[IPSM] Inuit culture should be taught in Inuit schools

[Macdonald Stainsby]

November 26, 2004
Inuit culture should be taught in Inuit schools

"We're trying to teach two or more opposing disciplines in the same schools"

SILAS ARNGNA'NAAQ

The introduction of the education system to nomadic people is very 
traumatic. The adjustments that the people have to make to adjust to the 
life they are leading now are so traumatic that we see the symptoms of a 
troubled people, but are not able to find solutions for them.

My parents, who are now in their 70s, tell me about a time when they had 
never heard of airplanes, snowmobiles, electricity, and so on. Their lives 
consisted of living in an igloo, which never really warmed up above zero 
degrees Celsius, and a windowless caribou skin tent.

They didn't have any noise other than what was spoken or sounds made by 
children or dogs. If you stopped and listened to what is around you right 
now, what do you hear? There are sounds that you don't notice, but they are 
there.

They had a structured life, one in which there was respect for one another; 
there was love for one another. These were expressed in ways that are very 
different from what is taught today.

The food they ate consisted of animals that were caught with very primitive 
equipment, tools that were handmade, tools that took time to make. Those 
tools weren't fast, they weren't tough, but they took ability, dexterity, 
intelligence and strength to make and use.

If you look at any simple implement that you may use today and try to find a 
replacement for it using only materials that are from the land or from the 
animals that you catch, where would you start? Would you start with 
implements to build a shelter, to catch food, to make heat, to find 
transportation? Where would you start?

When you live out on the land you have to think very differently from when 
you live in a community or home that doesn't move with the seasons. Your 
concept of time is according to the sunlight, not according to an implement 
that ticks. The only way that you're going to stay warm is by moving around, 
finding shelter from the incessant wind, or eating meat and making use of 
the fur from that animal.

So far this has only been about how to survive. When we start discussing 
relational, social, learning, and any other forms of interaction with 
different people, or peoples, we find a complete and systemic way of life, 
way of living with a people that have a hierarchy, one that has respect for 
all aspects of life, whether that life be the animal that you catch or one 
of your, siblings, parents and other relations.

There is a respect for another's way of life, and another's property. This 
is just a touch of what was involved in the life my parents lived.

I was educated in an environment where I was not able to speak my own 
language during classes. I was not allowed to exercise any of my own 
people's way of life in the school until later on. In the early 1970s, just 
before I left for high school, there was an attempt made to introduce land 
skills. The teaching of my people and the teachings of the foreign people 
were kept separate until then. I knew how to behave when I was in school, I 
also knew how to behave in front of my parents and my elders. I knew how to 
treat them; I also knew how to treat my teachers.

I believe the reason why we have so many young people who are not 
disciplined or not willing to listen to their elders and their teachers is 
because we are confusing them. Our children are in the middle of a crisis. 
We as parents and proper guardians have to relieve that crisis.

I believe this crisis is an identity crisis. We are creating children who 
cannot decide whether they are Inuit who live a southern style of life or 
whether they are southern children who are stuck in the North.

Our children identify better with a Chinese character named "Li" then they 
do with their own grandfather. They know hip-hop or rap music better than 
they know how to drum-dance or throat-sing. But they could probably build a 
shack better than an igloo, drive a vehicle better than a dog team. They 
could travel the world and not get lost in city streets but they wouldn't 
have a clue on how to travel in their own enormous backyard.

We have two or more opposing cultures that we are trying to impose on our 
children. There is the school that is so concerned with time that a child 
has to be disciplined by keeping the child in after school to correct their 
tardiness, there is also the parent who never held a full-time permanent 
job, who has no concept of what time means other than when the sun is up or 
down or when the stores and some government offices are open. For that 
matter, time might matter only when their favorite television or radio show 
is on.

The schools give their instructions in a closed environment, whereas Inuit 
culture is lived outside where there are no restrictions to space and time. 
The end objective of the southern or foreign school system is to allow the 
child to find full-time work, preferably at a desk, where there is no 
motion, commotion, or view.

The child's own culture (Inuit) would have taught that child to live freely 
in an environment and atmosphere that is endless, where nothing but activity 
and interaction is the norm.

Our children today are a wonder. We impose on them confusion, different 
forms of discipline in the same day, in the same room and environment. We're 
trying to teach two or more opposing disciplines in the same schools.

We Inuit view the English, Scots, Irish, and for that matter French people 
this the same when we see them, we call them Qallunaat. When they teach 
their own cultures, they create separate schools, and that is just to teach 
a language.

What do they do for teaching all other aspects of their lives? They're 
taught at home. If they are going to be taught in a school environment, then 
special times or locations or even schools are created.

When the Inuit want to teach their own way of life, they try to fit it into 
four square walls and a time-frame that suits the schools. I have just spent 
this whole letter explaining that our culture cannot be lived in four square 
walls and taught using an implement that ticks to tell me that I have 
finished building my igloo or that I am finished hunting because the ticker 
says so.

Let us stop trying to teach our children our own culture in haphazard 
situations. If we're going to teach our children their own culture in 
institutions, then let us create separate schools that conform to the Inuit 
way of life.

An institution does not have to be made of four square walls, or doesn't 
have to be at one location. Our forefathers were a nomadic people and they 
were not restricted to four walls.

Allow the southern institutions to teach our children their materials in 
those four square walls and then teach those same children their own culture 
in completely separate institutions. Maybe then they will have a better 
respect for who they are and where they come from.
-- 

Macdonald Stainsby
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope
	--Bertholt Brecht.