Ideas - How Iqaluit's learning institute gave a generation of Inuit adults a path back to Inuktut

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Younger generations in Nunavut today are less likely to grow up immersed in Inuktut. At a language school in Iqaluit, Inuit adults who didn’t grow up speaking Inuktut now have the chance to learn it as a second language at the Pirurvik Centre. By learning the words for kinship terminology, they’re also discovering things about their families they never knew. 

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This is a CBC Podcast. One night in 1993, Lena Evick had a startlingly vivid dream. I saw a facility that was so inviting that it also told me somewhere like, Lina, your house is ready for you. But then I saw all these hands up in the air as well. Those were knees. Those hands belonged to generations of Inuit who were hungry for language. And the facility she dreamed up was a center in a Caliuate dedicated to assuaging that

hunger. I sketched what I signed my dream the very next morning upon waking up. I guess it was a sign that I got it imprinted in me even stronger, because it haunted me. I decided to sketch a bigger facility in 1997 only because I kept playing around with, you know, this dream and I would expand it and I saw it all in color and I would be inside the facility. Like, I just imagined so much of it. She wrote a mission statement telling the story of the center, a center that still lived only in her imagination. It was two and a half pages long.

In present tense, because when you do your vision statement, you do it in present tense, not way down in the distant future that may never come to fruition or even manifest. Lena knew it was inevitable that her dream would come true. I never really saw obstacles and challenges like a reason for me to not pursue without that level of trust. And I'm a teacher by training, so I taught for many years in the system. Since I put my foot in into the school back in the early 70s, I just knew that I wanted to be a teacher to promote my language and Inuktut wasn't even taught in the school yet at the time. Having found no space to make Inuktut a language that thrives, I kind of knew that I needed to create a space

that allowed it to thrive. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. More than 30 years after Lina Ivek woke up and started sketching, I visited her in the future she dreamed into being. An institute of Inuktu's higher learning in Nunavut's capital called Parovik. It's a place where people can study their language at the most advanced level. Even I, I have a great deal of hunger to learn more about the rich traditional terminology of Inuit. They would have been like a daily language in the years before.

And a place that offers a pathway back into Inuktitut for Inuit who grew up outside it. They offer this other program, Al-Niyavik, which is specifically designed for Inuit who want to learn Inuktitut as a second language. And I'm like, that is oddly specific and exactly me. Like, heck yeah, I want to do this. Younger generations in Nunavut today are less likely to grow up immersed in Inuktitut. In 2021, 65% of Inuit youth 15 and under reported Inuktitut as one of their mother tongues, compared to over 90% of Inuit 55 and older. My children's great-grandparents were unilingual,

and then our grandparents have less Inuit, and then to us as their parents have even less, and to them they have none, so we're trying to reclaim that and bring that back. In this program, they can finally find the words they've been searching for. You know, you're trying to convey a feeling or an emotion or move the story this way or that way and there's like a specific way you want to say it and it's just so satisfying when you have the right one that does it in a word. We'll begin with one of those words, Aunjavik.

It's a word that comes from this landscape and has no easy equivalent in English. But in this one word, there is a whole world. I'll use two types of examples for it. During the transitional phase of seasons, like the fall where it's not so safe for traveling by boat anymore because of the freeze-up, but the ice is not safe yet.

So there's these little inlet types where when you can travel to hunt, often the seals would be around those sheltered areas. And often Inuit hunters would wait for seals to pop up. So that's an example of that sheltered cove-like landscape, Aung Ngaap Bich. And the other use I want to share about is during transitional traveling, let's say in the spring, sometimes a family would temporarily camp there on their way to their more permanent destination, very well knowing it's not their permanent space. That space inspired Perhovik's course for Inuit adults who want to learn Inuktitut as a second language, a temporary transitory space on the journey to full fluency.

I really love it because Inuit were traditionally semi-nomadic and we would have put up, you know, temporary spots here and there. My full name is Ashley Khaleva Calavaxavard and I am from Iqaluit, Nunavut. And I like that idea a lot because it leaves room to grow, room to wander in a way that makes sense to me, like on my journey, my learning journey. Yeah, it's just very literal. Yeah, I love Anutiduk. It's a stopping point, almost like a way station on your way towards something else. We know we're heading towards language and we're heading towards our culture and just

doing that together. And we can all come here and take a rest and take a stop and appreciate that. My name is Jamacy, Jamacy Uyunga, and I am an Inuk writer from the Northwest Territories. And I'm here now living in Calawit. It was online. I was reading an article, I guess it happened during COVID times, that these Inuktitut beginner language courses were being offered online digitally. I really loved it, it was just kind of what I needed at that level. And the more I looked into it, and like it's part of this other school, Pilchivik, and

they offer this other program, Alniavik. It can be able to move to Iqaluit and also connect with other people who are in the exact same boat. And there's lots of us. My name is Jennifer Lindell. I'm from Iqaluit. I was born and raised here.

