Thank you for the question.
The Inuit language is taught often in kindergarten through to grade 3. In grade 4 the curriculum is changed into English. It's a wholesale change in grade 4. If you can imagine, in grades kindergarten to grade 3 you're functioning, you're thinking, you're learning in Inuktitut, the mother tongue, and then in grade 4 there's an abrupt shift into English as the language of instruction. That language of instruction remains until grade 12.
Inuktitut is relegated to a language art, much as a second language would be taught in southern Canada--i.e., if you're in an English school and you go to French class once a day. That's the same way that Inuktitut is taught in, say, the high schools here at Iqaluit. Since the establishment of the school system in Nunavut, there has not been, I think, a single graduate who you could say was educated in Inuktitut through the school system.
All of the language is an in-kind contribution to the territory. We see it as a huge cultural resource, a link into greater opportunities. The first language is the language of strength in anything a person does. This is what Inuit have been advocating for since the 1970s, really, since our first foray into this area of representation and political mobilization.
One of the first things that was talked about was the right to educate our children in our mother tongue. We're still fighting for that. We see no end to that struggle. Even though the new territorial education act and the Inuit Language Protection Act set out timelines for the implementation of our right to have Inuktitut as our language of instruction, we still do not believe that will happen without a massive investment in new money.