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Bilingual Education

A. The Importance of English

It may seem strange to begin a consideration of bilingual education with a discussion about education in English. It is necessary, though, to understand that when I emphasize the importance of producing bilingual high school graduates, it is not only their skills in Inuktitut that matter.

Most of the positions in government for which few Inuit qualify are those which require some sort of post-secondary or professional qualification. Nunavut has a population in the vicinity of 30,000 souls, about the size of a medium-sized town, and it is spread across 27 isolated communities. While extraordinary efforts have been made – often successfully – to provide post-secondary courses in Nunavut (the nursing and teacher training programs, and the Akitsiraq Law Program, for instance), it is simply not possible to provide the full spectrum of required courses in place. Even where it is possible to bring courses to the communities, advanced education is of necessity in English. Nunavut needs a generation of executives and managers, computer software designers, architects, audiologists, nurses, doctors, lawyers, accountants,[56] x-ray technicians, RCMP members and, of course, teachers. It is likely that few of them will receive their post-secondary education in Inuktitut.

It is the objective of the Government of Nunavut to make Inuktitut the principal language of the workplace. In fact, in many departments it will be the principal language of the workplace. Nevertheless, in those departments where scientific and technical knowledge are essential, and where regular contact with the outside world is important, it is English that will be the principal language of the workplace.

A central objective of the Nunavut education system, therefore, must be to produce high school graduates whose ability to function in English enables them to enter colleges and universities in southern Canada and to achieve success in their chosen programs, so that they can qualify for responsible positions in their own public service.

Given the importance of English to the Inuit, it may be asked, why not simply educate children in that language only? Is there any reason to preserve Inuktitut in the schools, let alone dramatically increase its use, as I am recommending?

B. The Importance of Inuktitut

There are a number of reasons why English-only education is not the answer in Nunavut.

First and most obviously, the population of Nunavut is, in varying degrees, a bilingual population. Inuktitut, despite an advanced stage of erosion in the Inuinnaqtun communities and continued endangerment elsewhere, continues to be the first-acquired language of Inuit children and for most children remains the most-used language in the home. It is an effective base from which to build advanced language skills when the children progress through the school system. It is clear from the academic literature that loss of first language skills, while often not an apparent handicap, nevertheless can significantly retard academic progress:

In situations of face-to-face peer interaction, conversation concerning familiar topics, where the situational context coincides with the topic, the [aboriginal] child will be able to express him or herself fluently and understand messages in a way that does not distinguish him or her from other native speakers of [English].

However, aside from the erosion of the indigenous language itself, the issue that concerns teachers and parents is the possible effect of language loss on the student’s ability to perform in academic situations, to be able to use language for the higher-order, literacy-related school tasks that with each grade become more and more challenging. For many bilingual children who undergo subtractive language loss, this very process may affect their ability to fully develop these kinds of literacy-related language skills, the broad category of discourse competencies that Cummins and Swain (1987) have termed Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency.[57]

Also, paradoxically, it has been demonstrated that effective academic use of a child’s second language (in Nunavut, this means English) is enhanced through the promotion of the first, indigenous language. Francis and Reyhner conclude a review of the literature on the subject with the following:

[A]voiding the negative consequences of subtractive bilingualism and promoting dual language proficiency in children will not only contribute to the historical continuity of the community’s language, but will provide for children the most favorable conditions for success in school. Among these favorable conditions are those that provide for effective learning of a second language and for using it as a tool for cognitively demanding, higher-order thinking.[58]

The second reason to avoid this “subtractive” unilingual education is that, because Inuktitut is the first language of most, and the only language of a significant minority (15 percent) of Inuit in Nunavut, Inuktitut is, and must continue to be, the language of delivery of government services in the communities. You need only visit the smaller communities, as I have, to understand how absurd would be a government operating there in English only. Bringing up a new generation of English-only public servants would effectively deny or severely limit access to government for many, if not most, of the citizens the government is meant to serve.

Third, Inuktitut is the vessel of Inuit culture. It grows out of a particular worldview. The Inuit want to remain true to their past; in Pascal's phrase, they want to become what they are. Inuktitut is an integral part of Inuit identity. Of course, collective and individual identity may be nourished by other means. But where a people’s language thrives, their identity is more likely to be secure. In Ford v. Quebec (A.G.) [1988] 2 S.C.R. 712 at 748-9 the Supreme Court of Canada wrote:

Language is so intimately related to the form and content of expression that there cannot be true freedom of expression by means of language if one is prohibited from using the language of one’s choice. Language is not merely a means or medium of expression, it colours the content and means of expression. It is… a means by which a people may express its cultural identify. It is also the means by which the individual expresses his or her personal identity and sense of individuality.

