NUNAVUT
It begins in the home, it's more complicated than we thought, and there aren't enough teachers. These are the reasons the Department of Education has given for not meeting its commitment to provide a bilingual education to all Nunavut students.

Former Nunavut languages commissioner Sandra Inutiq will be submitting written comments to the legislative assembly's Standing Committee on Legislation, objecting to proposed amendments to the Nunavut Education Act that will see the rights of Inuit children to a bilingual education diminished. - Michele LeTourneau/NNSL photo

Former Nunavut languages commissioner Sandra Inutiq has heard enough excuses.

"So now we have two consecutive governments who haven't done anything to increase teachers and just general capacity to deliver Inuit-language instruction," Inutiq, a lawyer and mother, told Nunavut News/North.

"That's the whole reason why the land claims took place, because we were losing our language ... I think that's part of the whole land claims process. Once you have the language, the culture is strong," Paul Quassa stated in 2003.

The regulations accompanying the 2008 Education Act require a bilingual education - an Inuit language and either English or French - for all students by the 2019-20 school year.

Quassa, the education minister, was a member of the special committee to review the Education Act, which presented its report to the legislative assembly in Nov. 2015.

"The special committee wishes to emphasize that the delivery of an education system is too important to be driven primarily by political idealism," the report stated.

The report calls the dates in the Education Act a "target" and the Department of Education has taken to calling the dates an "implementation deadline." The Government of Nunavut wants to change the deadline to 2029-30 for bilingual education to Grade 9, with no plans for Grades 10 to 12.

For Inutiq, pushing back the date robs today's Inuit children of the right to a bilingual education.

"The political will has to be there, number one. Then, once you commit that you take language protection seriously, there has to be a sustained, aggressive effort to start reversing the trend of language loss ... To train Inuit-language instructors, to create the curriculum, to create the material," said Inutiq.

"Right now, we have enough of a language base that, in a short period of time, we have a better chance of reversing language loss. If we start acting right now."

Ed Picco, who was education minister in 2008, stated there were 246 teachers then. The latest language commissioner's report states there are now 201, says Inutiq.

Instruction in Inuktitut was a goal that can be traced back to the 1970s and earlier.

The Nunavut Teacher Education Program began in 1979 as the Eastern Arctic Teacher Education Program. Mick Mallon, a linguist and long-time champion of Inuktitut, recalls those days, as he, along with David Wilman, created the program for the Government of the Northwest Territories.

The 84-year-old -who devised a system of instruction for Inuktitut as a second language, with materials still being used in the classrooms of Arctic College - is in a fury, saying he's kept his mouth shut for too long.

"The most important thing the government can do is to try and prevent that disaster (of language loss)," he said, citing numerous tragic examples worldwide of such loss.

"Which means, in my opinion, every person involved with language, at whatever level, that's how you judge their performance - you ask: what have you done to stave off the disaster that's just over the horizon."

Mallon says language loss creeps up on you.

"Fifty years ago - or whenever it was that Wilman and I started the (teacher education) program - there was no problem at all getting Inuktitut-speaking students. They'd come flocking at us. It was a complete success. We got a BEd going with McGill University. We were committed.

"Now the language is leaking away."

York University's Ian Martin widely distributed a document entitled Inuit Language Loss in Nunavut: Analysis, Forecast, and Recommendations even as the proposed amendments to the Education Act were being tabled in the Legislative Assembly earlier this month.

"Without intensive efforts by the territorial and federal governments, Inuktut will be 'definitely endangered' by 2051," states Martin.

Definitely endangered is a UNESCO evaluation: "the language is no longer being used at home by all children; parents are preferring to use another language."

That's just two steps away from extinction.

"If the home language loss rate of Inuktut is 12 per cent per decade, then, by 2051, a mere 34 years from now, the Inuit language will be spoken at home by only four per cent of Inuit in Nunavut," states Martin.

He also states that rather than being part of the solution, schools are part of the problem - with a shortfall of 306 Inuktut-speaking Inuit teachers.

