Evidence of meeting #23 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was inuit.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
Just correct me if I'm wrong here, but one of the issues we have is attainment. In my own community as well, that was something we had to work on, the idea that attainment doesn't mean entrance into college; attainment means being able to provide for and protect your family.
Is there some way we can work on changing that view of what it means to attain an education? Is that something you're working on at all?
Chief Executive Officer, Executive Services, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.
I don't know if the other panellists have anything to say about it, but I think we go—
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
If I want to pull it back to the big picture, when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you're a teacher, college is the end goal, and sometimes it's not where we need to be headed.
Is that a correct analysis?
Director, Department of Social and Cultural Development, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.
It depends on your level of skill. I believe that as a parent you already have choices when your child goes to senior high—which stream they are interested in, what requirements they have to achieve in order to graduate from high school.
Another thing we had explored was trying to create an Inuktitut school that would have 90% Inuktitut spoken. In the beginning, that's what one of the elementary schools in Iqaluit, the Joamie school, was created to be, but because of all the other requirements and the number of students who had no Inuktitut language skills or who were not able to speak Inuktitut but were expected to go into the Inuktitut stream, that quickly changed.
When NTI proposed revisiting the idea of creating an Inuktitut school, the response we got was that it would have to be a private school, which didn't make sense to us, because 95% of the public school students in Nunavut are Inuit, enrolled under the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement.
Conservative
Liberal
Liberal
Michael McLeod Liberal Northwest Territories, NT
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I wanted to talk a little bit about the youth, but also about the adults in this situation. For the most part, our focus has been on youth and the issue of suicide and youth. We've heard many testimonies on youth.
We visited a community where at one point there were 80 youth under suicide watch. The school reported that to us. It was shocking to hear, yet at the same school, when the students were given a questionnaire about what they would like to see changed or fixed, the response overwhelmingly was to fix their parents, so it's not just the youth we have to be concerned about: it's the adults as well.
We've talked about many scenarios of potential investment for solving some of these situations. We talked about family crisis centres. We talked about education programs and early childhood programs, and yet we haven't talked a lot about the adults. I know you mentioned in a couple of your speaking points that there needs to be healing and that there needs to be investment to help adults deal with their situations.
We have a lot of situations of the adults, the parents, not really passing on information, not teaching them about language, not teaching them about their history or their culture, not teaching them their traditional practices, so how do we do that?
In his report, Jack Hicks considered the differences between the young people and the older people. He found that the risk factors were different.
I wanted to know if the presenters might have ways to help the adults deal with the situation and to become better parents, and also better examples in our society.
President, Nunatsiavut Government
That is one of the most important questions that has to be asked.
Certainly residential schooling issues have impacted Labrador Inuit and aboriginal groups across Canada. Those who went through residential schooling have not been given the parenting skills required to look after their children. When they become grandparents, the problem is passed on to the next generation. We as parents and grandparents do not have the values as aboriginal people that our ancestors were given the opportunity to pass on to us.
When our children were taken away from their homes across Canada, much of our tradition was taken away. The parents of today, even grandparents, suffer from various types of abuse. They do not have the values that Inuit were blessed with when they were born.
We have to go back to the teachings the elders have. Because departments work in silos, we have to work around those issues. It's not just INAC that is responsible, and it is not just INAC that has a file on issues relating to aboriginal groups across Canada. Only when the different departments start to work together will they realize that this issue is bigger than what we see. It is bigger than what the aboriginal groups already know.
Qujannamiik.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Andy Fillmore
Thank you. I can see there's more to say on this. There's time for three more questions from members, so perhaps one of the members would invite a continuation of this particular conversation.
The next question goes back to Arnold Viersen.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
Thank you.
Do you want to carry on for a bit here, Mr. Lampe?
Liberal
President, Nunatsiavut Government
Certainly, where education is involved, in order for our children and our grandchildren to have good mental health, they need healthy home care. They need food on the table. They need to be able to sleep at night to get the rest and the energy that they need to be in school. Most do not make it to school. They will not go to school because they are hungry or didn't get the sleep they needed.
They don't have opportunity to speak to what it is that they want to become, what dreams they may have to become a teacher or a policeman or even someone who is a mentor, a role model. The only way that education will move forward, I believe, will be when we look at the role models, which are the mothers and the fathers; it is only when other parents start to see that, or when territorial and provincial governments start to acknowledge parents who are giving their children the proper care they need. That is challenging when the funding is not adequate for a single mother or a single father, and most certainly when even the grandparents are taking care of their grandchildren where the parents are not able to provide the health care and take on the responsibility to get their child to the school.