I'm a mother of four, and I am an entrepreneur hairstylist here in Iqaluit. And I've been interested in strengthening my Inuit language second language for not only myself but for my children to be able to start to speak Inuit and also communicate with our unilingual clients that deserve to have someone speak to them in their language and to understand them properly. My mother speaks fluent Inuititut, Inuinaktun. She has many dialects that she understands.

She was a school teacher and she taught Inuititut. She was pretty good with me. I feel like I had it and I lost it and I kind of brought it back. My father's from Quebec, so I spent a lot of my summers, the full summer in Quebec and I feel like I was picking up a lot of French so it was a lot of mix back and forth and I don't feel as solid in Inuit-Tituque as I want to be. I can fully understand but to be able to feel confident was something I struggled with. Being in Iqaluit in the capital, it isn't strong. My husband is from Aqwe and Inuk is his first language and he had to learn English

later. But my upbringing, it was definitely more English. Well I grew up in Iqaluit. I'm half Inuk, half French-Canadian and I grew up hearing both, but never being sufficient in both languages, French and Inuit. My parents kind of used English as the common language and it's hard because being a biracial Inuk, trying to navigate identity and a lot of identity for Inuit is tied to language, tied to cultural activities and tied to community. And I felt like the language part is the key to opening up all those other aspects of Inuit culture. I believed that a language learning center really needs to be connected to our culture and our culture. And our culture is out there in the natural classroom.

When she first dreamed up Berhovik and started sketching its design, Lina knew it couldn't just happen within four walls. I also sketched on the land retreat component to it. We feel at home out there. It's serene, it's peaceful. It allows you to do two things simultaneously or spontaneously, which is thinking about tomorrow and the ideas, but also living in the moment totally.

That big smile says it all. in the moment totally. On the first day of Aniavik in August, a cohort of roughly 15 students gathers by the harbor and heads off for a week at camp. It was actually over there. You can see that's what they call the breakwater, you know, for have calmer waters for people getting out on boats. And that was the very first day that we all had to meet each other to get on the boats to go out to Sao Lut, which is way over there. About an hour's boat ride in that direction. It's cold and you know, a bunch of strangers were all like, hi, awkwardly saying hello to one another I get a my cell phone I got a message from my mother saying oh hi I see you're

getting on a boat right now you're on your way out to Saqqut I'm like mom like how do you even know that like I haven't talked to you guys in a couple weeks like oh no I saw it on Facebook like how is it like oh your cousin posted that that she's on a boat and I saw you in the background I'm like my what and I look over and it was Elizabeth Ryan I'm like hi are we related and she's on a boat and I saw you in the background. I'm like, my what? And I look over and it was Elizabeth Ryan. I'm like, hi, are we related? And she's like, oh yes, all these different crazy ways that we're all connected and keep crossing paths.

We arrived on a very sunny, calm day at the campsite at Saqqot. We have cabins and tents and we all came together and had like an opening ceremony and explanation of what the week will be. It's only a week but it's intensive week like morning to night but you don't feel it because we're in our natural classroom but also our natural cycle. If you take like working on a seal skin where the women do out there, the whole process is from stage one to stage 17.

Qajak, it's when you take off the initial layer of blubber and then Majak is the second, when you take off the membrane on the seal skin, you wash it, awaseq. When you're sewing up the holes afterwards, avasek. When you put it on the frame, inik. When it's drying, iniasi. When you take it off the frame, iniuyak.

