Ottawa (Oct 09/06) - It's a good way to make friends and influence people: invite them over, then feed and entertain them.

At a meeting of the House of Commons' aboriginal affairs committee last month, Nunavut Sivuniksavut (NS) - an Ottawa-based college preparatory program for Inuit - extended an invitation to the committee's twelve members. On Tuesday, 10 of those MPs showed up for a visit.

"It was a dandy," enthused NS coordinator Morley Hanson. "I'm not sure what they had in mind other than they wanted to take the ideas we were presenting and put a face on them."

MPs were paired with students and given a tour of NS's campus "although it only takes 30 seconds to walk around the place," Hanson said. Students chatted up the MPs and answered questions.

After that, the students performed some songs for their guests and served up some country food.

"They seemed to be digging in," Hanson said. "It's pretty hard not to like smoked char and char chowder and bannock and caribou. I didn't see too many trying the muktuk (though)."

First-year student Ulaaju Peter said the visit was good news for NS and for Nunavut as a whole because students are drawn from all regions of the territory.

Megan Pizzo-Lyall, also a first-year student, said MPs were struck by the gender imbalance at the school, where 17 students are female and five are male.

"I made a little bit of a joke and said 'because we're smarter,'" Pizzo-Lyall said. But she went on to explain that men are traditionally more connected to the land and more hesitant to leave the provider's role.

The country food was also a hit, Pizzo-Lyall said. Committee chair Colin Mayes, a Conservative representing Okanagan-Shuswap, BC, "came right up to the where we had the muktuk cut up and he started eating it and the first thing he said was 'Oh, it's chewy.'"

Part of the reason behind the committee appearance was to make the case for a stable source of federal funding for Nunavut Sivuniksavut. Hanson isn't sure if Tuesday's visit will mean more money for the program, but thinks it can't hurt when the MPs sit down to write their report to Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Jim Prentice.

"This is one more way for MPs to get educated about what they're dealing with," Hanson said.