But the main reason why English cannot be the single language of instruction is that the Inuit do not want it to be. In the 2001 Census fully 87 percent of Inuit responded that “the Inuit language is very important to learn, re-learn or maintain.” The Inuit are a majority in Nunavut but it is a majority besieged by the onslaught of English, which is pervasive, in books, magazines, newspapers, television, radio, and popular music. The prevalence of English threatens to crowd out their own language.

There is an almost universal desire among the Inuit to avoid loss or extinguishment of their language. This is so among not only Inuktitut speakers but also even stronger among those who speak Innuinaqtun, the most seriously endangered variant of the Inuit language in Nunavut.

English is, in many ways, the language of colonialism. But when it is mastered by the Inuit it is also the language they use to speak to Canadians and the world. It can be an enormous asset to them. For Inuktitut to survive, it has to counteract the competitive dominance of English. Yet the Inuit understand that they must speak English too; they want their children to be competent in both languages.

There is one thing to add about educating Aboriginal children in English only. We have tried it and it doesn't work. The Indian residential schools were established in order to detach Aboriginal children from their own culture, and the principal means was to deny them the right to use their own languages and require them to use only English. It led to tragedy.

In Nunavut today, the schools in Kugluktuk and Cambridge Bay have an all-English program and graduation rates there are no better than in the other regions of Nunavut, where an all-English system of instruction prevails after Grade 3.

Loss of language and educational underachievement are linked. The strengthening of Inuktitut in the school, the home and the community can bring improvement in achievement in both Inuktitut and English.

C. The Current State of the Inuktitut Language in Nunavut

Inuktitut is still the dominant language of Nunavut. It has three times as many speakers as English. The situation is reversed in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories; there English is the dominant language by far. The extent of Inuktitut usage in Nunavut is described by Hicks & White:

According to Statistics Canada’s 1991 Aboriginal Peoples Survey, 96 per cent of adult (defined as age 15 and over) Inuit in Nunavut speak Inuktitut. In the 1996 Census 71 per cent of people living in Nunavut reported Inuktitut as their ‘mother tongue’, and 60 per cent reported Inuktitut as their ‘home language’. English is the ‘home language’ of 35 per cent of all residents and the territory also has a small but vibrant Francophone community – most of which resides in Iqaluit. 15 per cent of the population speaks neither English nor French.

The language spoken by Inuit of Nunavut consists of seven dialects, which are essentially variations on a single language. Six of these dialects are collectively referred to as Inuktitut, and are written using a Syllabic writing system. The dialect spoken by the residents of the communities of Kugluktuk and Cambridge Bay, in the western part of the Kitikmeot region, is called Inuinnaqtun – and is written in Roman orthography. (By contrast, the Dene of the Yukon and Northwest Territories comprise several different peoples each speaking a distinctive language.)[59]

More recent Census data bear out the prevalence of Inuktitut among the Inuit of Nunavut. 2001 figures showed 99 percent understand the language “well or relatively well”; 94 percent report speaking it to that same standard, and 71 percent report using “Inuit language at home all or much of the time.”

For thousands of years, Inuktitut was an oral language. In the 19^th Century, two systems of writing were developed. One uses Roman orthography – that is, the familiar letters of the English alphabet – to spell out the words. A second, known as Syllabics, uses symbols to represent the syllables of the spoken language. In Nunavut, except for the Kitikmeot region, the written language is rendered in Syllabics. In Kitikmeot, Innuinaqtun is rendered in a Roman orthography. In the Western Arctic, the Inuvialuit use a Roman orthography; so also the Inuit of Labrador.

