Applicant discovered programs option
Money could be used for elders to pass on cultural knowledge
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Published Monday, October 20, 2014
NUNAVUT
Former MLA Nancy Karetak-Lindell received a letter informing her of the $3,000 personal education credit in May.
She misplaced it and, after struggling to navigate the unco-operative website, she found a toll-free number and left a message.
She received a replacement document and sought help from Arctic College registrar's office in Iqaluit to fill it out. Once she receives the second form from Crawford Class Action Services - the company appointed to handle the IRS personal education credit process - she's to take it back to Arctic College for them to fill out. Then, and only then, approval for her son's program will be pending, and she can only hope all that happens by Dec. 1.
"He was already familiar with the process, thank goodness," said Karetak-Lindell of the college employee, whose job it really wasn't to help her fill out that initial 20-page form.
But Karetak-Lindell would soon learn that, although her experience was relatively painless, and although she happened to have a son who could use her credit, she didn't have the whole picture.
An article she happened upon in mid-October detailed some of the options claimants could use the credit for, such as pooling credits for language and cultural programs.
"If I had this information four months ago ... People could pool their money together and they could do a camping trip together with their children and grandchildren. If they don't have a cabin or their own boat, they could pay someone to take them out for even a week, pass on cultural knowledge, talk with their children and grandchildren about what it was like to be in residential school," said Karetak-Lindell.
She adds another option could have been going through the Pulaarvik Kablu Friendship Centre in Rankin Inlet, for example.
"Noel Kaludjak is always looking for funding to do on-the-land camps for families, or young people or men or women. An organization like that could have been the co-ordinator. A lot of us don't have the means to fill out those forms and figure out the right things to do. He's trained as a counsellor. He attended all those residential school events in Winnipeg. What an ideal way that he could have helped people."
However, Karetak-Lindell says she doesn't even know if those sorts of activities would have qualified, because programs have to be government-approved.
"It's very rigid, which is exactly what residential school was. It's very ironic that they developed a program where the choices are limited and they dictate how, when, where and who."
As lawyer Stephen Cooper said, "they say if you want to see what the approved institution and programs are, go on the Internet? Are you kidding me?"
In fact, the Crawford website doesn't load most pages, although this reporter made numerous attempts to access information.
Karetak-Lindell posted an informative article on her Facebook page.
"One of my friends writes down. '$21,000 right there from our family that's not going to be used.' And that really made me sad and so frustrated."
Karetak-Lindell says she takes full responsibility for not researching enough.
"I didn't think of what we could do with it. If not for me, for other people. Out of eight children from my parents, seven of us went to residential school. Seven times three, that's $21,000 right there, too. Some of us are passing it on but, having said that, my sister, none of her children are old enough to go to post-secondary. They're in high school."
The government concept of immediate family - one generation up, one generation down, and extended now to grandchildren - doesn't honour the Inuit concept of family at all, which considers a niece or a great-niece the same as a grandchild, for example, said Karetak-Lindell.
