The Second denial of Inuit language rights (2017) The method of killing was the removal from the bill of the implementation schedule - this meant that there was no annual report on progress, and no follow-up on the Qalattuq Strategy, or requirements for NTEP to set up a plan to train Inuit teachers to teach in Inuktut.Īll this set the department on a path toward non-compliance with its own legislation, which continues today. It is wrong to say, as Jim Bell has recently claimed, that the 2008 Education Act, with its July 2019 goal was “dead on arrival.” It wasn’t dead, it was politically killed. In 2005, it commissioned the 2006-2016 Qalattuq Strategy, a solid plan to invest in Inuit educators.Īnd in 2006, there were discussions to roll out kindergarten to Grade 12 bilingual education, starting with a commitment to kindergarten to Grade 3 in 2009, Grade 4 in 2010, and ending up with the system in place by September 2018. The department was aware of the need to train bilingual Inuit teachers to teach in Inuktut. This was an important goal: to produce fluently bilingual graduates to staff the public service, for which a cohort of bilingual Inuit educators are needed.
In 2008, the government committed itself to a bilingual education system in which Inuit would be taught principally in Inuktut from kindergarten through Grade 12 by July 2019. The First denial of Inuit language rights (2008) The result: 75 per cent of the teachers don’t speak the Inuit language-certainly not the intention of the founders of Nunavut. Instead of reinvigorating a Nunavut Teacher Education Program capable of accrediting Inuit to become teachers, the Department of Education has chosen to staff Nunavut schools with high-turnover teachers from southern Canada. Three times in the last 10 years, the government has had an opportunity to create bilingual education and implement Inuit language rights, and three times it has declined to do so. It has turned its back on the main reason for the Nunavut territory: ensuring that the public government reflect Inuit ways of understanding and being. For 10 years, the Nunavut government has been indifferent to the goal of a fully bilingual education system, failing to recognize that a strong, vibrant, bilingual education system is critical for the flourishing of Inuit culture and identity, and the gateway to Inuit employment. In much of the world, Indigenous languages are being recognized as valuable.īut not in Nunavut. In Canada, the federal government has recognized that Indigenous constitutional rights include language rights. Many governments are passing laws and investing funds to strengthen, revitalize, promote and teach Indigenous languages. The year 2019 is the United Nations Year of Indigenous Languages.
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