In the Inuit heartland of Canada, in Nunavut and Nunavik (the home of the Inuit of northern Quebec), however, Syllabics prevails. Nunavut historian Kenn Harper writes:

In the eastern Canadian Arctic, excluding Labrador, Inuit use a Syllabic writing system. This non-alphabetic system was developed first for the Cree by a missionary, James Evans. It was adapted to the Inuit language by two missionaries, John Hordern and E.A. Watkins, but the major work in promoting its use among Inuit was done by the Anglican, Rev. Edmund James Peck, still remembered by his Inuktitut name, Uqammak. He worked first in Arctic Quebec for almost two decades before establishing a mission in Baffin in 1894. His efforts, and those of the Inuit catechists he trained, notably Luke Kidlapik, Joseph Pudloo and Peter Tooloogakjuak, resulted in Syllabics being used by Inuit of the Baffin and Keewatin; when the Roman Catholic church established its first missions in the Keewatin region, they too used Syllabics.[60]

Harper continues:

Before the advent of modern computer technology, Syllabics was a costly system to maintain. Today, however, there is probably little, if any, cost premium to publishing in Syllabics. No matter what orthography is used translation costs will remain constant.[61]

Inuktitut still prospers in Nunavut, but it faces serious challenges. The depth of language –that unique facility of expression that improves with age – must be fostered. Inuktitut must not only be preserved, it must grow and adapt: vocabulary has to be developed to permit communication of modern ideas. Things must have names in order for the language to be one truly suitable for all aspects of daily work in government and the private sector.

The loss of their language among children, exposed as they are to English in ever-broadening areas of media and in their social lives, is of particular concern. Francis and Reyhner write:

[S]ubtractive bilingualism involves the loss, sometimes gradual, of the child’s first, or primary, language. If the indigenous language community has made the decision to work toward the revitalization of their ancestral language, its widespread and early erosion among children represents a clear danger signal. If not reversed, the permanent and irreversible loss of the language is simply a matter [of] time.[62]

The Inuit of Nunavut are faced with the erosion of Inuit language, knowledge and culture. Unless serious measures are taken, there will over time be a gradual extinction of Inuktitut, or at best its retention as a curiosity, imperfectly preserved and irrelevant to the daily life of its speakers.[63]

D. The Need for Effective Bilingual Education Has Long Been Recognized

In 2000 the Government of Nunavut published the Bathurst Mandate, expressing the goal of seeing Nunavut become by 2020 "a fully functioning bilingual society, in Inuktitut and English". Also in that year, the Government of Nunavut commissioned a study into the Language of Instruction for Nunavut Schools. Canadian Heritage provided funding for the research. The purpose of the research was to lay the foundation for the design of a system of education that would result in bilingual graduates in Nunavut, consistent with the goal set out in the Bathurst Mandate and with the federal Nunavut Act.[64]

In the result, Professor Ian Martin of York University produced Aajiigatigiingniq, a discussion paper that presents a 20-year plan for the development of a strong bilingual program for the Nunavut educational system. Dr. Martin observed that the “long-term threat to Inuit language from English is found everywhere, and current school language policies and practices on language are contributing to that threat.” He stated that the current model, inherited from the NWT, forces Inuit students to become English speakers if they wish to continue education beyond the Grade 4/5 transition point and thus “replaces the child’s first language with an imperfectly learned second language and…too often neither language develops to its full potential.”

It is apparent from Professor Martin’s report and the literature in the field that virtually all who have studied the subject have concluded that a program of strong bilingual education is called for. The original NWT policy document on bilingual education, published in 1981 after a year long research project into bilingual education around the world, called for 90 percent instruction in Inuktitut in Grades K-3, 70 percent Inuktitut in Grades 4-6, and an even 50-50 percent split in Grades 7-12. Professor Martin cites other early efforts, from the 1982 Learning Tradition and Change report, chaired by Tagak Curley to the 1985 document Bilingual Programming in the Keewatin - An Educational Model by Katherine Zozula and Simon Ford. Zozula and Ford developed what Professor Martin called "a very well thought out plan which, had it been followed 15 years ago, could have changed the linguistic landscape considerably."[65]

Without solid linguistic skills, few Inuit struggle through to graduation. Employers complain that many students who leave school in grades 10, 11, or 12 to work do not have sufficient literacy skills in either language to be effective employees. In his 2000 report, Professor Martin called the present system "fundamentally flawed", one that "does not help students learn either language, English or Inuktitut, at a high level of bilingualism and biliteracy."[66]

Professor Connie Heimbecker of Lakehead University, reviewing Arlene Stairs’ research in Nunavik (in Northern Quebec) on the relationship between early Inuktitut fluency and literacy and later English fluency and literacy, noted this same phenomenon:

[Stairs’] study was conducted with grade 3 and 4 children who had experienced Inuktitut language programs in the early grades. Stairs found that children's English writing was related to the fluency of their earlier Inuktitut writing, and their current Inuktitut fluency… Communities with greater grade3-4 Inuktitut writing proficiency, also displayed greater proficiency in English writing and speaking. Communities which had spent less time with Inuktitut and more time with English in the lower grades, displayed a lower level of Inuktitut and only a similar level of English. As Cummins states "These community results show that the positive relationship between English and Inuktitut writing skills is not based only on the intelligence or general language aptitude of the individual students"[.][67]

Since publishing the Bathurst Mandate in 2000, the Government of Nunavut has established an Inuktitut Living Dictionary. New Inuktitut terminology has been developed for use in government. Language training in Inuktitut is being developed for non-Inuit and for Inuit who are not fluent in their own language. These and other measures lie within its authority and competence. But they will not, in and of themselves, produce the bilingual workforce Nunavut needs. Instead, we need to fundamentally expand the role of Inuktitut in the schools of the territory.

E. The Schools Today

The goal of a bilingual and biliterate society will not be achieved unless the schools of Nunavut produce graduates who are bilingual and biliterate in Inuktitut and in English. This is not happening now.

In fact the present system – an "early exit immersion" model whereby most students are abruptly switched from Inuktitut to English in Grades 4/5 – seems to be producing the opposite. Because it provides students with an insufficient foundation in their first language and too sudden immersion in the second, it is seen as a significant contributing cause of Nunavut's high dropout rates.

The present “early-exit” bilingual model is inherited from the Northwest Territories. In its time, this model was seen as an improvement over the English-assimilationist residential school system which preceded it. However, while the NWT model called for the use of Inuktitut as a language of instruction from K-12, schools could never achieve this goal owing to the lack of Inuit teachers and Inuktitut curriculum and resources. What resulted was the early-exit model that remains in place in Nunavut schools.

The "early-exit" model works like this: With some exceptions, children in Nunavut enter school speaking Inuktitut. In the early grades, Inuit children all over Nunavut are taught in their first language as the language of instruction, i.e., from kindergarten to Grades 3/4/5. Beginning at Grade 4/5, there is a “transition” from Inuktitut to English as the language of instruction (for students in the Inuinnaqtun communities, English is the only language of instruction from kindergarten to grade 12.). From Grades 4/5, Inuktitut is no longer a language of instruction, but merely a subject like any foreign language.

The result is that just as Inuit children are acquiring the ability to read and write in their own language they are abruptly transitioned into English and required to learn math, social studies and science – and all other subjects in the curriculum – in a second language

Some Nunavut schools teach oral English as a second language in the primary grades, but in many places, the curriculum that Inuit children are introduced to in Grades 4/5, with English as the language of instruction, is their first academic exposure to English. Many of them can converse in English. But they can’t write in English. In Grade 4 or 5, they are starting over, well behind. Their comprehension is imperfect; it slips and as it does they fall further behind. By the time they reach Grade 8, Grade 9 and Grade 10, they are failing (not all of them, to be sure, but most of them). This is damaging to their sense of who they are. There has been not only an institutional rejection of their language and culture, but a demonstration of their personal incapacity. The Inuit children are trying to catch up; but they are trying to hit a moving target since, of course, as they advance into the higher grades, the curriculum becomes more complex, more dependent on reading, on books, more dependent on a capacity in English that they don’t have.

Instead of adding a second language to a solidly anchored first language that they continue to develop, enriching their language skills by adding the second, the opposite occurs. As they gain more English Inuit children lose more Inuktitut. They lose fluency in their mother tongue; the literacy skills they acquired in the early years atrophy and the space left ‘vacant’ by the loss of Inuktitut is not simply filled up with English. The children’s initial threshold of fluency in Inuktitut should be – but isn’t allowed to become - a foundation for the attainment of a second threshold of literacy – in Inuktitut. And they are not compensating for the lost Inuit language with new gains in English. Because they are never allowed to develop their Inuktitut initial fluency and literacy into advanced fluency and literacy through engagement with progressively more demanding subjects, and because the English program largely fails to develop higher-order skills, the children’s Inuktitut linguistic strengths are never acknowledged. They are forced pay a high price for the early exit from their home language. They end up without fluency or literacy in either language.[68]

The problem – the gulf between what the current program (inherited from the Northwest Territories) aspired to and what it has been able to deliver – is not likely to improve over time. High attrition rates of Inuit teachers mean that it is questionable whether even the present limited level of bilingual education can be sustained. Resource and curriculum development has continued to be slow owing to ongoing lack of resources. There is a slide, and it is expected to continue, unless something is done to stop it.