That's Sandy Vincent, a graduate of the program. Oh, and then you soften it, and you take off any other kind of layers of membrane afterwards with another tool called a tessitut, tessitut, um, kadakti, and uh, oh, and then you kind of roll it up into a ball and you stomp on it to help soften it and that's tukil. Being on the land, the weather is boss, you know, you can't change that and you have to work with it. And we had for a few days really high winds and it kind of blew the roof off the tent and we had items blowing around, we were cleaning sealskins and they were,

you know, smacking us in the face. And it just made us realize that this was part of life before and that that's something we have to work with. But we had so much fun, I wouldn't have changed, you know, that the wind. And then on the way home, it was calm again. So those winds came at the right time. Last year, I was part of a leadership cohort at work. And through one of our modules we got to go to Salok to Pilviks camp to do the Amle Angutit Makimanik, so the reclaiming the whole man and whole woman program and on my second day at camp I found myself speaking fluently to the point where

even my colleagues and friends I've had since high school looked at me and went, holy crap, you're fluent. And I just kind of went, oh, I am. And from there it was like, this is where I need to be. And I came back from that trip and told my boss. I'm from Iqaluit, or I live in Iqaluit, but I'm from Pangar Tongue. I guess you can call me a mature student, and I also have a daughter who's in college. So me and my daughter are both going to school at the same time. Yeah. Inuktitut is actually my first language. And so our Nelvik is designed for Inuit where Inuktitut is actually my first language and so Aunelvik is designed for Inuit where Inuktitut

isn't their first language, but as it's a good foundational course, this is where I want to apply. What is it that you think from the environment that you were in that helped you suddenly begin speaking so fluently? What's the connection? It's total immersion. All the instructors and all those working at camp are always speaking, you know, so that's what you're hearing all the time with interpreters there. If we need to, we can ask questions. But even just being immersed in that was enough to trigger

the language switch in my mind. Yeah. So it's an immersion in the language, but it's also an immersion in the culture. Absolutely, such an immersion in the culture. So when you're at camp, you are living camp life. Though we may have internet access and we're running, you know, fridges and ovens off propane,

we're still, we don't have running water, you know, we're still having to fetch water. We have to make sure the boats are good, we have to be aware of our surroundings at all time. If someone doesn't do their chore at camp, camp doesn't run. So we really rely on each other and that it's a really great way to actually bond with your class, kind of build a foundation in a safe place. You've described something you called young Inuit who have endured years of hunger to learn their own language. I'm just curious how you describe that hunger, what does it look like, and how people respond

when they finally address that hunger. I feel extremely small to answer because I see it through my own eyes. I witness it along with all my colleagues, especially when we have our cohorts out on the land, the answer is all there. Like when you're feeling so limited in expressing in your own language or when you're feeling limited because you haven't learned how to do some cultural skill. That really matters.

You have that feeling of, not just a feeling of insecurity, but also that feeling of void. If I'm in my 40s, late 40s, and I know I'm going to be a grandparent fairly soon, then you feel like, oh, I'm feeling inadequate because I don't have a lot of knowledge about my own culture. And then once you become in your 60s and you are becoming, you know, great-grand or a grand, or for that matter, the next generation of knowledge keeper to be.

These are natural stages of reevaluating yourself. But I think it's that early 20s, mid-20s cycle where you start to really feel like, where am I coming from? Where am I from? I want to know more about me. There was a time in high school, or in my youth, where I was not learning in Ututuk and I didn't think I needed it and it didn't feel so great and I didn't really know who I was because of that. What is it that knowing this language unlocks in you? Well for me it unlocks history, history, family and life lessons. I feel like Western society is very fast-paced, very aggressive, they

don't spend time to digest everything or think about things thoroughly. There's no time, you know, and I think with Inutituk I forced myself to slow down, to take it in, to digest it, to understand fully and what that means too. This is why I love poetry writing too, to take these ideas and articulate them and to be able to share that and to kind of connect those two worlds, if that makes sense. Have you gotten to the point where you're writing poetry? Yes, I have. I published one poem in Inuktitut with the Canadian League of Poets, I think. And I've written about three more goals to have a book of poetry. Around the same time, I also was working on writing a play in Inuktitut.

And so it kind of went hand in hand with my learning. The play is an original kind of creation story for Inuit talking about the origins of Takanaluk or Sedna or Nulayuk. Can you explain what that is? Yeah. Can you explain that please? So some people would explain it as she's the goddess of the sea, but really she's kind of more than that when I got into more stories and more histories,

which I was already really interested in because she's also very connected with tattooing and tattooing history. So she's kind of like one of the main figures in Inuit spirituality. And that would be relevant to any Inuit community, not just in Canada, right? Yep, all over. There are stories of her in Alaska, all across Nunavut, different versions, even in Greenland. It's one of the main stories that kind of encompasses all Inuit. What can you say or what did you want to do in Inuktitut in a play that you couldn't do in English? There's so much history and so much

emotion and Inuktitut can be very specific and it would take a few sentences to say in English what you want to say in Inuktitut. So originally I had written the play mostly in English what you want to say in Inuktitut? So originally I had written the play mostly in English, but there were some words and concepts that were included where I was like, this is the word we're going to use. And I got to understand the whole concept of that word through conversations. And then we had originally translated it into the North Baffin dialect, which is the one I like. But many of the actors were from South Baffin, so we translated it into South Baffin, actually with another Biblique teacher.

