Launch of the Coady International Institute Indigenous Women in Community Leadership Program, June 7, 2010, Gatineau, Quebec

Nakumiik. Merci.
Thank you for that kind introduction...
And for the invitation to join you for the historic launch of
The Indigenous Women in Community Leadership Program.

Your Excellency, honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen…
As some of you may know, this is an important year for Inuit. We are calling it the Year of the Inuit.
It is an opportunity for us to celebrate our achievements and inspire future successes.
And it is the spirit of celebration and inspiration that bring us here tonight.
When we invest in young aboriginal women, we celebrate their achievements and we inspire them to become leaders in our communities.
They, in turn, inspire us and other young aboriginal men and women. And they expand our thinking of what is possible. Of what we are able to achieve with the right investments, the right partnerships.

I am delighted that Governor General Michaelle Jean is here tonight.
Your Excellency, you and I share similar passions:
Passion for developing the potential of our youth.
For building healthy communities.
And we both recognize the importance of education in achieving these goals.

For those of you who are not aware, Her Excellency took time away from a very busy schedule two years ago to join Inuit educators in Inuvik for a landmark summit on Inuit education.
It was the beginning of our work on drafting a national strategy for Inuit education – work that will reach an important milestone later this year as we release our strategy and begin the process of implementing our goals.

Thank you, Your Excellency for your continued support.

A constant theme in our work on the national strategy has been the importance of community-based leadership.

We have been examining promising practices in Inuit communities and around the world to learn from and build on these successes.

Earlier this year, for example, 21 Nunavut women graduated from the first-ever Masters of Leadership in Education program to be offered in our homeland.
Like your program, the Nunavut program involved an essential collaboration between the Government of Nunavut, the University of Prince Edward Island and a university many you know well: St. Francis Xavier.

The thinking behind this ground-breaking program was this: Investments in education build future leaders.

We have learned that such investments can help us rebuild our education systems and recover from the traumatic era of education policy characterized by residential schools.
An era that shook our belief in ourselves.

Our work today in setting up new governments…
And reviving our language and cultural heritage…
Is about transforming ourselves – reclaiming our identity, and developing the skills necessary to be leaders in our families, our communities, our regions and our country.

My own history in leadership has been strongly guided by my early years in northern Quebec.

As a young girl, my family and I lived in Kangiqsualujjuaq, on Quebec’s Ungava Coast. We lived a traditional lifestyle, speaking only Inuktitut, travelling only by dog team and eating only food that we hunted and gathered ourselves.
My father was originally from Manitoba. Yet he adopted our culture and learned to speak several dialects of Inuktitut.

We lived in a tent, and with the wood stove blaring hot, my grandmother Jeannie would teach us the stories of our past. She taught us that family bonds were at the core of our culture.

Those early days grounded me in my identity as an Inuk.

When I turned 6, my family moved to Kuujjuaq so that my brothers and sisters and I could begin federal day school. Until then, we had learned simply by observing the actions of our elders.

I remember how strange it seemed to suddenly find myself at school, where the rules were entirely new, and the teaching methods were different than anything we had ever experienced.
And it was all in English!

We were punished if we spoke to our friends in Inuktitut, the only language we knew.

There is a word in my language – illiranaqtualuk – that means, essentially, “the white man has power over us.”
It was the term elders used when referring to white men and it was what my grandmother used to say to get us to listen.

She would say “Qallunaq Illiranaqtualuk qaiilangayuk,” which means “The white man will come and get you if you do not behave.”

When the going gets tough, I think of this expression and it gives me the determination to carry on.

Determination is an essential quality for me, and for many aboriginal leaders like me, working in a largely non-aboriginal world. And a very diverse world it is.

This diversity can be summed up in a joke that is often told throughout the Arctic.
An elder is asked what the definition of a vegetarian is.
And he replies: A bad hunter.

One of the great quotes on leadership comes from Henry Kissinger:

He said: “The ultimate task of a leader is to take his or her society to where it has never been. But this requires a willingness to travel on the difficult road between a nation’s experience and its destiny. She is bound to be alone at least part of the way until experience catches up with possibilities.”

This is especially true for aboriginal communities. That difficult road between a community’s experience... and its destiny... is a road nurtured by leadership.

Your goal is no less than to help our young women draw the maps they need to navigate that road.

Let me take a moment to acknowledge the leadership of the Coady International Institute, the Imperial Oil Foundation, and the Exxon Mobil Women’s Economic Opportunity Initiative, which are responsible for this unprecedented partnership.

But I would be remiss if I did not also recognize the criticisms being leveled at big oil companies because of the horrendous events taking place in the Gulf of Mexico as we meet here this evening.
My views on offshore drilling in the Arctic are a matter of public record.
We must do everything in our power to prevent such devastation from occurring in the Arctic.
Such a spill must never be allowed to occur in my homeland.

Yet I also recognize the good that can occur when corporations use their power to improve social conditions throughout the world.
This evening is proof of that.
Nakumiik. Merci. Thank you.