F. What Does Effective Bilingual Education Require?

There are essentially two methods of effectively producing bilingual graduates in Nunavut. One model is that which is common in many European countries, in which students are taught in both languages, typically the standard languages of European nation-states, from the first year to the last. The second model, perhaps more familiar to Canadians, is the immersion model, in which Anglophone or English-dominant students are taught exclusively – or nearly so – in a second language (i.e. French) for a substantial period of their education.

Either model appears to be capable of producing the desired results: students who are not only bilingual but also biliterate – able to read and write at an acceptable level in either language. The difficulty is in the detail: both require a high level of commitment to both languages, together with the resources – skilled teachers, appropriate curriculum materials, and methods for assessment of student progress – in both as well.

In Nunavut these challenges appear to all but foreclose the European "parallel instruction" model. Its adoption would require curriculum materials in Inuktitut to the Grade 12 level, and a cohort of teachers trained to teach a number of high school courses in Inuktitut, neither of which presently exist. If bilingual education is to become a reality in Nunavut within a generation, it must be through the implementation of a system that provides a gradual introduction of English instruction, and a longer retention of Inuktitut, not only as a subject of study, but as a language of instruction.

G. The Proposed System of Bilingual Education

I am convinced that only a robust and effective system of bilingual education can provide the foundation for the fulfillment of the objective of Article 23.

The objective is to ensure that Nunavut students have first and second language skills by the time they complete their schooling. They will be able to maintain their identity and their culture, and at the same time be equipped to enter governmental or private sector employment.

Nothing quite like this has been undertaken in Canada in the past. There is no template for a jurisdiction-wide bilingual education program for all children.

So what would a comprehensive program of bilingual education look like in Nunavut? It certainly could not be implemented immediately. Bilingual education was the policy of the Northwest Territories, as it is now, in a more fully-developed way, the policy of the Government of Nunavut. The NWT did not have the curriculum, the resources or the teachers to fully implement such a policy.

Neither, at present, does Nunavut. The Territory lacks the funding even to maintain the early-exit model adopted from the Northwest Territories, let alone to improve upon it. It has made a start, however, by assigning $7.5 million from its current education budget specifically to development of a bilingual curriculum and materials to the expansion of teacher education. But it does not have the resources to meet the demands of a fully bilingual education system.

The Bilingual Education Strategy adopted by the Nunavut government in November 2004 provides a glimpse of what needs to be done to achieve comprehensive bilingual education in the territory. The K-12 curriculum and resource development and implementation plans to achieve the strategy have been initiated. But the challenges should be borne in mind.

There remains a severe shortage of Inuktitut-speaking teachers in the education system such that even the kindergarten-to-Grade-3/4/5 Inuktitut programs will be difficult to maintain at present levels. There is also an almost complete absence of advanced teaching materials in Inuktitut. The plan I propose will require hiring and training teachers, and developing an advanced Inuktitut curriculum, at an unprecedented rate. Even the most optimistic forecasts indicate, however, that bilingual education will develop gradually, year-by-year, school-by-school, over a generation.

Fortunately the most successful model of bilingual education appears to be adaptable to gradual implementation. Francis and Reyhner write:

For Indian children entering school, dominant or monolingual in their Native, indigenous, language, the program model that appears to have produced the most consistently positive results is that described by Krashen and Biber (1988) and Krashen (1991, 1996): the “Gradual exit, variable threshold” approach. ESL students are mainstreamed early in activities where language comprehension is virtually guaranteed because of the complete context support in academically less demanding situations (art, music, and physical education). In school subjects, where context support is high (e.g. primary level mathematics), ESL students receive early immersion in the second language, reserving (in the early grades) the subjects that are more language-dependent and abstract (e.g. reading, language arts, social studies) primarily for the dominant, primary, language.[69]

The model I propose would start with “language nests” (an innovation of the New Zealand Maori) carried out in conjunction with Inuktitut daycare and pre-school programs. It would then carry through the elementary and secondary years, and beyond into adult literacy and basic education programs.

The most critical component of the program will be the development of a strong new generation of Inuit teachers.

