CORAL HARBOUR - Three preschool staff members from Coral Harbour are getting a firsthand look at how they do things in the south this week.

Tony Eetuk drum dances during a culture night held in Coral Harbour this past week. - photo courtesy of Noel Kaludjak

The three Coral women are in Canterville, Man., for the second part of an exchange program that saw the same number of preschool workers from Manitoba visit their community this past week.

Attiqtait Preschool manager Celina Eetuk said the exchange was arranged through the Aboriginal Head Start Preschool Program.

She said a special evening was held in Coral to introduce the Manitoba visitors to the Inuit lifestyle.

"This was the first time these ladies had ever visited a Nunavut community," said Eetuk.

"We wanted to hold a special event to promote our Inuit culture, language and traditions, and they were pretty excited about it because they'd never seen any of it before.

"We called it a culture night, and we had a fashion show, throat singers, drum dancers, ajaaja and square dancers.

"We also had a few dice games and we gave away, as prizes, two pairs of sealskin mitts and a new pair

of female-sized kamiik."

Eecherk said this is the first time the Coral Attiqtait Preschool has been involved in an exchange program.

She said she is making the trip to Manitoba, along with fellow staff members Molly Angootealuk and Elsie Harron.

"We're all very excited about being given the opportunity to see how they run a preschool program in the south because, I'm sure, it's totally different from our programs in the North.

"We've never seen a preschool program being operated outside of Nunavut, so it should be a very interesting experience.

"We want to learn from the experience and, hopefully, be able to bring back some ideas to our program in Coral.

"I'm sure some things they do would be a benefit to our community's preschool program."

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