With education the future is nowNorthwest Territories/News North - Monday, July 6, 2015
For the first time in Lutsel K'e history, Grade 12 students have been given the opportunity to study their last year of high school in their home community.
From family, friends and peers to community leaders, almost the entire community came out on graduation day to laud the community's first grads, Tristen Lockhart and Lucas Enzoe, on their accomplishment. They were veritable heroes for a day, for good reason.
Instead of traveling to either Fort Smith or Yellowknife to study their final year, Grade 12 finally came to Lutsel K'e so these two students could learn in the comfort of their own home community. This expansion of curriculum is part of a Department of Education, Culture Employment initiative to equip all schools in the South Slave with the ability to graduate students.
It's a step forward.
The move will help to drive up graduation rates - not only is it more convenient to take Grade 12 at home but watching older youth in the community do well certainly inspires younger students to excel in school as well.
But of course there are trade-offs in expanding Lutsel K'e Dene School to offer Grade 12 rather than letting these students end their educational journey in the territory's population centres.
Community schools simply don't have the same infrastructure as the ones in Yellowknife or Fort Smith. Instead of graduating surrounded by science and computer labs it comes with the territory that smaller community schools have fewer classroom tools. This leaves students with less opportunity to graduate on par with the potential peers they might meet if they ship off to a southern university or Aurora College in Yellowknife after earning their diploma.
This point is not meant to undermine the hard-working Lutsel K'e Dene School staff who are no doubt capable at employing ingenuity to close this gap. In fact, News/North just recently ran a feature on the school's principal, Devin Roberts, who runs an after-school DJ program. Not only is this a creative way to approach music and technology education in one swoop but it's just a cool program that sounds seriously fun and engaging.
That said, ECE could work to expand tele-education along with the number of grade levels NWT's small community schools offer. The Mackenzie Valley fibre optic line is about to give people along the Mackenzie Valley access to faster and cheaper telecommunication tools. Who needs a fully equipped science lab if students might get the opportunity to log into a complex dissection, chat with Chris Hadfield or take a virtual tour of the Royal Canadian Museum in Toronto? Conversely, Northern students could show a classroom in Mexico how to skin a muskrat, drill an ice fishing hole or how to make fur mitts. How cool is that?
The technology to expand the horizons of youth in the communities is arriving, and it's exciting to think about where it could take us.
City council is not charm schoolNunavut/News North - Monday, July 6, 2015
It's a rare opportunity that in a disagreement between multiple people, one has the power to literally shut another up with the press of a button.
It certainly doesn't make for an evenly matched confrontation but Iqaluit Mayor Mary Wilman took advantage of this ability in the latest meeting of city council.
Challenged by Coun. Kenny Bell, the mayor shut off his microphone, removing his opportunity to give any further argument. In fact, she did this multiple times during a back and forth exchange between Bell and Coun. Stephen Mansell.
Interestingly, this debate was over a bylaw that would put a code of conduct in place for councillors that Coun. Terry Dobbin dubbed a "gag order" and Bell argued was targeting himself directly. The code would prevent councillors from speaking to media on any issue without the mayor having first-dibs on commenting, and to largely ensure no statement is publicly issued that could potentially embarrass the city.
In other words, this bylaw would shut off Bell's proverbial microphone, as well.
The rules may apply to all councillors but it's hard not to see how heavy-handedly it covers the mouth of one in particular. Bell has, on multiple occasions, criticized the city and brought attention to policy issues, cracks in infrastructure and administrative problems that plague the city.
But isn't that what he was elected to do?
Ruffling feathers is, or at least should be, an important part of politics. Among his colleagues Bell is certainly the one that stirs the pot but this doesn't exactly make him an anarchist.
Mansell cited Bell's "unprofessional behaviour" as a reason why the city needs a code of conduct but this code is not just about manners. It's about silencing dissent in a clumsy effort to prevent embarrassment to the city.