Presently, 35 per cent of teachers speak Inuktitut, and their numbers are slipping due to attrition owing to retirement, the stresses of the job (particularly for women with families) and the temptations of other careers in the territory, since Inuit teachers are the largest cohort of qualified Inuit in any field. The program I am recommending will require that many more teachers be trained. In the meantime other measures can be taken. There are, for instance, middle-aged and adult Inuit in every community who speak Inuktitut well. They would be given a year of teacher training in the community and would teach Inuktitut in the schools. At the same time, local tradespeople, carvers and sculptors would give classes in their specialties. Life on the land would not be forgotten. Survival skills in danger of being lost would be transmitted in the classroom by veteran hunters. All this while more Inuit teachers are formally trained and introduced, year-by-year, into an expanding bilingual curriculum.

There is an opportunity for economies of scale by working with other regions where Inuktitut and its variants are spoken. The Inuit population of Nunavut and Nunavik (in northern Quebec) speak the same language and use the same system of Syllabic writing. Together they constitute 90 percent of Canada’s Inuit population. It is obvious that the model of bilingual education adopted in Nunavut might over time find a home there too, eventually perhaps in the Western Arctic and Labrador (it is true that Roman orthography is used in both these latter locales, but it is becoming easier to transcribe from one script to the other).

The aim would be to affirm Inuit identity, to improve Inuit educational achievement, to strengthen the language that is at risk, but at the same time to improve ability in English.

Success would meant that, over time, we will see Inuit high school graduation rates in Nunavut achieving parity with students in the rest of Canada. These graduates would be able to take their share of positions in the Government of Nunavut and in the federal government in Nunavut. They would be equipped to take post-secondary training anywhere in Canada. And they would be ready to enter an expanded private sector in Nunavut.

This is not to say that all Inuit children would be destined for graduation. Some would not. Nor is it to say that Nunavut ought to adopt a wholly academic program. Whether Inuit youth are going to live off the land or go into a trade, there would be a place for them in school. But high school graduates are the key.

In this way – and I believe only in this way – can the objective of Article 23 be achieved.

H. The Choice

I see no alternative to a strong program of bilingual education. I believe that under the direction of the Government of Nunavut, with the support of the federal government, and with the full participation of Inuit families, it can succeed. But nothing less than the full involvement of all partners at all levels of the education system will be sufficient.

There are valuable international precedents. Comprehensive attempts in recent decades to reverse the decline of traditional languages in the Basque and Catalonian regions of Spain (which were suppressed under Franco) and in Estonia and other Baltic countries (where under Soviet rule the local languages were used less and less) have met with some success. Describing the program in Catalonia, the Languages Commissioner of Nunavut reported:

There has been measurable and, indeed remarkable success in increasing the status of Catalan within the education system. By 1999, 98.5 percent of teachers in primary schools and 81.2 percent of teachers in secondary schools held a certificate of competence in the Catalan language. This compares with a figure of only 52 percent of pre-school and primary teachers just twenty years earlier. By 2000, 88.9 percent of primary schools and 51.2 percent of secondary schools carried out all their teaching in Catalan (except courses in Spanish and foreign languages), while the remainder carried out most of their teaching in Catalan. By comparison, in 1995-1996, the figures stood at 67.5 percent for primary schools and 25.9 percent for secondary schools.[70]

The secret to these successful recovery programs appears to be based on comprehensive efforts on the demand side (by requiring or encouraging use of the local language in the public service) and on the supply side (by instituting a robust program of bilingual education). Similar programs have been instituted in the Scandinavian countries to reinvigorate the Sami language.

Here I urge adoption of the initiative taken by the Maori of New Zealand in the use of "language nests.” By the early 1980s the use of Maori was dying. The Maori people, however, insisted that it had to be revived. And they knew they had to do it themselves. So in schools and community halls the Maori would meet in the evening. Elders would teach their children and their grandchildren their own language; soon the next generation and the generation after that would start to use Maori.

The proliferation of the Maori “language nests” – in 1992 there was only one, by 1998 there were 646 – was nevertheless not on its own enough to re-establish Maori as a language suitable for everyday adult life, and in 1997 the New Zealand government began an intensive effort centred on recruiting and training sufficient numbers of Maori-speaking teachers and developing appropriate materials. The Languages Commissioner of Nunavut reports:

Since then, budgets for producing Maori language teaching and learning materials have been increased substantially (to around $7 million per year). Various strategies have also been adopted to increase the supply of teachers competent in the Maori language, including scholarships for teacher trainees, face-to-face recruitment campaigns, in-service Maori language training for active teachers, etc.[71]

But the best evidence that an Aboriginal language need not be overwhelmed by a European language is Greenland. In that country in the 1960s the colonial power, Denmark, which had asserted sovereignty over Greenland since 1721, promoted the use of Danish from the first grade. But Greenlanders resisted this.

