‘Trust gets rewarded’: Sanikiluaq sewing program brings students to class

Everybody has someone special that they would want to make a pair of mittens for, says Mary Kavik, a Sanikiluaq sewing teacher.

Cindy Alariaq cuts up some fabric to make a pair of mitts for her boyfriend at Sanikiluaq’s high school. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)

“It’s a very warm feeling making something for a person you love,” she said.

Kavik has been a teacher in Sanikiluaq for 32 years.

One cold blizzard-y morning, three of her students were doing exactly that — one of them was working on a surprise gift for Kavik herself.

“I’m making this for her,” said 19-year-old Louisa Meeko, sitting cross-legged at Paatsaali High School’s sewing classroom with nearly completed burgundy mitts.

“She is just so kind to us. And I saw her not wearing mitts one day, and I thought I want to make them for her.”

Meeko’s friends were working on their own mittens as well: Cindy Alariaq was making a pair for her boyfriend, and Elisapi Arrutainaq was creating mitts for her three-year-old daughter.

“It would be awesome to see her wear them,” Arrutainaq said.

When she is done with the tiny black mitts, it will mark the first project Arrutainaq has made on her own from start to finish.

All three young seamstresses had parents and grandparents who made hats and parkas for them when they were young.

“It’s kind of special to keep that tradition,” Meeko said.

All of them mastered this skill in their high school’s sewing class. The room boasts about a dozen sewing machines, many rolls of different kinds of fabrics, and mannequins.

But the most important lesson they learn in the class is not about sewing, Kavik said.

“It’s about trying and getting better,” she said.

“I always encourage them — even if you may think the finished product is not the best, you should keep going and you will get better over time.”

Paatsaali High School’s sewing program has existed for many years, but until recently students would only work during class hours under a teacher’s supervision. Now, students like Meeko, Alariaq and Arrutainaq can come to the school’s sewing room any time and do the work on their own.

“When you put trust into students, that trust gets rewarded,” said school principal Frank McMullin.

The freedom and trust brings the school’s attendance up, he said.

The number of students enrolled in Paatsaali High School jumped to 160 from 123 over the past year in a community of just over 1,000 people.

Paatsaali High School principal Frank McMullin says Nunavut schools have to work against the bad reputation caused by Canada’s residential school legacy. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)

The average attendance is about 130 students every day, or just over an 80 per cent attendance rate.

Across Nunavut’s 45 schools, there were 10,852 enrolled students from kindergarten through Grade 12 in the 2023-24 school year. The attendance rate was 69 per cent, according to the Education Department’s annual report.

“Of course, our goal is to get all teens to classrooms, but we have to get the community to trust the school first,” McMullin said, noting that history is working against that goal.

“A lot of people have such a negative view of school from the days of residential school when colonialism came in and told them they were doing everything wrong,” he said.

There were 13 residential schools that operated in Nunavut, including Kivalliq Hall in Rankin Inlet which closed in 1997 — Canada’s last residential school, according to Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.

Across Canada, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their families and forced to attend the government-funded institutions over about 150 years.

Modern Nunavut schools should be as remote from that legacy as possible and be places where “people want to be in,” McMullin said.

“I knock on wood every day, I’ve got nice kids, and I think we are succeeding.”