Inuit elders' knowledge comes south to children
Meeka Mike spreads traditional knowledge to Yellowknife schools
Candace Thomson
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, October 16, 2013
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
There are 18 different types of ice, wolves always bite to the right and polar bears have bathrooms, living rooms and bedrooms inside their dens.
Meeka Mike, an educator, climate change adviser and hunter from Pangnirtung, has been visiting schools in the south in hopes of teaching children some of the knowledge she gained from her Inuit elders on life in the Arctic. Mike visited Yellowknife Education District No. 1 schools last week, including Sir John Franklin High School on Wednesday, where she is pictured above. - Candace Thomson/NNSL photo |
This is knowledge the Northern Studies class of Sir John Franklin High school is now privy to thanks to a visit last week from Meeka Mike, director of the Tusaqtuut Core Indigenous Knowledge Project based out of Iqaluit.
"These are things you're able to learn from the elders that we haven't yet been able to put into a textbook," Mike told the intrigued class of about 30 students.
Tusaqtuut is a charitable project that began in 2007 after a group of Inuit elders expressed a desire to spread their knowledge to younger generations both inside and outside Inuit culture in a single document. To give an idea of the size of the document, so far, they have 84 pages on polar bears alone, said Mike.
They have no government funding but have received donations from organizations such as the Small Change Fund, which donated $5,500 so Mike could buy laptops to process the project's huge amount of data.
Her presentation at Sir John taught the students traditional knowledge about Arctic life, including how and why animals get their names, how to notice the progression of the seasons and how climate change is affecting the environment.
"This is biological and scientific information. If you're in school taking science and biology, what the elders have to share is for your own future," she said.
Mike asked the students questions to get a sense of how much they knew about living on the land and when she asked how many went fishing, there was a good show of hands. After that, Mike taught the students the various Inuktitut names there are for Arctic char, all based on physical and developmental traits the fish possess.
"You respect their traits just like you do with your peers, that's how our language is structured," Mike said.
After the presentation, she answered questions about her own experiences hunting caribou on the land to provide for her family, and helped a few students practice their Inuktitut, although most were shy.
Reaching out to southern students is a gesture she describes as being quite different for her culture.
"We're teaching this for our young people, who we believe should know the knowledge like our ancestors share it," she explained. "What's different now is we're sharing beyond our own families and cultures. In indigenous cultures your responsibility is your family."
