Andrea Cnudde
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 02/99) - Imagine catching a four-foot cod.

Imagine seeing polar bears everyday for a week. Now think of scuba diving in Arctic waters and surveying remote eiderduck nesting islands.

For the 13 students at the Qikiqtaaluk Youth Summer Science Camp, these things were business as usual during a week-long adventure on the land.

Project co-ordinator Glen Williams is enthusiastic as he describes the experience. He feels quite strongly about developing a different approach to education.

"The camp is in Inuktitut to show the students that there is another way of perceiving things like science," he says. "Inuktitut is not only a language thing."

Williams said the school system, because it is based on a southern model, does not instill Inuit with a pride in their culture.

"School is in Qallunatitut," he says.

"We use science to show how credible and important traditional knowledge is."

An excellent illustration of this, Williams says, is clams.

Most Inuit know that if you eat clams raw, you must squeeze the clam to remove the small, clear worm-like piece first or you'll get sick. Well, bring science into it and you learn that this clear "worm" is actually an enzyme-producing gland in the clam and, yes, these enzymes will make you sick if you eat the gland raw.

This concept of taking things that one is familiar with and learning why it is so is at the forefront of the camp's philosophy. Williams believes science taught in this way validates the knowledge many Inuit youth already possess.

QIA regional youth co-ordinators, Christa Henderson and Jonah Akavak, are also committed to this view. As organizers of the camp, their vision is to establish a science camp that utilizes "a melding of traditional knowledge, values and skills with the principles of scientific understanding of the environment."

For the kids, Akavak says, it's an excellent opportunity to meet new friends, go camping and learn new technologies.

"One of the problems these kids face is boredom. A lot of them haven't travelled much. Some of them have never been out of their home communities before," he says.

For seven days, the students, who are from several different Baffin communities, were far from bored. From a base camp four hours down the bay by boat, they were kept very busy learning the basics of technologies such as GPS and SONAR, surveying nesting islands and hunting for food.

A highlight of the trip was a visit to Ogac Lake, where an ancient, unique colony of Atlantic cod live. It was at the lake that one of the students landed a 40-pound, four-foot fish.

It's experiences such as these that cement science and Inuktitut together.

Williams is hopeful that camps like this one will have a lasting impact on the kids, hopefully steering them towards a future in the sciences or the environment.

"What we're doing here is planting seeds.

"How many will germinate and what direction they'll take, we'll have to wait and see."