Some final thoughts before I go. More for me than for you, but I'm in a "share with the group" mood, so you'll just have to suffer through it... Now, keep in mind that I am no expert on the life and culture up here, I'm just making observations on what I know of it.

The thing that has amazed me most about this community is that all these children (and I think I mentioned that the birth rate is quite something) are just one generation away from their heritage out on the land. Igloolik became a settlement in the mid-sixties, and it's not like these Inuit moved here from another town! So some of these children are brought up in front of the TV and some are still brought out on the land and taught land skills. And these children are brought up in our education system, which has nothing at all to do with their own way of teaching and traditional ways of living, except that the first 4 or 5 years of school are in Inuktitut.

Igloolik is one of the last communities of the North to keep using the syllabics of their language. Many other communities have switched to writing Inuktitut in roman orthography. Something I did not know about these syllabics is that they were made up by qallunaq (that's us --- whitey) missionaries, so there's really no historical reason behind hanging onto them. (This makes complete sense, of course, knowing that Inuktitut is an oral tradition, not written.) This makes the language transition, at grade 4 or so, when the children start being taught English, extremely difficult. So the children of Igloolik are behind most other children in the Territories as far as education goes, and their literacy skills suffer the most. In class there were book reports up on the wall, mostly done on the works of Robert Munsch. And that class was a grade 5/6 split. It's a bit of a mystery as to why Igloolik won't give their children a bit of a better chance by making the switch to roman orthography. Keep the language! Absolutely! But change the letters. The other thing about the syllabics is that, put simply, they're really difficult to read and write.

Paul tells me that children in class will escape their teacher by speaking in Inuktitut, but they write notes between themselves in English, because they never really get a good grasp on the syllabics of their own language. So their education is not as complete as a southern education because of the language issue. If students actually finish high school (not many do --- attendance is very low, especially in high school) and go south for college or university, they're bound to fail there, either because they have been pushed through the system up here, or because of culture shock.

Igloolik is one of the best communities of the North for keeping their language and traditions alive and well. And this is encouraging. But it's also a shame to see how much they've lost already, in 30 years. There's an article in National Geographic (September 1997 issue) called "A dream called Nunavut " (nuna=land, vut=our) about the Inuit "dancing a fine line between new and ancient ways." (It's a really good article, I suggest reading it to all of you. Also, the photographs are excellent.) In it, there is an Igloolik-ite, shown hunting a polar bear --- touted as an expert hunter (which he is. He was one of the men that took the kids out on a hunt on my second day here, when Paul came to get me to take some pics). His own grandchildren are not being taught the land skills that he has mastered. In fact, two of them came on that class trip I took out to Avvajjaq and couldn't stand being out for an entire day, wanting to go home. Now, that's a real shame, don't you think? It makes me wonder about whether these skills will be taught at all in another 30 years.

This is a huge transitional stage for the Inuit, especially with Nunavut becoming a new Territory next year. It will be interesting to see what happens as far as the problems. These include: the education issue; high suicide rate (Inuit men have one of the shortest, if not the shortest, life expectancies in the world, and the high suicide rate of young men is a big factor in bringing that age down); alcoholism and drug abuse (sniffing is big up here, unfortunately); physical and sexual abuse; as well as the slow disappearance of the Inuit traditions; plus all the problems involved with living in such isolated communities (it's over $1000 just to fly to Iqaluit, where all women have to go a month early and stay to give birth, since there are no doctors living here in Igloolik year round. They come through town doing regular rounds, but I believe it's pretty infrequent. There's a nurses' station, but any major medical problems are flown out).

Basically, there's a lot to be sad and concerned about here, but there's also a lot of aspirations pinned on the formation of Nunavut and the self-government it will bring. One can only hope that the kinks of this transitional phase are worked out and Nunavut lives up to its expectations. Of course, not everything is sad here, and the traditions are still alive, especially in Igloolik, as I hope I've shown in my previous emails. I've had a fantastic time here, and have thoroughly enjoyed the people of this community and the heritage that's been shared with me. This is just something that I've been thinking about in my final arctic days...

Lynn