“Happy Seal Day”, said Ms. Udloriak Hanson, a representative from Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), a Canadian national Inuit organization. Ms. Hanson greeted the crowd gathered at the Peterborough Public Library on Thursday, February 2, 2012, as she capped off Trent’s day-long Northern Studies Colloquium with her keynote address. “The seal is very important to Inuit culture and to our daily lives,” observed Ms. Hanson in her opening remarks, “but like many of the topics I will touch on tonight, it has definitely been given a political twist.”                                            

Beginning with what she referred to as “Inuit 101”, including a brief description of the territory and demographics of Canada’s Inuit population, Ms. Hanson then went on to look at the challenges facing this population today. “We have a very youthful population,” explained Ms. Hanson, “and are dealing with a number of challenging social problems including housing shortages, under-employment, violence and suicide. For all these challenges, education is key.”

Ms. Hanson highlighted the role of education in addressing these challenges and in moving towards greater autonomy, referring to retired Justice of the B.C. Supreme Court Thomas R. Berger’s 2006 report on Nunavut Land Claims agreement implementation. “The spirit of the land claims agreements was to have all stakeholders work together towards the goal of having Inuit govern their own land. We can’t get there without an educated workforce.”

“75 per cent of our Inuit are not graduating,” explained Ms. Hanson. One of the challenges, she maintained, is overcoming the reluctance of some Inuit parents to send their children to school, given their own negative experiences in the residential school system. An even greater problem, however, is the curriculum itself. “The education system in the north was adopted and adapted from the south, so the curriculum that I grew up on was Alberta’s. I remember in grade five learning about the different types of trees,” said Ms. Hanson against a slide-show backdrop of a treeless northern landscape. “It was very frustrating as a child. We need an Inuit-centered curriculum, one that isn’t written in English and translated into Inuktitut, but one that is written in our language and based on our culture,” she maintained, citing evidence from Thomas Berger’s report. “If it’s in your language and it’s culturally relevant you are much more likely to be successful.”

Ms. Hanson pointed to the success of the Nunavut Sivuniksavut (NS) college program in Ottawa as an example, attributing the success of that program to its curriculum. “At NS, students learn about themselves - their culture, their language, their leaders, and their past. It’s all about Inuit. There’s this huge sense of pride that these students get from NS and that’s why they’re so successful.

Ms. Hanson went on to describe the National Strategy on Inuit Education that was announced in 2011, calling its launch a “momentous” occasion. The objective of the strategy is to graduate children confident in the Inuit language and culture and capable of contributing with pride to the emerging opportunities in Canada’s Arctic. “The Strategy is a blueprint for the education system we want. It is a 21st century vision for our children’s future.”

Udloriak Hanson is the special advisor to Mary Simon, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), the national organization representing Inuit from Nunavut, Nunavik in Northern Quebec, Nunatsiavut in Labrador and the Inuvialuit region of the Northwest Territories.