A lot of the conversations was really just understanding these bigger concepts and bigger words and kind of the nuances between the words that I was like, no, it's definitely this one. As she worked on the play and studied at Prahovec, Sandy Vincent fell in love with the feeling of finding the exact right word. We were talking about maybe a star constellation and what it was in Iuktitut. And I was really stuck on that. I'm like, okay. And then I'd ask my friend, I'm like, hey, do you know about this?

And she'd be like, hold on, let's call my grandma. So we'd like FaceTime her grandma. And her grandma would share the story and I'd hear her grandma say it in Iuktitut and then she would kind of help translate it. That was a really cool experience. Whereas, you know know something was mentioned in passing in class and I just got really interested and ran with it and and learned more than I

anybody kind of thought about. Speaking about family is a big thing because family members have names and they're not names that you, people outside the family would address them by. There's kind of a joke like, go tell baby that uncle said that brother was going to take him to the store later. Like, but only that person would understand which relatives you're talking about. And of course saying that fully in Inuktitut, it sounds weird when I just said it in English. Like, yeah, but if you were using those same kind of names in Inotituk for those people, it's almost more endearing. Like, Anik, brother.

Anikuluk, precious brother. Anikuta, tall brother. So because I have four brothers, I have Anikuta, I have Anikulu, I have a brother. Like I just call him brother. Yeah. And then I have anikuta, I have anikulu, I have a brother. Like I just call him brother. Yeah. And then I have anik. So even though all four brothers all have ani, you know, showing the relationship

that they are my brother, there is a affix to indicate which brother I'm talking about. In a layer that wouldn't happen in English. But it would sound silly for me to like, tall brother, tall brother, you know, or precious brother. But Anikulu sounds nice. Anikuta sounds better than tall brother. We had this unit where we're exploring family terminology, kinship terminology, which is

another whole, a whole other conversation because it's just one of those things the myriad it just explodes out the more you look into it I have found with connecting with my aunt here and talking to them I'm like I'm doing this kinship terminology thing and we're filling out family trees but then they also told me like well there's this treeable document which is there's this father treeable I think Anglican minister in the 1950s in Iglulik, who started to make family trees and take documents of everyone in the community and all their relations that they could remember. And so they had this and they shared it with me. And I was like, this is amazing being

able to, I can see going back like, you know, five or six generations of my Inuit side of the family. And so I of my Inuit side of the family. And so I shared that with the rest of the cohort of students, right, because we may have ties going back to the Galulik. And sure enough, we did. And that like three of us were related to one another and that we're all part of this kind of same family tree, all descended.

And like, we didn't know it at the time until we were all like, presenting to the rest of the class. And we're like, uh, presenting to the rest of the class. And we're like, hey, that's my same, like, ancestors. In Iqaluit, James C. is getting to know the place where his mother grew up, the subject of so many of his childhood stories. She was always a translator, you know, with her language, with the Inuktitut. And eventually that had brought her to Yellowknife. I mean, that's where the legislative assembly is.

And before Nunavut had become its own territory, before everything was just all the Northwest territories. And so my mom would travel in between Iqaluit and Yellowknife, just working at the different legislative buildings. As a kid, I never really got to come up here to Akali whenever my mom would be traveling. And so I've always hearing about this far off place that, you know, there's a land in Nunavut and it's filled with all of our people and the culture and traditions, everything that I've been researching and trying to explore, you know, it's all here. Now he works at Inhabit Media, the only Inuit-owned independent publisher in the Canadian Arctic.

When I sit at my office, I work at Inhabit and I'm working on translating with creative writing and everything. And it reminds me of her doing the same thing, of her sitting in her exact same office trying to buy her in Nuketut dictionaries. And now I have the same in Nuketut dictionaries and we're both kind of working in the same field and it's all centered around language. And this hunger for language, my mom having the same thing, you know, and that's how she decided that was her career was,

is helping Inuit, you know, being able to communicate, you know, whether it's through publishing or through like medical translating as well, helping Inuit receive the care that they need to achieve a bit of healing. And language is a vehicle for that, right? On Ideas, you're listening to Arnavac. It's the first of a two-part series on Indigenous language revitalization.