Bell said he has been accused of breaking from policy by bringing to light issues within the city and speaking with the media. Even in the council chambers, Wilman chided Bell about speaking disrespectfully - while silencing his mic - but left Mansell to speak his piece. This validates Bell's concern that final say on this code of conduct is left to the mayor, with no third-party monitoring to ensure objectivity. Who's to say what is respectful and who's to say how an elected city councillor is to act?
Furthermore, what this code of conduct dictates is that these councillors shall represent the city corporate entity but not the residents.
The people elected Bell to his position and they elected him with a voice. Sure, that voice may be louder than some and more defiant than others. But, the fact is, the people have spoken - or does that microphone have an off-button as well?
Easy to get run over by social media bandwagon Weekend Yellowknifer - Friday, July 3, 2015
As the methods in which people get their news and information continues to evolve, so too must newsrooms and journalists.
Social media adds an interesting wrinkle into the fabric of newspaper production in that most people have instant access to an abundance of unfiltered information.
Observing some of the more contentious stories to brew on social media can make journalists feel as though we're horses with a drive to gallop while reins pull us back. But those reins are restraint and they're absolutely crucial. In order to preserve journalistic integrity in representing the truth as best as we can - being fair and balanced and avoiding becoming a platform for somebody to air dirty laundry - we sometimes must watch the social media train pass us by, even as it picks up speed.
But sometimes that train is so loud and flashy and is running right through the centre of the city and we would be remiss to ignore it.
Such was the case with former City of Yellowknife employee Lauren Mercredi's viral Facebook post that accused another city employee of sexual harassment and city employees and administration of ignoring it.
Her post, which she set to 'public' on her Facebook timeline, walked through her side of a story that if taken at face value has grave implications for the city and its handling of serious concerns. Included in the post were pictures of her home and vehicles vandalized with spray-paint, that she suggested were vandalized by the same person who had sexually harassed her.
Within days, the post was shared more than 850 times.
The trouble was, after reaching out to Mercredi multiple times, she declined any further comment including physical proof that corroborated her claims. And the city declined comment, calling it a personnel matter.
Covering the story based solely on her Facebook post would be irresponsible journalism because of the lack of corroboration of serious allegations - but the information was already spreading at a velocity that couldn't be ignored.
It was the popularity of the post along with the fact that city council and administration reacted to it with a meeting that eventually drove us to report on it under the front-page headline "Facebook accusations against city go viral," and the story headline of "City investigates after Facebook post claims sexual harassment."
We followed every thread of the story we could, although most were very short - city: mum; Mercredi: mum; RCMP: mum, although just last week charges related to the vandalism were laid against a youth.
City councillor Bob Brooks commented on Mercredi's Facebook post that he would look into it, after which he didn't attend the city meeting about it because of his day job.
He then deferred to a statement released by deputy mayor Linda Bussey who declined to comment due to the situation being a personnel matter. Coun. Niels Konge told Yellowknifer after the meeting the city's procedures were followed to a 'T'.
Thus, we found our dead end.
Reacting to the murmur of social media is done on a case-by-case basis.
Facebook is becoming just as in-the-public-domain as a person yelling things on the street and its users are just as susceptible to media coverage, should we deem that it is warranted. No doubt, Mercredi was surprised at just how quickly her allegations caught fire but that is the risk of posting provocative messages on Facebook.
Although the related charges do lend some credence to her claims, her story at present remains entirely unsubstantiated. If further threads to this story reveal themselves, we remain committed to our journalistic responsibility of representing the facts to the best of our ability.
Time to break from tug-of-warDeh Cho Drum - Thursday, July 2, 2015
During the Dehcho Annual Assembly from June 24 to 26, it became apparent that many communities who are a part of the Dehcho Process are disheartened by what they see as a downloading of responsibility from the federal government to the GNWT.
The assembly drafted a motion to take a hiatus from the Dehcho Process altogether. That motion has yet to be voted on but will likely be determined next week. It follows months of rocky negotiations between the Dehcho First Nations and the territorial and federal governments, in which talks broke down completely before shakily resuming earlier in June.
One can hardly blame participating First Nations for considering calling a halt to the entire process until federal and territorial elections finish and the political landscape potentially changes. Over the course of the process, the government has proved itself unwilling to compromise.
