Principal of Attagoyuk school wants to lead the way toward a more enriched Inuit school system
Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services
Pangnirtung (Mar 19/01) - A cash infusion has given new life to a culture camp for Attagoyuk school students.
Principal Donald Mearns said $43,000 from the Kakivak Association is the needed ingredient to make the school's spring camp, where kids are taken on the land, a success.
"From this camp, our dream is to make a more permanent camp situation that we can feed students into year round," Mearns said. "We are aware of the need for an (Inuit) school in Nunavut."
The funding, announced last week, came as a relief.
"We've always had a spring camp but in the last few years it has been very hard to run because of lack of funding," he said.
Now elders and guides will accompany kindergarten to Grade 12 students to the base camp at Nasauya Point, 32 kilometres from Pangnirtung.
Depending on the grade, kids spend one to several days in camp, hunting for caribou and seal and fishing. Kids will also gather caribou blood and turn it over to the Department of Sustainable Development for testing as well as study organic pollutants.
Besides learning traditional skills, students will be able to work on their language skills, both English and Inuktitut.
"Students would benefit from speaking Inuktitut on the land where it is designed to be spoken and speak English in the classroom," he said.
Mearns hopes his school's camp could grow even bigger.
The Nunavut government wants to start an Inuit school similar to ones in Greenland.
"We need to go forward with a bullet-proof proposal," Mearns said and added if the government approached him with a plan to expand Pangnirtung's program, he "would be delighted."
