Nov. 14th, 2005

The past two weeks we have had many interruptions to the school week, so we have not had full weeks. My Dad told me that if I ever worked two days in a row I should demand a second cheque from Kativik School board. It has not been quite that bad.. but it has been bad. We lost an afternoon to furnace problems, a morning to no power in the village and then Friday was Nov. 11th. The week before was the death and burial of an elder.

Up here the 11th of Nov is remembered as the day the James Bay Agreement was signed. That was the beginnings of modern life and the start to some self-gov't for this part of the north, Nunivik. For the teachers it was a day to go to nursing for our flu shots. I spent most of Fri and Sat on the sofa with all the symptoms of the flu. I was just a tad nervous that I would be sick again after my long bout of illness last month.

But like when I was teenager, as the sun went down I felt my strenght returned and I was able to enjoy a wee bit of partying. That was so successful that we partied again on Sunday. We are all good cooks up here so when we get a bit of a holiday we out do ourselves. And the holidays allow our friends from different communities to hitch a ride to Salluit.

We had a major blizzard on Saturday. No run to the shops or post office . No one went out until evening. The teachers houses are all very close together... a good thing most of the time but a bad thing if you want privacy. Some of my students wrote in their journals this morning that it was fun to go out to play in the wild weather. Any storm is a potential problem as our power cuts in and out but the kids love it when it is stormy.

These days the sun hardly gets over the horizon..partly because the mountains are so high here. There is good strong light from 9 am to 3pm. With the full moon people are going to the mussel hole to gather them in. The tides are high like in Nova Scotia. The mussels can be picked right off the sea floor. Later in the winter, when the ice forms, people will crawl down thru the hole in the ice, pick the mussels and scamper back up. I will not be amongst them... but I will be home with the boiling water ready to cook . everybody has a job... but one of mine is not crawling under the sea ice.

I have been lucky enought to receives some newspapers from Toronto and Montreal. No matter how out of date they are, they are most welcome. There seems to be a great many people who live south of 60 who think they know the answers to the varied problems in the north. The answers are not as simple as they write. Life is changing rapidly here. There are diamond mines and nickel mines near Salluit. The north is opening up. Now to bring our people along with this development. The Inuit workers at this mines are very successful. Now to educate more and more people so they can work in these mines. The wealth from the mines is being distributed thru out the north. But like Premier Loughead in Alberta in the 70's the people of the north want the bulk of the processing done in the north as that is where the real wealth is. There are not enough people, at this time, who can successfully wrestle with big business for the fair deal. Their numbers are small but they are doing a good job. .. and things will get better.

Our Mayor here in Salluit is a good man, honest, well intentioned but he reads neither English, nor French. The educational system here has not been as successful as it could have been.. but we are getting better. More students attend regularly. More teachers dive into the community working hard to gain the respect of the elders. We are working together better these days. When time is devoted to Culture that means less English, French, Math or Science. Just like down south we have to figure out what is really inportant to be learned in school and what can be best learned from the elders outside of school hours.


The Inuit child is brought up differently than a child down south. The Inuit value a child that is quiet. Southern parents are always encouraging their child to be curious, to be verbal, to ask questions, to be on the go. The Inuit parents want their child to observe, not to ask personal questions, to think, to reflect. In my family Sara would be the typical Inuit child, and Aran the typical southern child. Even the first years of the Inuit child's education is in an Inuit classroom with Inuit teachers who are trying hard to break out of that traditional ways. Rome was not built in a day. Then the child comes to me who wants them to be so verbal... I am always asking what is seen as personal questions. Of course I bribe mine with chocolate to get them to talk. That gets them going every time.

Right now we are having a great deal of fun memorizing poetry. "In Flanders Fields" was abit of a h ard go but most of them did a fair job. Now we are on to some fun stuff.


Enough for today.
pearl