At times, the negotiations hardly seemed amicable at all, with the First Nations staving off a strong-armed agreement with the only tool they have: delay.
It reflects badly on the government to dig in its heels and refuse to budge on a negotiation process that has been going on for so long.
It does not help that the process is unique to the Dehcho - a region that already has a treaty. This comprehensive claims process cannot be negotiated in the same way as other jurisdictions without a treaty.
The issues go deep. The Dehcho originally rejected the comprehensive claims process in 1996, refuting the idea that they could only select a certain amount of surface rights and less subsurface rights.
With the original treaty having been made with the Crown, some members of the Dehcho Process also feel process negotiations should not even involve the Canadian government, but rather should be with the Queen.
Whether or not that is the case, currently the federal government has taken the lead. It was an even more bitter pill to swallow, then, when they offloaded that responsibility to the GNWT during devolution.
All parties need to get back to the original intent of the Dehcho Process, but none more so than the federal and provincial governments. The Dehcho First Nations, like all nations, deserve to be dealt with in good faith and in a respectful manner.
Airing grievences anonymouslyInuvik Drum - Thursday, July 2, 2015
Earlier this week, I came across Inuvik Confessions - a Facebook page where residents are invited to submit their thoughts anonymously. With more than 1,000 followers, my curiosity was piqued. I wondered where the idea came from and what the attraction was since people seem to visit the page religiously. When I tracked down its elusive administrator, I got my answer.
"I wanted a place for the people of Inuvik to anonymously let their opinions and confessions out without being attacked," they told me. "A place for them to say things they wouldn't say in real life ... and the confessions came rolling in."
Those familiar with the page will know it is simultaneously shocking, amusing, heartbreaking and inspirational. It is a electronic psyche, updating every few hours.
This trend of "confessional media" has taken off in the last few years. Popular blog Thought Catalogue receives personal articles on a variety of topics and calls itself "a raw document" of human experience. Its motto? "All thinking is relevant."
Some have argued this desire to publicize the private - to expose ourselves and others - is evidence of a degenerating and narcissistic society, but the concept itself isn't new.
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum under a thick layer of volcanic ash, the communities were perfectly preserved at moment of impact. What historians found when they excavated the site were hundreds of phrases written onto the walls of town buildings.
Scanning through a database of the graffiti, the etchings are far removed from the musings of Cicero and Plutarch - instead, they lament on unrequited love, poor sanitation, lousy inn service, rotten food and sexual trysts - and Rome was said to be the height of Western civilization.
Media platforms like Inuvik Confessions may not be an intellectual debate on political reform, but in this way, they are perhaps more valuable. Instead, it is a fluid record of thoughts, feelings and everyday occurrences - insight into what makes a community tick, what they value, what they fear, what they love moment to moment - and that contains more potential for change than any doctoral thesis.
We are moving away from looking at history through the lens of the "great man" and instead placing emphasis on the individual experience. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court made the decision to legalize gay marriage nationwide and some will no doubt argue this could not have happened without the crushing force of today's social media campaigns - more specifically, the thousands of stories shared online by couples pushing for change.
Studies have shown people dedicate 15 times more of their attention to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter than traditional news channels. Our opinions are driven by what goes "viral" and we get information from what our peers share.
Inuvik Confessions may be a micro-community and its content questionable, but those idiosyncrasies are part of a much larger purpose: writing the first draft of local history, one Facebook post at a time.
Can't-do governmentYellowknifer - Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Lands Minister Robert C. McLeod must have missed the latest grim news coming from Statistics Canada.
If he had read it, perhaps he might not have been so quick to put the kibosh on the Yellowknife Motocross Association's plan to resurrect a decades-old stock car race track next to the Ingraham Trail. The track is still there, if a little overgrown, as is the will to bring it back to life. The association boasts 80 motorsports enthusiasts, all anxious for track car racing to return to Yellowknife.
What's lacking is the prescience of mind among government officials to consider what such a facility adds to the enjoyment of living here, and that just maybe, it might encourage some people to stay here instead of heading south as many others have done in recent years.