You can hear Ideas on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, across North America on U.S. Public Radio and SiriusXM, on World Radio Paris, in Australia, on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. Find us on the CBC News app and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayd. Hey, I'm Gavin Crawford, host of Because News, Canada's funniest news quiz. If you find yourself having a hard time tuning into the actual news, why not let us help by making it a bit more fun? Each week here at Because News we have some fun with the headlines, games, riddles, altered lyrics, voices, and more. It's like dropout,

but with news. Subscribe today on Spotify to never miss an episode. Why? Because News. Subscribe today on Spotify to never miss an episode. Why? Because news. Perhovec, an inuktitut language centre in Iqaliwit, is a building full of laughter. Whenever we walked down the hall to find a quiet spot to interview a student, we could still hear the rest of the class laughing in the background. That laughter isn't just joyful. It's healing. Especially for the students in Ornjavec, a course designed to teach Inuit adults Inuktitut as a second language. In Nunavut, more than 90% of Inuit 55 and

older have Inuktitut as a mother tongue, compared to just 65% of Inuit youth 15 and under. Many of the students in this course carry the complicated emotional baggage of having grown up without Inuktitut or having lost some of what they once knew. There have been times where growing up I have said something incorrectly and I have been told, hey, that's wrong or hey, temang unge. And it was done in such a way where I felt shunned, where I didn't want to try again because I was afraid to get in trouble. It's almost, I guess, embarrassing or feeling shame.

That's a feeling Ayu Peter knows well. She's a renowned Inuit rights activist who teaches in the program. Ayu was born in Greenland and sent to live with a white Danish family as a child. When she returned to Greenland at 18, she could no longer speak Inuktitut. Could you speak to what it is that you think you bring when you teach a language that you had actually lost at some point that maybe somebody who's spoken it their whole lives may not be able to bring? I bring a lot of laughter. We laugh a lot, which makes it a safe environment. The residential school instruction was so bad. They were in fear they would be beaten. They would be, you know, all those punishments. Christianity comes from punishment.

And the Western system comes from punishing and if you punish people like what are they learning? They learn to be in straitjackets, that's what. So with the teaching we do it in a fantastic, fun way, safe and they learn so fast. They were so committed, they were just like me, so hungry to learn the language and the culture. So you think that hunger that you had, the fact that you missed all those years, makes you understand them better? I would like to think so, because there's that insecurity that we feel, oh, I'm not good enough, I can't say it properly, I'm Inuit and I don't even speak my own language. I mean, all those things that come from the outside and you internalize it and you believe

it. I think the biggest challenge with learning Inuit Titok is unlearning lateral violence in all the ways that as a community, you know, with residential schools and federal day schools, language was taken away. And when the children came back and they didn't speak Inutiduk, that was such a heartache and heartbreak. You know, what is an Inuk without language? And that's something that people have kind of changed

their minds on instead of like grieving, they're now encouraging. Anyway, to learn Inutiduk, there's a lot more kindness and patience and understanding as to why this generation wouldn't speak or didn't have the tools to speak. In terms of language loss, my father is non-Inuk, but that family line has also experienced language loss. Moving to Canada, my grandmother and the family spoke Danish, but it sounded like German.

So when they moved to Canada, they were told not to speak Danish. So that was language loss as well. And for us in the classroom, there's correcting of each other, but it's done in a way where, you know, we're cautious of the tone and we're cautious of the way we approach it, saying, uxakannig'u, like, say that again, uxakannig'u. And so it gives us a chance to think about what we just said, to say it again, and understanding that we're all learning together. I mean, we're all at different levels, I should say.

Some of us are more fluent speaking, and some of us are more fluent writers or readers. So like, we're all in different points now. What about your daughter, where is she at in her ennictitude journey. My daughter has some understanding but doesn't speak and I was raised in a household surrounded by ennictitude.

My mother works for CBC. Yeah, my Salome. Oh my God, Salome, are you Salome's daughter? I was surrounded by Inuktitut. My mother works for CBC. Who's your mom? Salome. Oh my God, Salu. Are you Salu's daughter? Yes, I am. You're kidding me. Oh my God.

