Iqaluit (July 10/06) - There are fans, critics and skeptics of the government’s move to force senior bureaucrats to learn Inuktitut.

Pauloosie Mickiyuk of Sanikiluaq is in favour. “It’s a good idea,” he said. “We’re the ones in the North - they should speak our language.”

He said it’s nice to see the tables turned after so long. For many years Inuit have had to learn English so they can explain themselves to people in the government.

“Some southerners have been in the North for 20 years and haven’t learned Inuktitut,” he complained. “They don’t try ... why should Inuit be the ones learning English?”

In the Kitikmeot community of Kugaaruk, senior administrative officer Elwood Johnston wasn’t sure if the bureaucrats would be able to handle the language training.

“A person from the south, how much Inuktitut are they going to learn in 18 months?” he said. “I’m retiring soon so I’m OK.”

While he emphasized he didn’t want to tell the territory’s politicians how to do their jobs, he wondered if the requirement was really necessary. “Almost all of the world’s business is conducted in English, so I don’t know.”

Janet McGrath, who grew up in Taloyoak and Rankin Inlet, learned to speak Inuktitut as a child. She said learning the language was a pleasure because she was immersed in it while living on the land, for which she had a passion.

“I just loved the sound of people talking, and Inuit culture is so powerful to me,” she wrote in an e-mail interview with Nunavut News/North. “The way of seeing the world is really in the language.”

McGrath, a consultant now living in Ottawa, questions whether bureaucrats pressured to sit in a classroom are going to ever truly appreciate the subtleties of the language and culture.

“I think it’s really easy to learn Inuktitut if you relate to the culture, because the language just makes a lot of sense when you know the way of being,” she explained.

“That’s really hard for new government workers to grasp because they have day jobs with a lot of isolation and paper work. They can’t go out on the land, and often don’t know how to connect to Inuit families or don’t have the basic skills or time to cultivate close relationships... Government can pour out training money, but it might not actually produce the intended result.”