IKALUKTUTIAK/CAMBRIDGE BAY - Students in the human services program in Nunavut Arctic College in Cambridge Bay took a trip to Norway last month to present a workshop called Me - My People: Keeping Culture in Counselling.

Teacher Kevin McGill said the trip was the first step in developing a long-term connection between Nunavut Arctic College and Finnmark University College in Alta, Norway.

"A big outcome of this is Finnmark University College is proposing an ongoing relationship with Nunavut Arctic College," said McGill. "We're looking to sign an official agreement over the next number of months, which will start with an exchange of faculty and research people. Hopefully as early as next year we'll be able to have a reciprocal visit and the end result will be student exchanges."

McGill said one of the goals of the trip was to learn about the Sami culture and their approach to social work as the Sami have dealt with many of the same issues Inuit are dealing with today.

"They have gone through a number of the same kinds of assimilation pressures, residential schools, learning other languages so they're a great mirror for students who are going into community development and social services to see how other people quite similar to them have gone through this process," he said. "They are reclaiming their language and their traditions and yet moving forward in terms of economics and being part of modern Norway as well."

The group visited the regional Sami capitals of Kautokeino and Korasjok on the trip and groups from Finnmark University College, Sami University College and Nunavut Arctic College participated in workshops together.

McGill said the groups learned about each other's cultures and a consistent theme was the role of community in keeping a community healthy.

"This sense of community being responsible for its own health," he said. "It's one of the aspects that was lost through things like residential schools."

Student Linda Uvilluk said the group learned a lot about how Sami people do social work.

"Our main goal was to find out how the Sami people do their counselling and we gave a presentation and we sang and did a drum dance for the students of Sami College," she said. "We learned a lot about how they do their social work, their youth programs.

"It's kind of similar, but since they're in a big city they have these youth centres."

Uvilluk said involving a client's family was a big part of the process for the Sami.

"Each client had a social worker and after a few months they would bring the client's family into that environment and they are assessed and they are taught how to deal with the client's frustration and they learn how to deal with it," she said. "They would learn and then go back home."

She said she would like to try to make office space in Nunavut a more home-like environment for people visiting social workers in the territory.

"Most of the social work offices have grey walls or no colours at all. Once we get our own office, we would like to make it more homey, with everyday stuff so the clients feel more comfortable and at home because right now they're more office-type rooms."