Oh my God. We spent a week with your mom two years ago in Pervinutuk. Oh yeah. Oh my God, that is hilarious. I want to scream. Salu Ava, Alexia's mother, is a senior producer at CBC Radio in Iqaluit, where she trains Inuktitut language broadcasters. I was raised in a radio house with Inuktitut on all the time.

My mom's siblings were in radio. My grandmother worked in radio. We always had the radio on, always inaudible playing, so I was always listening to that. And now when I raised my daughter, we didn't have the same kind of routine. And with technology now, we don't necessarily rely on the radio for news or information, so we don't always have the radio on. So we're missing the inaudut programming, that kind of thing.

But also English is very much the dominant working language. Actually, people within my generation and a generation before were kind of swayed away from using inuktitut a little bit because English was the dominant working language. And so it was kind of said that if you want to have a good job, you need to speak English. I think growing up we were told in the school system, look outwards, go out of Nunavut,

go to university and you need French for that. And Nutituk is not really necessary, you know, unless you're wanting to stay here. And actually I like to say, how do I say this, to be accountable to myself because I was a part of that generation and it wasn't just me, it was a lot of people in my peer groups that were like wanting to put Inuititut behind and quickly realizing as we went out into the real world, we didn't know who we were and then backtracking and trying to reclaim Inuititut and that's how for myself, I make sense in my world and how I make sense of the people around me, and I feel good.

What are you telling your daughter about language? For her, it's to hold on to what's dear. And I understand that, you know, she's at an age where language is not as easy to grasp. You know, she's an adult, a young adult, so it's a little bit more challenging. But I remind her that it doesn't make her less of an Inuk. It doesn't define who she is. Sorry. It's okay, please. Oh my God.

Because so much of our identity is stored in our language. So there are so many Inuit who don't feel Inuk enough because they don't speak. Yeah. Not that they can't speak. Yeah. It's just they haven't had the opportunity or the space to learn and that's that's the beauty of pelvic. So guilt that comes with that, is there? A little bit. But we create our own guilt. Guilt is not a feeling that's natural. It's something that we have created. So I try not to feel guilt.

Instead, I try to do what I can to change that feeling. So if I'm feeling guilty about something, let's say for a language for my daughter not knowing the language, then like as I'm doing right now, I share with her what homework I have or what I learned in class and it helps her to learn too because then she can see the grammatical structure of a sentence, how it's broken down or the different affixes and the root word and we can learn from each other. And I'm sorry I gave it a name and I should have just asked you what is it that you're feeling? Yeah, it's hard to say because it's a lot of feelings. I don't want to say resentment. I don't want to say guilt. It's a lot of like,

well, it could have been nice if, you know, we had learned together when she was younger or it could have been nice if I could have taught her when she was younger. But as, you know, we were learning in class, the saying is te me, what was I saying? Te me, I can't remember now, but it was basically like whatever, if it was meant to be, it'll be. So, you know, we can't go back. I can't go back and teach her when she was a toddler. I can't go back to teach her when she was a young child. What I can do is hold on to right now and teach her right now for the future. And so maybe if I have grandchildren, she can teach them too. So beautiful. Thank you for sharing with us. Thank you for coming here.

I'm sorry that we took you to a place that was painful, but it shows how important this all is. So at Saagut last year, I introduced myself as Qeqt-Duqq and that's something I am named with love as Big Cry Baby. My family members know me as Qeqt-Duqq because I'm a Big Cry Baby. You know, again, in Qeqt-D-Tuk it's endearing, it's really nice, but you wouldn't, you know, you to hear my dad say, hey big crybaby, it sounds mean, but it's all out of love. So these tears I'm known for and now my daughter is Khiatchuk, because she is a crybaby. Oh yeah,, so I was Khyatchuk,

but then once I had a child who was very much a crier when she was a baby, I was Khyatchuk-jouak, and she became the new Khyatchuk. That's part of the natural progression of life. One generation follows the next, and Inuit pedagogy is built around the life cycle.

I've even said at one time or another that I'm a real fan of the Inuit, even though I'm an Inuk myself. And I think it's because I get fascinated with the complexity of our Inuktitut language model, like a life cycle model of teaching and learning. It is so beautifully cycled from simplest to the most advanced. At one point, Alexia told me about a specific word in Inuktitut with no correlation in English. What's the left side of the sternum called in? I'm not, I'm not, in my learning journey, I am not that age. So I might be age in numbers, but in my learning journey, I'm not approached that age yet.

