Darrell Greer
Northern News Services

Rankin Inlet (Feb 20/02) - Not only does the Rankin campus director for Nunavut Arctic College support amendments to Nunavut's Official Language Act, he also sees them as a wonderful opportunity for the college.

Mike Shouldice was one of only two stakeholders to show up for a meeting on the new Language Act with a special government committee in Rankin this past week.

He says there's two areas of importance from the college's perspective -- protection and the workplace.

"A lot of that has to do with being able to provide services in Inuktitut, either the right to work in Inuktitut or in terms of learning in Inuktitut," says Shouldice.

"To do that, you need adequate resources and development time.

"The college would make a great partner in terms of a Centre of Excellence for Language and Culture."

Such an institution is included in the college's five-year plan.

Shouldice says the college already boasts a teacher-education program that can train teachers how to teach in Inuktitut. He says the college could also develop curricula for an interpreter-translator program to focus on specific undertakings for dialects or professions.

"The college already has a lot of in-house expertise. We have the potential to develop strong language materials in a partnership with the departments of Human Resources and Culture, Language, Elders and Youth.

"That's not only for teaching non-Inuit how to speak Inuktitut, but providing job aids for bilingual people and services."

Shouldice says he doesn't view the language initiative as Nunavut's version of Quebec's Bill 101. He says the act is aimed more at providing services for Inuit, than being obstinate.

"In the front of the Language Act, they talk about Inuktitut being invaluable to the culture and that's true. But I suggested to the committee that invaluable is just too weak of a word," he says.

"Inuktitut is inseparable from the culture. You can't have a language act without culture being part of it."