Junior Inuktitut

After school yesterday, Brooke, Dave, and I trundled down to the local library -- the Rebecca Idlout Library, which shares a building with the interpretative centre. On our arrival, we discovered that there has also been an artist in residence, of sorts -- a woman who specializes in a particular form of print-making, who was flown up for a few weeks to teach local folks how to create prints in this manner. The prints are beautiful -- depicting scenes from or animals relating to traditional Inuit life, either in black and white or stunning combinations of colour -- and show such incredible artistry. The instructor commented, astonished, on how quickly her students picked up the art form and how intuitively they used it.

The narwhal features prominently here: on the sign outside of the library, the model suspended in the lobby of the building, on the t-shirt of the man who let us into the interpretative centre. Entering the building, one is greeted by the expanse of glass at the interior space, the suspended narwhal model, the sound of children laughing in the library to the right. Boots are strewn across the floor just inside of the interior door: no one wears their boots inside; sock feet prevail, here and at school.

The interpretative centre reflects traditional Inuit life and how that existence underpins contemporary Inuit existence.

Boots to protect the dog's feet during spring, when ice melted and refroze and could cut paws.

A child's clothing, made from caribou that would have been harvested in the fall. Each woman would make two sets of these clothes for every family member.

An avataq, a float made of seal skin. If a hunter harpooned a whale, this would help keep the whale from diving down and would allow the hunter to track its movements until its death.

Similar small touches of the connection between Inuit culture and the land are evident in all buildings, from the high school to the co-op to the library and interpretative centre.

The library is a lovely space, warm and full of the sunshine that seems omnipresent in Pond. The selection of titles is better than I'd expected, and I was pleased to see plenty of books in Inuktitut, for both children and adults. The majority of video titles available have a very Northern focus.

A reading corner. Surrounded by the Arctic and bathed in light.

Inuktitut titles for adults.

An excellent selection for children.

Inuktitut is thriving here in Pond Inlet: it is the first language of all of my students and, from our very informal surveys, the children all say that they primarily use Inuktitut at home. English only sees use in the school environment (of course, it's also present in the TV shows and movies the kids watch). Other communities, especially those in the Western Arctic, have nearly lost their Inuktitut -- but here it lives on, and that is a wonderful thing to see. Of course, that means that English Language Arts is very much an EAL/ESL course, which means that my focus as an educator needs to shift.

Plus learning another language -- working in another language -- is exhausting. We received a brief lesson in Inuktitut from Pat last night, who has a phenomenal accent. Pat and Dave have three children, all of whom still live in Nunavut, and all three of whom are fluent in Inuktitut, having grown up in Pond. I'm pleased to say that, after a lot of work and frustration over some Inuktitut sounds that the English-speaking tongue seems very reluctant to make, I've managed to get a handle on a new sound: ng -- for ngi, ngu, and nga. My own junior Inuktitut, but it's coming. At least now I know my name in Inuktitut for the Pond Inlet dialect: ᕇᐱᑲ  (Riipika).

Finally, a little goodbye from a stuffed seal from the interpretative centre (I'll have to go snap some pictures of the white seal skins drying at a house just above the school -- and the full-on frozen seals waiting to be eating/skinned/something else... Seals are tricky to get this time of year, but very possible!), and an obligatory picture of the landscape.

The mountain on the right is shaped like the syllabic for 'i' and is named relating to that symbol -- although I haven't yet mastered that one.