Sinew project spawns successful sewing
Darrell Greer
Northern News Services
Rankin Inlet (Apr 04/01) - Sometimes a great idea can turn out to be so successful it becomes difficult to accommodate everyone wanting to take part.
Such was the dilemma facing the Kivalliq Inuit Association (KIA) and its wildly successful Reclaiming our Sinew program.
The program was launched this past year in partnership with Maani Ulujuk middle school, which provided space for the traditional part of the program to be taught.
Program participants spent their mornings with elders, being taught traditional animal skin preparation and sewing skills, and afternoons developing their literacy skills through Arctic College.
This year's program brought an even greater response and suddenly the KIA found itself in a difficult situation.
KIA representative Bernadette Dean says program co-ordinators were saddened by the prospect of having to turn anyone away who wanted to be in the course and became determined to come up with an alternative to the daytime program.
"The program became so popular, we had more than 50 women sign up," says Dean.
"We had to come up with something to accommodate them all and the idea of a four-week sewing program that could be held in the evenings or on the weekends began to take shape.
"We had so many women who were interested in the program, but couldn't attend because of their jobs or obligations to their families during the day.
"We had to come up with something to get them taking part and this was it."
The sewing program received support and funding from Nunavut Tunngavik's Harvester's Support program.
Dean says all one has to do is look at the end result to see the sewing program has been a success.
"Everyone who took part seemed to have such a good time, and you can tell by how beautiful everything they made is that they really learned a lot during the four weeks."