Martin has worked extensively in Nunavut, including serving as a consultant on bilingual education on the Conciliator's Report on the Nunavut Project written by Justice Thomas Berger in 2006. Berger is only one of many who, over several decades, have warned of the dire need for bilingual schooling for Inuit children.

There is one telling incident Mallon recalls from earlier days.

"We left, we left, we left," he says, referring to himself and Wilman, "And other people took over the jobs. There's a guy who David hired to come in, he's still there, and his commitment to the language ... Let me put it this way, I came back (on contract) and was working away, and this gentleman came in and said, 'Are you still playing around with that stuff?'"

Martin states: "My personal belief is that the vested interests of non-Inuit teachers and administrators trumped the land-claim mandated rights of Inuit. In the years following 2008 there have been no major efforts to increase the numbers of Inuit teachers; meanwhile the reduction of the use of Inuktut in the schools and the absence of Inuktut as a language of instruction has reinforced an English-dominant education system - not a bilingual one."

But Martin points to a way forward, by reminding readers of the Qalattuq: 10 Year Educator Training Strategy 2006-2016 released by the Department of Education and Nunavut Arctic College in July 2006.

Had that strategy been implemented, with the attendant budget, 304 educators - 89 of them with BEds, would have entered schools in a four-year time span, not to mention that by now schools might be fully bilingual.

"There is already a prototype for adding 300 Inuit educators over a short time frame," states Martin.

Qalattuq includes all the details, including a budget, to provide Inuit children and youth their right to a bilingual education, and Martin suggests the GN should look to that strategy for inspiration and rework it "to respond to today's needs."

As for funds to implement such a strategy, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. says there is $50 million available for education and training, over and above the $255.5 million settlement agreement it reached with Ottawa in 2015.

Martin also provides several practical recommendations, including holding the Government of Canada to account.

Deputy Minister of Education Kathy Okpik said at a news briefing after the proposed amendments were tabled that once the Inuit Employment Plan for educators was completed and another review of the Nunavut Teacher Education Program was completed, the department would likely be accessing those funds.

But Okpik also said parents are the strongest supporters.

"I've had the opportunity to attend many, many graduations. The number one thing you hear from students is, 'Thank you mom and dad. Thank you for waking me up,'" she said.

But Okpik didn't talk about all the students who didn't make it to graduation day.

Nunavut's graduation rate sat at 35 per cent in 2014. The national rate is more than 80 per cent.

Mallon recalls a young Inuk student who did graduate from high school, but was now at the college and struggling to learn Inuktitut. She said with tears in her eyes, "I blame my parents."

Inutiq, who feels that burden of responsibility, has a grown daughter also now trying to learn Inuktitut at Arctic College.

"I've apologized to her."

She also has a nine-year-old son who is in the Grade 4 transition, or immersion, year. Students receive their education in the Inuit language to Grade 3, after which they are streamed to English only.

In addition, The latest Official Languages Annual Report 2015-16, states that only 11 of 27 primary schools were able to offer adequate Inuktut instruction to Grade 3.

"From here on in, it's all English. The odds are completely against (my son) to really develop in the (Inuktitut) language unless, as a parent, I take Herculean efforts to try and make sure that he's learning."

Inutiq says there's a researcher in Nunavik who has studied what happens to children in the same set-up as Nunavut's: they don't learn either language well.

"It makes you question their ability to express emotionally the struggles that young people have, like suicide."

This sudden transition to English-only schooling has also been shown to contribute to drop-out rates.

"The effect of the complete switch-over starts to be seen at Grades 7 and 8. Students start to really fall behind and it just gets worse each year," said Inutiq.

Bill 37, which is the mechanism by which the GN is attempting to change the Education Act, is now before the Legislative Assembly's Standing Committee on Legislation. The committee will accept formal written submissions on the proposed amendments from Nunavut residents and organizations until 5 p.m. on April 21.

Inutiq and Mallon both plan on providing written submissions.

"There are children in the system right now that we're giving up on. There are children in the system right now that are not learning the language that will begrudge us and ask why," said Inutiq.

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