Iglulik (June 16/03) - Her son is currently suffering with a mysterious allergy, so the principal of Attaguttaaluk School in Iglulik, Betty Ann Thunderchild, and her family are heading south.

But she vows to return, and says that the memories of the land, her 330 students at the school, and the art of Iglulik will always stay with her.

News/North: Tell me about what you've been doing at the school, what you've achieved.

Betty Ann Thunderchild: Basically this year we've emphasized getting discipline set up and behaviour under control. We've worked on enhancing our breakfast program.

They've had a breakfast program here for a while. They do hot breakfasts for the kids four mornings a week. Other mornings when they're not getting a hot breakfast, every kid in the school got either crackers or pilot biscuits, Cheez Whiz or peanut butter. So everybody in the morning gets food.

We enhanced that through a grant we got through the Breakfast for Learning program. So we've been buying apples, oranges, bananas, celery and carrots. So there's enough food to make sure everybody's eating well and ready to learn.

N/N: Tell me about your time in the North.

BT: We love it. This is our first time up here. I came up with three kids. We all love it. My 17-year-old has become addicted to going out on the land and hunting. My daughter is learning the language, and is out non-stop, especially with the 24 hours of daylight.

We had no problems with the winter weather. We're from Northern Saskatchewan, so we found the cold quite nice ... because it was a dry cold!

It's taken a little time to adjust to the 24 hours of daylight. You no longer use the line: "It's dark out Mary, you have to go to bed." That doesn't work at all up here.

N/N: Tell me about your career, how you got into teaching.

BT: I've been teaching since 1976. I started in Ontario. And then I got married to a native man from Saskatchewan, so we moved out there when we had kids. So we lived in Saskatchewan for 20 years.

I had always wanted to work in the North. I grew up in Northern Ontario, and my brother used to work out of Moose Factory and Moosonee and he would get to fly North to all the remote communities to do electronic stuff.

I just envied him to no end. So the job appeared magically on the Internet. And we were up here 10 days later.

N/N: Tell me about your impressions of the North when you first came up. What did you think of the community?

BT: I thought it was quite nice. I'd worked a lot on the reserves in Northern Saskatchewan. And one of the things that I found was that the language and culture is so much alive up here.

Iglulik is a marvel. Everybody here speaks Inuktitut. Absolutely everybody. Their language is very much alive.

In the Cree communities that I've been working with in the past, a lot of it has been trying to bring back the language. They've lost so much. Here it's spoken and written. It was just heartening to see it can be done.

I've gotten the same experience out of education in the North. I'm very impressed with the directions they've chosen.

[Pause]. Oh no, it's snowing.

N/N: It's snowing there right now?

BT: This is going to make it difficult for them to drive. One of our classes is going out on the land. We do quite a few land trips in the spring. It's part of the educational system here. It's understood: everyone gets to go out on the land. We did it in the fall. Our teachers took them out and talked about ice safety. Now they're getting the opportunity to fish. They love it.

N/N: Do you have any specific memories that stand out for you from your time in Iglulik?

BT: The way we were accepted into the community. Everybody worked so hard to make us feel at home.

And in the school, one of the things we've been working on is making sure everyone has a voice. We have a lot of teachers from the south. And -- let me try and say this in a positive way -- Southerners tend to be very outspoken.

But the Inuk way is not to be very vocal. They do a lot of listening. They share their experiences more cautiously. They're very generous among themselves. But they need encouragement to be able to share their experiences with people who they're not sure will understand. So, we've been encouraging that. The teachers here are just wonderful.