Students come to Arnavac because they want to grow, to reach the next stage of maturity in their language. I feel like I like to do the full circle from the beginning right to the end as an elder. I think this is the beginning and I'll just be inspired to grow and grow and to keep growing and to get to where we need to be. And the different courses at Bráhovec are designed to create that full circle. After Arnavec comes a program designed for functional inuktitut speakers. In other words, people who grew up speaking inuktitut as a first language and want to

study it at a professional level. Or people who have completed the Ornjavec program and are ready to keep growing. We call it Qimattuvik. Also relates to our cultural terminology, which used to be when we lived in our winter camps, we'd have spring, summer and fall camps all in different locations. Going off to our summer camp, we would leave our essentials that had great significance to us. We would drop them off under some, you know, a little overhang or like a little cave type structure,

say from the elements, to go back and pick up again in the fall. And that space is called Qimat Tuvik. So Qimat Tuvik, for first language speakers like me, taking the program, we encourage them, all the learning they do in that program, to store in themselves, in their intellectual base, to always come back. But this too is a transitional space. There are higher levels. Courses, even Prohovec's instructors are enrolled in as students. Ayu Peter, for example, is a student in a 21-course

Prohovec diploma program for in-nuk-tu-tut instructors. Even I, like I have a great deal of hunger to learn more about the rich traditional terminology of Inuit. And periodically I use some as metaphors when I speak because they're excellent for expanding my expression. But they would have been like a daily language in the years before. So I have this hunger to know more about the richness of my language that I should have been able to also possess at my very age today, but I don't, right? And I aspire as a teacher, but also as a vision keeper of the Olympic Center, to attain as much as we can for that level of top articulacy.

We will never reach it because many of our knowledge keepers are not around us anymore. But we have captured some essence of it by working with elders here for all these years. In this model, there is always room to grow. That spirit is reflected in the name of the center itself. So Pilvik in itself, a place to grow, is really honestly the best name for it because we're not just growing in language, but we're growing as a person. And then Alnelvik, a temporary resting place, this is intending that you're only here for a short time because you will grow and move up to the next level or move on to the next place. It's a reminder that I'm not here forever, that I'm not stuck at

this level forever and that I will only grow or move up from that. At a speech at the National Land Claims Coalition Conference, Lina told the audience, we as Indigenous cultures are in our Agnavic era. A temporary stop as we search for a permanent place of resilience, freedom, and self-determination. What does that permanent place look like? How do you get there? Well, it's still in an uncharted territory. I have no clue what is there, but I think it's the travel, the path that takes us there, however we equip ourselves, what tools we use to get there.

But how we get there is so much for us, by us. As Lina says, the journey is the destination. And it's a journey that's taking Brahovac students to very different places. For Sandy Vincent, writing her first play in Inuktitut has brought her to Greenland. I'm going to work with the National Theatre in Greenland and get some professional development and looking to improve my directing skills and learn more about that, which really was born out of this love for Inuktitut. And it's really enjoyable in Greenland where Inuktitut is just everywhere

and you're just surrounded. And if you go to Greenland, you learn Inuktitut almost. That's kind of the expectation. I mean, it's just really nice to work there where you're just surrounded in it all day. And through Inuktitut, Sandy and other artists can use their craft as a tool of cultural resurgence after decades when media from the South so often had the opposite effect.

So I remember hearing about television and when it was coming to what is now Nunavut communities and it was going to Iglulik, which is where I'm originally from. And it was kind of described as like this tool of cultural genocide, because there was no Inuit-specific or Inuktitut programming. And originally, it sounded like Igulik voted against television until there was more Inuit content, which is why I think the film and performance industry is very strong there. And so that knowledge that if we're

going to have this then we need to include Inuktitut, I think that's been there. It kind of seems like there's more motivation or more opportunity for Inuktitut production. For Jennifer Linda, learning Inuktitut has brought her closer to her family. So I have four children. They're all three years apart, the oldest being 15. And they've never really felt confident to speak the language, but just starting with Belfik in end of August, just a few months, you can see a huge change in our home already. It feels like where we always needed to be.

Same with working in the salon, I feel a lot more confident when my clients come in. I feel like I could understand them more and I could explain to them more about what they want. But in the home, I could see the pride in my mother too. She comes over and she speaks Inuktitut the the whole time now from when she comes in to when she leaves. She might try and translate if she sees us struggling, but it's given a big change. And I also can see how strong my husband is in Inup'itut and I never realized how strong

he was. So he's also a good teacher for all of us. Ashley Killevik-Savard is moving to Ottawa this spring, where she will continue on her journey of language reclamation. Right now I'm also a filmmaker as well, so I'm trying to... I haven't started any of the work to do it yet, but I want to do a documentary about the difficulties of relearning a reclaiming language. And I want to call it on the tip of my tongue.