A renaissance of Greenlandic occurred in the 1970s. In 1979 Home Rule came. The Home Rule government made the preservation of Greenlandic a priority. Today students are taught in Greenlandic throughout primary and secondary school. They have an indigenous Greenlandic literature and they have translated many works of world literature into Greenlandic.

The Greenlandic model, however, has its limitations. It is graduating students unable to use Danish or English; in a real sense they are unqualified for work or study outside Greenland, or even equipped to speak in any European language to the world outside Greenland. Greenland academics now urge the adoption of a more fully bilingual model, urging that English be taught from grade 4 and not from grade 7.

So the Inuit must be equipped to use English as well as Inuktitut. Thus the bilingual model I am recommending.

I. The Nunavut Project

This is a project for all of Nunavut, not just teachers and students. Inuktitut must be spoken and strengthened in the homes of Nunavut and in all the communities of Nunavut.

Every community should have a Head Start pre-school type of program (as opposed to day cares) and they, like other daycare and early-childhood programs, should all be conducted in Inuktitut.

In Nunavut the Inuit will have to take the initiative in establishing "language nests". Elders must pass on the language. Parents must participate in the nests and make sure the whole family uses Inuktitut. Communities must support the use of Inuktitut in family language camps and literacy activities throughout the year. And parents must do all they can to keep their children in school. Students who have graduated from Nunavut high schools say that two important factors in enabling them to be successful in school are parental support and high expectations.[72]

Nunavut doesn’t have enough teachers. They will have to be recruited, and young people will have to volunteer to be teachers, even knowing that more lucrative and possibly less arduous careers are available to them. The invaluable role of Inuit teachers must be recognized and their unique status must be cherished in every community. Men as well as women must come to see teaching as a worthwhile career. All teachers will have to receive the level of support they deserve. The schools must become the hub of community activity, a place where elders and infants are welcome along with students and teachers.

There are impediments. Inuit families do not usually resemble middle-class families in Vancouver or Calgary, accustomed to instilling in their children the virtues of learning through the written word, sending their children off to French immersion. These are families only a generation or two removed from hunting and gathering, who have seen their whole world turned upside down.

My emphasis has been on bilingual education, on the schools and on graduates, because there lies the long-term answer to the problem. But this is not a stand-alone project. It cannot succeed unless the housing and health of the Inuit improve. These things go together.

Housing for Inuit in Nunavut is cramped, to say the least. Students’ health is at risk, and sickness and overcrowded homes contribute significantly to Nunavut schools' high absenteeism rates.

One of the biggest surprises you find in Nunavut schools is the presence of amplification systems in the classrooms. It was explained by school officials in Iqaluit that – incredibly – between 30 and 50 percent of Inuit children are believed to suffer from some degree of hearing loss. The reason the figure given is so vague is that there is very little known about the phenomenon. School-wide screening of students has never been instituted.[73]

It appears that the hearing impairment in Inuit children is mainly caused by Chronic Otitis Media (COM), a chronic infection of the ear which is more prevalent among Inuit than any other race in the world. Hearing loss due to COM can cause delayed language and speech development. Students suffering from COM may have difficulty learning and poor academic achievement.[74]

COM is closely associated with, among other things, overcrowding and exposure to tobacco smoke, two risk factors particularly prevalent in Nunavut communities.[75]

Imagine the odds faced by a student attempting to do homework with 12 or 13 other people in the house (on average, half of them children), perhaps sleeping two, three or four to a room. Nunavut's climate dictates that these tiny homes will be shut tight against the weather for possibly eight months of the year; virtually every home has at least one resident smoker, and usually more; oil heating, particularly from poorly-constructed or maintained systems, may produce carbon monoxide and other pollutants. The fact that even one quarter of Inuit children graduate from high school is, under the circumstances, a testament to the tenacity of those students, their parents, and their communities.

I wrote in my Interim Report that the issue of social housing did not come within the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement and ought to be pursued in direct talks with the federal government at the highest levels. I still believe this to be the correct approach.

This does not, however, mean that housing is insignificant to the issues which concern me as Conciliator. Student, staff and government housing programs will be important parts of many of the initiatives I propose. But nor are the more basic issues of social housing irrelevant. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that very little that I am proposing regarding bilingual education and a representative public service in Nunavut can succeed without a comprehensive social housing program.

