Sharing steps to strong identity
Program co-ordinator teaches that history, language, home life, school and community all play roles
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Published Monday, February 2, 2015
IKALUKTUTIAK/CAMBRIDGE BAY
Julia Ogina's work is intensely rooted in the success of Inuit. Ogina is one of two program co-ordinators with the Kitikmeot Inuit Association (KIA).
Julia Ogina, one of two program co-ordinators for the Kitikmeot Inuit Association, presents the organization's language framework at the Nunavut Roundtable for Poverty Reduction held in Iqaluit in late November. - photo courtesy of Department of Health, GN |
Her speech is quick and pointed as she weaves together the variety of areas that comprise Inuit life, departing from a few essentials, such as language and the family unit. Knowledge of the language and strong relationships work together to build a healthy society.
The Inuit, she said, need a foundation of understanding, a baseline understanding, of Inuit history, "from nomadic Inuit to white man coming to our camps and bringing a life different than we were used to, with different methods, even clothing and food, cigarettes."
A great disconnect occurred as a result of the family being broken up "when people were taken to residential schools and hospitals." These events led to a loss of parenting skills and a loss of language.
"It was a different way of placing values and beliefs, a different way of thinking," Ogina said.
In daily life, this can be seen in how people with children are told "learning in the school is more important than what they are learning at home."
But the fragmentation can be turned around, she said, with more emphasis in the pre-school years from infant to age five, those foundational years, with parents understanding that the potential of their children can be developed with learning Inuinnaqtun and Inuktitut, and their connections with parents and grandparents can be strengthened.
"When we talk about empowering the family unit, we're talking about giving tools at the family level," said Ogina, adding empowering parents means developing leadership in parents.
By re-rooting children in their language and in their cultural values, while raising them to be independent and flourishing in today's inevitable job market, they can be successful participants.
"Young people say their number one priority is, 'Speak my language, know my identity. I want that pride.'"
With a strong identity it is possible to flourish in a world where to be able to survive you need to have a job, a house, food, a snow machine, a boat or an ATV, she says.
"Kids need to be going to school."
Ogina notes that, for quite some time, groups of people met separately in discussion. The groups were made up of youth, young adults, the next generation of elders, and elders, as well as men and women. But these separations only served to keep Inuit society fragmented. Her work now involves gathering all the groups together and nurturing the links between them.
Language is one such essential link and, for the Kitikmeot region, the Kitikmeot Inuit Association's language framework is a useful tool. This is what she presented at the Nunavut Roundtable for Poverty Reduction in Iqaluit in late November. The other regions want to learn more, and Ogina plans to make a presentation at the Inuugatta conference in Iqaluit from Feb. 24 to 26.
What she sees in the Kitikmeot, said Ogina, is "people want to re-learn the language or enhance their level of fluency. We recognize the fact that young families need language courses."
Sarah Jancke, Ogina's work-mate in programming, has organized one-week basic language courses in each Kitikmeot community. The courses are taking place now.
"They've been really popular. We've had more applications than we have capacity for. The desire is there," Ogina said.
Another area Ogina focuses on is camps, where all the generations gather to speak the language while reconnecting in key cultural activities that teach all-important values from elders to youth.
"People are becoming more engaged. They desire to know who they are," she says.
Ogina says her work is born from looking at the issues in a holistic way. But getting to that point wasn't so easy.
She recognizes that "healing was one of those topics that never gets talked about."
"People want to meet. Before there was just a handful of people, and groups in isolation. But they all make up the family unit and the community."
She says, "I am also a survivor of family violence. I went through the healing process for that. When one has been hurt and you work on the healing journey, you see the holistic nature of life."
