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IQALUIT - An educator for the past 24 years, Eva Noah has long had a fascination with her culture and the traditional skills of her elders.

As an instructor with Nunavut Arctic College, she is guiding students through a cultural journey to uncover a realm of knowledge that is not often recorded.

Educator Eva Noah with her granddaughter Christina Papatsie. - photo courtesy of Lan Hu

Through the educational cultural studies course, students in the Nunavut Teachers Education Program are tasked with making cultural items under the direction of elders who guide them through each step of the process.

"In a four-year program, they have to make six pieces of cultural items, and on top of that, they have to research them," said Noah. "I tell them the elders' knowledge is never written by our own people."

"First, they're learning the skills," she added, "Then they have more pride in themselves and they learn vocabulary that isn't used anymore."

Noah said most of her students, being mainly women, tend to choose to make articles of clothing such as parkas, sealskin pants, kamiit and amautiit.

"I've had two male students in the last three years and they've both, at different times, made the harpoon," she said. Raised in Baker Lake, Noah grew up watching her mother sew all of the family's clothes.

"I grew up in a summer camp until I was 17," she said. "We always went to Baker Lake for school and soon as school was over, we'd be out on the land."

Noah has been working for the college for the last seven years, but has also spent many years teaching junior and senior high school, as well as elementary, and has served as a vice principal.

As a teacher, she would like to see more learning materials produced in Inuktitut.

"I used to spend a lot of time translating and making Inuktitut materials," she said. "If you're teaching social studies, you have to translate everything. If you're teaching science, you have to translate everything."

Noah said she would also like to encourage more students to take the Northern Studies program in high school, where they would learn about their history, culture, language and politics.

"That gives the students more pride in themselves and they know what they want after they take that course," she said. "They really learn where they came from and then they seem to be grounded."