There are many different issues that we have to look at, and most certainly we have to look at issues that relate to the children and the grandchildren.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Andy Fillmore
Thank you.
There are about two minutes remaining, if you would like to share.
Chief Executive Officer, Executive Services, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.
Thank you. I will try to respond quickly to this.
In terms of what the question is concerned with, there is a deep need for health services among our people, and a need to help them cope and move on from the issues. We have a mental health strategy, but we need it to include mobile trauma response teams. We also need additional mental health specialists in the area, and we need grief support networks to continue and to be funded.
I want to quote something that I think is really appropriate here. It's from the 2009 NSPS document that was the development of the Nunavut suicide prevention strategy. It says:
Elders are a very important part of the cycle, for them to educate young people. [They need] to coach the students to give them an understanding of where they are coming from. Some issues need to be addressed on a daily basis, education, healing, etc, but also need to start understanding that you are living a life where you have a sound foundation to stand on. For some young people, especially young adults, notably those who have problems of consumption, suicide becomes part of the picture. There needs to be much more education among [those at risk] in order for them to become aware of who they are and be proud of [who they are and] where they come from.
Liberal
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
I will probably make a bit of a statement.
Specifically in the territories, it seems that an Inuit person's life is inundated with alphabet soup: KRG, NIT, and all these things. I haven't a clue what.... Whenever we have a witness here, we get all these acronyms thrown at us, along with the words “approval”, “program”, “proposal”, “rate”, and “services”. There are all these words. I wonder how we could move to a world where that wouldn't be part of the everyday vocabulary in our territories. I guess that's kind of a hope.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Andy Fillmore
Perhaps we'll hear the answer as we progress here.
Thank you, and thanks for allowing our conversation to continue.
I have another five-minute question from Gary Anandasangaree.
Liberal
Gary Anandasangaree Liberal Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In the last couple of days we've heard a number of references to Clyde River. I know you mentioned it, Mr. Arreak. I'm wondering if you could, in about a minute or so, give us a summary of what it is and why it's successful, and if it is something that could be replicated in other places.
Chief Executive Officer, Executive Services, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.
Clyde River has two things going for it. One is the Ilisaqsivik Society, which is a community wellness program initiative. They have counsellors who are respected elders and have proven abilities to help those who are in grief. Again, those are key situations, so there's that program, and they go out to the community.
Second, they are a cultural school that is specific to Inuit and they kind of spearheaded this. I'm not sure if it's under the Arctic College or the Government of Nunavut, but they have a very specific role in terms of teaching students about what our culture is. It's based on the cyclical pattern of the unique calendar year. This coming year they're focusing on caribou, the skin, and then they're kind of following the pattern of the seasons and educating the students about this. We're hearing very interesting results coming out of it. It's something that I think this committee should be aware of and should probably follow up to dig deeper into the program.
Liberal
Gary Anandasangaree Liberal Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON
Thank you.
Getting back to education again. Ms. Mike, you mentioned decolonization. How do we do that in a deeply western education system?
Director of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, Department of Culture and Heritage, Government of Nunavut
That's the whole cleansing idea, having that as an example. The program James is talking about is the way to decolonize schools, to make Inuit valued and embedded into schools by the seasons and by the parents. I'm saying that because here they start at eight o'clock in the morning. I don't think I've ever been asked if a student or a young person would be learning at eight o'clock in the morning. I saw some other studies saying eight o'clock in the morning for a teenager is like five o'clock in the morning. Making the school system relevant to that environment would be to decolonize. We would be listening to the parents about how they want the school system to be.
I wanted to respond to private schools, boarding schools, or whatever they're called. There are all kinds available in the south. It's not so easy up here to do that. You need funding in order to have private schools, in order to have all that stuff. That would be the way to decolonize it, to have a model like the Clyde River school that has been mentioned.
Gary Anandasangaree Liberal Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON
What supports are required for the parents in order to support their children at school? I know that lack of support has been one of the intergenerational challenges. What needs to be done in order to strengthen the support?
Director of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, Department of Culture and Heritage, Government of Nunavut
We need to work together, the parents and the school. Not just the school but the whole government needs to understand what cultural competency is, what the cultural differences are. All of those are very important to start discussing in relation to how we could work together, how we could communicate with the parents. They want parents involved, and yes, we're trying. If the school is just answering through an automated system and they're unilingual, you're not going to communicate. There are many things that we need to discuss, and not enough time.