National Inuit Education Accord * Iqaluit, Nunavut * April 2, 2009

 

 

Remarks at the Signing of the
Inuit Education Accord

April 02, 2009
Iqaluit, Nunavut

 

Mary Simon
National President, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami

 

Ullukut everyone.

 

Happy tenth Birthday Nunavut!

 

Minister Strahl, Premier Arreak, Minister Agglukark, Minister Tapardjuk, Mr. Kaludjak, Jim Lyall and other distinguished Inuit leaders, elders, our honoured young guests, friends.

 

Thank you for joining us today for an event that I hope history will record as a milestone in Inuit education.

 

I believe we are at a point in our modern history… where graduating more kids from our schools, is considered our number one priority. I say this because… ‘all trails lead back to the success or failure of our education system’:

 

• If we are going to improve our health care system, and incorporate our own knowledge alongside modern healthcare practices, we need to dramatically increase the number of Inuit nurses, midwives, and doctors in our system.
 
• If we are going to develop a world class wildlife co-management system that values Inuit knowledge, we need more Inuit policy makers, and scientists.

 

• If we are going to develop an education system on par with the rest of Canada, producing bilingual graduates, proud of their Inuit heritage, we need more Inuit teachers, and Inuit curriculum specialists, administrators and education scholars.

 

We are going to need mining engineers to assess our resources,  and sovereignty specialists to protect our interests, lawyers and computer technicians… and it begins here….with you… our young citizens.

 

Our school system must be a place that you want to come to… everyday…to learn our language …to learn about our rich history …and ultimately…be a place that opens the world to you. 

----------------------------------

Last April, ITK hosted the first-ever National Summit on Inuit Education in Inuvik. We invited Inuit educators, curriculum specialists, policy advisors, elders and education leaders to gather and talk about what was working in Inuit education, and where the gaps remained.

 

When you get Inuit educators and education specialists together... talking to one another over three days …as they did in Inuvik… the remarkable thing was to hear about the range of successes that were occurring in our classrooms whether it was in newly developed Inuit centered curriculum, or in early childhood language programs or in the classroom practices that were working best for Inuit students.

In other words, it would be a mistake to think that we are starting from scratch in developing an Inuit education system model.  

 

What we need to do now, is to take the success stories in Inuit education … and turn them into strategic investments across our education systems…with the aim of boosting results at a quicker pace than what we have been achieving thus far.

 

As a result of today’s Accord, over the next 12 months a National Committee on Inuit Education will work toward determining what those strategic investments should be …to boost results in our education system. They will produce the first ever National Inuit Education Strategy. 

 

------------------------------------------------

Less than a month after his historic election, President Obama announced that his government would be making a $165 billion dollar new investment in the American education system…to graduate more kids.

 

The emerging economic giants, India and China have made significant investments in their education systems so that their own citizens can take the jobs created by their booming economies.

 

We are standing at the same threshold! 

 

With the era of negotiating our land claims now behind us, we stand at a point in our history where our future success depends our getting our education system right. 

 

Getting our education system right will take a commitment and leadership by our governments, so I am encouraged that Minister Strahl, the premier of Nunavut, and Ministers and representatives from our provinces and territories are here today to demonstrate their commitment. Thank you for being here.

 

Getting our education system right will also take a commitment and leadership from parents. We must get up every day and demonstrate to our children that their education is important to the family and vital to our success as Inuit.

 

As the saying goes, “it takes a community to raise a child.” If we all do this, this will encourage our kids to stay in school and study hard.

 

Getting our education system right must also involve a historic investment in educational leadership in our schools …leaders who will transform our schools, and be the reason why you the students will get up every day and come here.

 

Let us put ourselves in the position of saying that the signing of the Accord was the moment when we agreed that we cannot allow another year, another month, another minute to slip by without fundamentally improving the educational outcomes for Inuit.

 

Nakurmik.