Topic spans: 1957 - 2002
An Inuit Education: Honouring a Past, Creating a Future
While Inuit parents were being moved from igloos to houses in the 1950s, their children were being assimilated into the Canadian education system. In the worst cases, children were taken from their families, harshly disciplined and stripped of their culture. Only over the past 25 years have the Inuit been permitted a voice to speak out about how their children are educated. After so many years of feeling marginalized by formal education, the Inuit today are a people trying to correct the damage.
9 television clips
4 radio clips
Adaptation, evolution and control
Broadcast Date: May 8, 1969
White teachers, Inuit students and several points of view. It's 1969 and opinion is still divided among the Inuit population. What is the value of an English education, particularly in a place 2,000 miles from Montreal, inhabited by 400 Inuit and 20 white people? This perspective, and many of the others expressed by Baffin Island teacher Lorne Smith, seems preposterous to CBC Radio reporter Marianne McCormick. Why wouldn't they want to be a part of the modern world?Adaptation, evolution and control
• Traditional Inuit education was passed on from elders to children and intertwined practical skills with cultural values. Traditional Inuit skills included hunting, meat and pelt preparation, sewing, building igloos and navigating on land and water. The Inuit also have a rich tradition of oral storytelling, music, dance and craft. Respect for the environment is an integral part of traditional Inuit knowledge.• Observation is central in traditional Inuit learning. Children learned by watching adults and were encouraged to try skills on their own. Children going through the federal school system would have been away from their families and divorced from their traditional upbringing for the first time in the history of their culture.
• One of the most common misconceptions about Inuit assimilation was that once Inuit young people had tasted city life, they wouldn't want to go back home to their harsh arctic environment.
Adaptation, evolution and control
Medium: Radio
Program: Matinee
Broadcast Date: May 8, 1969
Guest(s): Lorne Smith
Reporter: Marion McCormick
Duration: 7:19
Last updated:
March 26, 2008
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13 clips in this topic . page
Radio
14:37
Mrs. A interviews a young writer, Farley Mowat, and asks his wife Fran how she managed meals and housekeeping in a bush tent way up north.
Topic
When dump trucks roared in to ship Africville residents out, it seemed like a good idea to city planners. By the 1960s, years of neglect and racism had made Halifax's oldest and largest black neighbourhood one...
Adaptation, evolution and control.
The CBC Digital Archives Website.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Last updated: March 26, 2008.
[Page consulted on Feb. 15, 2012.]