So instead of a group of people rolling up their sleeves and spending the summer breathing new life into a once popular city mainstay, they will sit on their hands and contemplate their options. The race track, meanwhile, will continue festering in the forest, neither used nor cleaned up.
This is the fruit cultivated by the territory's can't do government. No 9-1-1 emergency phone service in Yellowknife?
Can't do it, Minister McLeod said in 2009 - not until other little communities like Colville Lake and Sachs Harbour can have it too. They're talking about it now but not until yet another study is finished. The GNWT should forgive people if they're not holding their breath.
Can't reach an agreement with the city on who will pay for lifeguards at Long Lake beach? Get rid of them, until a child drowns. Then spend more money on studies and arrange a milquetoast compromise on "beach attendants" that satisfies the lawyers and insurance companies but not the people who actually use the beach.
Denying people permission to rebuild a long-forgotten race track in the woods, by itself, is no great act of tyranny.
But the more the GNWT throws its hand up and says, "No," while providing no coherent rationale other than, "because those are the rules," the more it sends a message to its citizens that they are not welcome here. People who don't feel welcome typically don't stay.
It's the GNWT's stated goal to increase the population by 2,000 people but nearly 500 people have left in just the past year alone.
Building race tracks to growth instead of throwing up roadblocks - that should be the mantra being uttered by every GNWT minister and bureaucrat if it is at all serious about population growth. Alas, its addiction to red tape is just one more reason to leave.
Paying the price for government arroganceEditorial Comment by Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News - Wednesday, July 1, 2015
By the time you're reading this, I will be recharging my batteries and enjoying life on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.
I leave Kivalliq News in the more-than-capable hands of Michele LeTourneau, who is over from Iqaluit to allow me to take my annual sojourn to the East Coast.
It's hard to believe I'm at the midway point of my 17th year at the helm of this newspaper.
And I have now lived in Rankin Inlet longer than any other place in my life, including my formative years in Port Morien, N.S.
Rankin is my home!
It's been an awesome ride and I'm sure year 18 will be just as fulfilling.
The past year has been an eventful one in the Kivalliq.
We have met, and continue to meet, many challenges, while still struggling with others.
Keeping more of our youth in school continues to be a struggle, as does getting more of them to enrol in academic studies and carry on to post-secondary education.
No better an example of the struggle can be portrayed than what we see in Arviat.
The community's continued battle with attendance woes, and having so few register for academic classes in the upcoming school year, has led the Government of Nunavut (GN) to slash 12.5 positions from the teaching ranks for the 2015-16 scholastic year.
In that regard, the Nunavut Trades Training Centre in Rankin continues to be a blessing, as more and more students earn their qualifications and enter the workforce in well-paying jobs.
Ditto the job being done by students and instructors at Nunavut Arctic College's Kivalliq campus, where the number of graduates finding jobs continues to increase, especially those from management studies.
Unfortunately, and sadly, the Kivalliq continues to struggle with the same monster the rest of Nunavut has been unable to tame in suicide.
It's fair to say, at this point in time, the initiatives undertaken by the GN to try to curb the number of those taking their own lives have met with dismal failure.
In fact, the one light of hope, is that grassroots initiatives such as those led by the Coral Harbour-based Angutiit Makigiangninga (Men Rising Up) men's group, and Kivalliq Counselling and Support Services through the Pulaarvik Kablu Friendship Centre in Rankin have been more effective than the big-budgeted initiatives undertaken by our government.
The successes of these organizations, although still baby steps towards ultimate success, offer hope for more victories moving forward.
Also quite saddening for me -- especially during a year that should have moved us closer together through the exceptional work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission -- is how often racism reared its ugly head in our region.
I still, however, have enough faith in Kivalliq to firmly believe the day will arrive when we shall overcome and leave that ugliness behind us once and for all!
I can't wait to see what the upcoming year brings us in the Kivalliq.
But, until then, my sincere wishes for everyone to enjoy their summers and I'll see you all in August.
