of that project.
A school next to the airport?
Yes
Colonial governments and systems act in specific, predictable and recognized ways.
These include politically monopolizing power, an appointed and external Executive branch, plus an inferior local Legislative branch, resulting in unequal power dynamics.
This extends to economic control where the colonizer is able to exploit the resources of the colony, mercantilism where colonizing business dominates the economy, forcing unequal trade.
These measures result in social and cultural controls such as forced assimilation and cultural alteration, Displacement and violence, and Legal inferiority.
We in Nunavut have a local Inuk Commissioner, who has never varied the deliberations of our predominantly Inuk Legislative Assembly. Our economy is dominated by government spending, however, our Assembly exerts control over that spending including whether the build schools. Our private economy includes external forces, but mining benefits by law accrue to local Inuit. We operate our schools under a made in Nunavut Education Act, warts and all, that legally acknowledges a role for parents and communities in the Education system.
Based on our current set up for Education, I struggle to see how formally asking a community how to deal with its future elementary schooling needs can have a colonial approach or aspect.
A colonizer would have just told Iqaluit that this was the decision, and they better live with it. Or else.
This is a key point made in this News article, but the specifics are glaringly missing.
There are constant calls for job creation and self-reliance. This puts the sled before the dogteam. There are far more jobs in the North than there are able-bodied Indigenous of normal working age. GN needs to take an inventory of all the jobs and then gear education to have Inuit fill them–including the professional and managerial jobs. For those positions, good grounding in reading and writing English needs to start in pre-school.
The two entrepreneurs who founded Sony wrote a book with the self-explanatory title Kindergarten Is Too Late. As for the worthy objective of supporting Inuktitut, consider the example of a Ukrainian friend of mine. He attended evening and sometimes weekend language and culture classes run by the Ukrainian community.
Community engagement done by a southern firm with no Inuit – lots of lessons learned, hmmm, I wonder what their lessons are lol
The spirit of Nunavut seems to be lost with our government, the who reason why we worked so hard to get Nunavut.
The last 25 years of Nunavut our government has gone backwards and became what we did not want, another colonial government in our own territory.
Iqaluit is really bad for this colonial mindset, it’s evident in our government and city, the local businesses, when you have a population in Iqaluit that is 50% from outside Nunavut this should be red flags, the education system in Nunavut has not changed or improved since Nunavut came to be, in fact it has regressed and the education act has been continuously delayed and watered down, still no Inuktitut curriculum.
Arctic college has deleted a lot of its programs, NTEP has not been updated or improved, the college has not updated or addressed the needs of Nunavut to help provide programs to fill jobs in our government, we have to fight constantly with outsiders that come up here to take leadership roles in our government, a constant fight for our government to represent us.
We moved backwards, hopefully with this new batch of mla’s they can start reviewing all these and start demanding change, the status quo is not working, it only benefits people not from Nunavut. Still so much colonial mindset that we continuously have to keep fighting. Here is just another great example of that.
The whole reason why we fought and worked so hard to get Nunavut was to get away from this and to have our government represent us and our interests, this in the last 25 plus years have slowly eroded back to a colonial government, in our own territory. It has become even more difficult to try and make changes in our government and for our government to represent us fairly and accordingly. So disappointing.