Footnotes:

• 56 The Auditor General's 2005 Report to the Legislative Assembly of Nunavut notes the shortage of trained accountants, particularly in the smaller communities, and recommends that the Government of Nunavut undertake a program, based on the example of the Akitsiraq Law School, to produce Inuit accountants. (return to source paragraph)
• 57 Norbert Francis and Jon Reyhner, Language and Literacy Teaching for Indigenous Education[:] A Bilingual Approach (Clevedon, England, and Toronto: Multilingual Matters Inc., 2002) at p. 70-71(return to source paragraph)
• 58 Ibid.at 73.. (return to source paragraph)
• 59 Hicks & White, supra note 35 at p. 100, fn. 48. (return to source paragraph)
• 60 Kenn Harper, “Inuit Writing Systems in Nunavut” in Dahl, Hicks and Jull, Eds., Nunavut: Inuit Regain Control of Their Lands and Their Lives (Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 2000) at p. 155. (return to source paragraph)
• 61 Ibid. at p. 163. (return to source paragraph)
• 62 Francis and Reyhner, supra note 57 at p. 70. (return to source paragraph)
• 63 There are a number of recent works on the topic of endangered languages. See for instance Mark Abley, Spoken Here: Travels among Threatened Languages (Toronto: Vintage, 2004); David Crystal, Language Death (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Joshua A. Fishman, Can Threatened Languages be Saved? (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2001). (return to source paragraph)
• 64 That Act provides, in s. 23. (1)(n): "[The Nunavut] Legislature may make laws in relation to … the preservation, use and promotion of the Inuktitut language, to the extent that the laws do not diminish the legal status of, or any rights in respect of, the English and French languages[.]" (return to source paragraph)
• 65 Ian Martin, Aajjiqatigiingniq: Language of Instruction Research Paper (Iqaluit: Nunavut Dep't of Education, 2000) at p. 28. (return to source paragraph)
• 66 Ibid. at p. 6. (return to source paragraph)
• 67 Connie Heimbecker, "Bilingual Education for Indigenous Groups in Canada" in Jim Cummins & David Corson (eds) Bilingual Education. Volume 5. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers,1997). (return to source paragraph)
• 68 The youth of Nunavut come last in the country on the (English) prose literacy scale, well below the other provinces and territories, according to the International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey (IALSS) in 2003. Over 88% of Inuit in Nunavut scored below level 3 in prose literacy compared to about a quarter of the non-Inuit, and noticeably worse than Aboriginal people in the Yukon and the NWT. The impact of low literacy levels in English/French is striking. In Nunavut the percentage of the population at Level 2 is 72%, 20 points higher than in any other jurisdiction in Canada. (return to source paragraph)
• 69 Supra note 57 at p. 74. (return to source paragraph)
• 70 C. Sabourin and J. Bernier, Government Responses to Language Issues: International Examples (Iqaluit: Office of the Languages Commissioner of Nunavut, 2001) at p.20. (return to source paragraph)
• 71 Ibid. at p.50. For an overview of the New Zealand efforts see Stephen May, “Maori-medium Education in Aotearoa/New Zealand”, in James Tollefson and Amy Tsui (eds.) Medium of Instruction Policies: Which Agenda? Whose Agenda? (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbrum Associates, Inc. 2004). (return to source paragraph)
• 72 Northern Lights: A Research Study of Successful High School Students Across Nunavut (Christian DaSilva and Cassandra Hallett, 1997). (return to source paragraph)
• 73 An earlier study in Nunavik found that 23 per cent of school-age Inuit children in Kuujjuaraapik had significant hearing loss in one or both ears. In the United States (by way of comparison), only about two per cent of children under 18 have hearing loss. (return to source paragraph)
• 74 Alan D. Bowd, "Otitis media: its health, social and educational consequences particularly for Canadian Inuit, Métis and First Nations children and adolescents" (Centre of Excellence for Children and Adolescents with Special Needs, Lakehead University, 2002):www.coespecialneeds.ca/PDF/otitisreport.pdf.
  (return to source paragraph)
• 75 The figures on overcrowding appear earlier in this report. As for smoking prevalence, one Indian Affairs survey revealed that 93% of Inuit women in Kugaaruk smoke: http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ps/nap/air/rep2003/fpm_e.html. The figures usually cited for Inuit smoking rates are around 70-80%. (return to source paragraph)