A background paper submitted to The National Aboriginal Roundtable on Lifelong Learning

The purpose of this paper is to briefly address some of the critical issues confronting Nunavut in – meeting the expectations of Nunavummiut originating in the signing of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, the rapidly increasing youth population, the acute housing shortage and the many other challenges the new territory has had to grapple with since April 1999. [...] As Inuit are roughly 85 per cent of the Nunavut population, that is the “representative level.” Significantly for the Department of Education Article 23 requires that this level must be “maintained.” Article 32 creates a legal obligation on the part of Government to provide “…Inuit with an opportunity to participate in the development of social and cultural policies, and in the design of social an [...] As the originator of formal education in the Eastern Arctic and as the current source of the vast bulk of the territorial government’s financial resources the federal government bears much of the responsibility for the current sorry state of educational outcomes in the territory. [...] This was acknowledged in a Memorandum of Understanding between the federal government and the Government of the NWT signed in 1992 in anticipation of the signing of the NLCA. [...] Nevertheless, the Department of Education recognizes that this fundamental need for culture and identity must be fostered by the education system and, given that the culture and life force of the Inuit language comes from pursuing the traditional life on the land, it is not likely that the schools can carry out this function entirely in from the formal classroom.