Coming home for summer
Trained students return home

Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 02/99) - Pretty much every community has them: young adults with big plans for life who achieve dreams step by step.

Often, their goals mean moving from the community for education -- something that can be an unsettling experience when young.

For Kugluktuk's Kevin Niptanatiak, pursuing his goals meant moving to Yellowknife to attend high school.

"I boarded with a family," he said.

"It was pretty rough, but I adjusted after a while."

He graduated in 1993 and then went to the University of Regina. In his first year, he focused on environmental engineering. His second year involved more math and physics.

A shift in his plans came in 1995, when he applied for basic training with the RCMP and was accepted.

"Being native and from the North, I thought a person like me couldn't be accepted into the national police force," he said.

His first posting was in Iqaluit, where he spent about one year before deciding that this career path was not for him.

Now back in the hamlet as the financial officer, Niptanatiak said he aspires to "move up the financial management ladder."

Fort Good Hope's community resources development officer, Darlene Barnaby, is another example of someone who has returned to her home community for the summer.

After taking some upgrading courses in Fort Smith last year, the 26-year-old is set to take a two-year course in computer engineering in September.

The first year of the program will be in Yellowknife and the second year will be in Edmonton.

When Barnaby was a teenager she, like many others from Fort Good Hope, went to Yellowknife for high school and only knew a couple other people as part of an immediate support network.

In Inuvik, Northern Beattie is an example of a fresh graduate who went to the university of Alberta to take native studies and anthropology before returning to the community to work for the Joint Fisheries Management Board.

Some of the work he has done this summer includes "assessing the aquatic life in Boot Lake" and determining the impact of the nearby Jimmy Adams Peace Park.

"I think I will return to Inuvik once I get my degree," Beattie said.

"I've already got people I know here and I think work shouldn't be too hard to find."

Because most students fail to pursue post- secondary education, Joey Amos, who is working with Beattie this summer, called Beattie a "role model for other students as an example of someone who has got a dream and a goal."