Oh, I can't wait to watch that. Fingers crossed I get funding. For James Yffornier, this process has been quite literally a homecoming. He came to Iqaluit once as a child, the only time he remembers meeting his grandfather. I was young and he was unilingual. He only spoke In Nuktitut and I didn't speak in Nuktitut. So we couldn't really connect. I remember being in his house and just being, you know, I didn't grow up around the ocean. So we didn't really have a lot of like ocean foods like seal or whale. And so my grandfather, Henry of Ruachuk, he had a fresh seal in the other

room that were cutting up and just the smell was too much for me as a little kid maybe like two or three years old and just became overwhelmed and I started crying. My grandfather you know was trying to console me and he you know we can't really talk to each other and so he takes me over to his kitchen and he takes down a little box and he gives me like a little cookie and I smile and he smiles at me and that was kind of the only memory that I have. It was a peak freeing cookie though, I remember that with the little jam in the center. But what was neat is that working with Inhabit Media and coming to Akalawet and going to school at Pililovic, one morning I was having my morning coffee at the staff house with Inhabit

and I was looking out and there's a house in front of it. And later on that week, I go and I meet my aunt for the first time. I never met her before as an adult. And afterwards I was telling them the story about a grandfather's house. And like, can you show me when you, you know, when we drive back and point it out to me and I want to walk by there one day.

And sure enough, that was the house right across the street that I was spending every morning and looking at with my coffee. the street that I was spending every morning and looking at with my coffee. That's the thing with, it's neat with the language kind of because it's this lexicon, this whole perspective of how the world has been, was interpreted or is interpreted by Inuit for like, you know, for millennia. And you get to see kind of what was really valued, what was important, what needed to be defined among other things. And so these little moments that you find that, like I find there's a word specifically for going home.

It's called anirak. And that's, you know, if you were going home or your friend is going home or you're coming back from home, they have a word specifically for that. And that's that you know English does not right I don't know another language that does but it's just so important and needed and you realize in your day-to-day life that's kind of what you're communicating every like what are you doing a moment way home and you can see that how much value there was in that with home and traveling and anyway that's we do a lot of that. Verhovec, too, is continuing to grow. The Centre is in a transitional era on its own journey. Lina dreams of getting funding for student housing

and eventually making Verhovec a degree-granting institution. You talked about the inevitability of arriving, you know, of this happening, as you say. Does that come from your dream? Does it come because it's inevitable because it's right that this language is reclaimed? Where does that confidence come from? Well, I think I have gone through quite a bit of change, I would say obstacles as well as great opportunities. I am a person who's always open to learning and I have done quite a bit of rich building between the two cultures over my time but also I can't deny the struggle that we inuit still face today and I just do not want to be one of the people that watch and stand by the world go around

but I like to be part of creating a better tomorrow. After all I give great salute to our young leaders of the day when they decided to embark on the Nunavut movement. And that's a grand design of a vision. And we're manifesting it as I speak. On ideas, you were listening to Ahnyavic. It's the first in a two-part series on Indigenous language revitalization. Coming up next, a day in the life of Amigmaa Cape Breton High School. This episode was produced by Pauline Holdsworth, Associate Producer, Caitlin King. Thank you to everyone we spoke to for this episode. Lina Ivek, Alexia Cousins, Jennifer Lindahl, Ashley Kilavak-Savard, Sandy Vincent, and Jamesi Fournier. Jamesi was also

our consulting producer in Iqaluit, working with ideas to hold the first Massey Lecture in Nunavut and on a series of creative writing workshops. You can head to your podcast feed to hear the Iqaluit Massey Lecture, a special panel discussion on Inuit approaches to conversation, and my conversation with renowned Inuit rights defender Ayu Peter, who is a teacher and a student at the Prerhovec Center. You can also hear more from Ashley Kilivak-Savard and James Yffornier in our episode North on North. Thank you to the CBC Library Partnerships Program and the Nunavut Public Library Services for making our week in Iqaluit possible. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso.

Our technical producer, Danielle Duval. Our senior producer is Nicola Lukcic. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly. And I'm Nala Ayed. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.