Simon's Narrative

Source  https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1329333584407/1329333802557#chp4

3. Simon (from an Inuit community in Nunavut)

My name is Simon and I'm 15 years old. I live in Nunavut¹⁰. I've lived here all my life, but I was born in Yellowknife because all pregnant women from our community are flown down to Yellowknife, 500 km away, to have their babies. We don't have a hospital here, so all babies in my community are born in Yellowknife.

I live with my dad, my mom and my little sister, Maureen. My dad's name is Thomas. He's a good hunter. He takes me out hunting a lot. He also works for the municipal office fixing their vehicles. My mom's name is Bessie and she works at the elementary school as an Inuktitut language teacher. And my sister, well, she's my little sister! I joke around with her a lot.

I go to the high school here in town. I'm in Grade 9. I've got lots of classes: English, social studies, math, but I think my favourite is inuuqatigiitclass. It's our Inuit culture and language class. We learn about reading and writing Inuktitut and we also make Inuit stuff like drums¹¹, harpoons and qamutiik (a sled we pull behind our snowmobiles).

A typical day for me would be get up, have a shower, eat a quick breakfast of cereal and then go to school. School is pretty much the same most days — classes, come home for lunch, go back to more classes. Something different we just had at school last month was a health fair. Students were presenting projects on things like STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) and the community nurses were there handing out free stuff like condoms, posters, food and prizes.

After classes, I usually go the school gym and play sports. I just made it on to the high school basketball team. One of the RCMP officers coaches us. We're practising to get ready to go to a tournament in Cambridge Bay where we'll play against other communities in the region.

After dinner, I have to do homework and, sometimes, I go up to the school gym to play sports again and hang out. The gym is just about the only place to do stuff in the community. There's usually a sport like volleyball, basketball or indoor soccer up there every night. There's really nowhere in town where kids can go to hang out. I've been to other communities and they've got arcades with video games.

I usually sleep in late on the weekends and then go and hang out with my friends. Sometimes though, I go hunting with my dad. When we go hunting, we have to pack up our sleds and get the gas the night before, and then we have to get up really early. It usually takes a few hours of driving on the snowmobiles to find the caribou. Then, once we've shot them, gutted them and tied them on the sleds, we drive back. It's usually a long day of work by the time we get home.

Sometimes, our whole family goes out camping. I don't think it's like camping down south. Camping for us means that we all go out on the snowmobiles and sleds. My mom and sister sit on my dad's sled and I drive my own machine. We bring a tent, food, stove and other stuff so we stay out overnight for the weekend. In the summer, we use four-wheelers to go camping. We spend a lot of time also at our cabin during the summer. It's a small cabin along the coast about a day's boat ride from the community. We sometimes spend a few weeks out there fishing and hunting. My dad is the one who taught me how to hunt. It's always great to spend so much time out on the land. Last summer, we were together at the summer cabin with my mom's sister's family and with my best friend Jacob. I think I would get bored if I was in the same community for the whole summer.

My dad, my mom and Jacob are the most important people for me. My dad's important, because he teaches me stuff, like how to hunt, how to skin a caribou and where to shoot them. I look up to my dad, because he's a good hunter. He knows a lot about the land and about the animals. He knows where to look for them and how they live. I look up to him, because he has these skills and he teaches them to me. He's a good teacher. He knows how to deal with challenges. My mom is important, because she gives me good advice. I guess they both give me good advice, but my mom always helps me with my problems and with homework. My friend Jacob is important, because he's my best friend. We do everything together.

Jacob and I go to the gym a lot. We go there to play basketball after school and on the weekends. I guess we also have the arena for hockey too, but that's only got ice in the winter. I play left defence on a community team during the winter. A third place we go is to the stores. Lots of kids hang out outside the Northern Store or Co-op. Those are the two main stores in town, but they have all kinds of things — everything from food, to stereos to clothes.

I'll always remember the time when an arctic sports tournament was held in our community. It was a couple of years ago and was for people from all over the region. The tournament is about playing arctic sports which are all Inuit games¹², like the two-foot high kick, the one-foot high kick, the knuckle hop, the ear pull — there's lots of Inuit games! I like doing arctic sports, especially the one-foot high kick. You play it by running up to kick a little stuffed toy seal that they hang from a string attached to a stand. You have to jump from two feet, kick the toy seal with one foot and then land on that same foot without falling over. It's hard to do!

My language, Inuktitut, is a big part of Inuit culture and of being Inuit. Playing Inuit games and drumming are some other things. How to hunt and sew are also important, I guess. I'm part of a drumming group at school. We sometimes perform for special events in the community. I learned most of that stuff from my dad and the Elders.

Every time I talk with an Elder, I learn stuff. I'm always learning new Inuktitut words from them. The Elders also come to our drum dancing practices and teach us things about the dances. There are so many different kinds of songs and dances¹³.

We speak Inuktitut at home most of the time, although we speak a lot of English at school. I speak both English and Inuktitut with my friends. Some of my friends don't speak Inuktitut that well. I think it's really important to speak Inuktitut, so I can learn my culture and speak to the Elders. Most Elders don't speak English very well, so you have to speak Inuktitut to learn from them. I think it would be good to be bilingual and speak Inuktitut and English. I think it's really important to know your culture. For me, that means being a good hunter or knowing how to sew. I go hunting a lot for caribou, seal and birds. I think that hunting and being out on the land helps me to maintain my culture. I also have my Inuit language and culture class in high school. That helps too. The environment is really important, because it supports the animals and us. We eat things off the land, and it's important that the environment stays clean. There's more and more pollution up here and that's not good for the animals. People say pollution gets into the animals we eat. We need to keep the environment clean so we can still keep eating caribou and seal¹⁴.

Good people would know their culture well and provide for their family, like having a good job or being a good hunter. They would also have to respect their Elders, their parents and their peers. It's really important to respect the Elders and do things like get groceries or ice for them. A good person also wouldn't drink or do drugs. Good leaders need to respect and listen to the Elders, and should know both Inuktitut and English really well. They should also not do drugs. It's important that they're a good role model. I guess they would have to find some way of getting jobs up here. I think a big challenge here is that there needs to be more jobs. There are lots of people without good jobs in the community, and a lot of young people are going to need jobs soon too.

It's really important to finish high school so you don't end up with a crappy job. I think it really hurts you if you don't finish high school. Most jobs now say you at least have to have a high school diploma and also you need to be bilingual in English and Inuktitut. There are kids in this community who skip out of school. I think they should finish school. I hope I finish high school and then go on to some kind of college in a few years.

I really want to become a pilot. I've been looking into pilot schools, but there's only a few in Canada. I'd have to go to places like Moncton, New Brunswick, or Calgary, Alberta, if I wanted to study to become a pilot. I guess I'll have to move away from here for a few years to do that. I think a lot of my friends will have to do the same. Maybe some of them will still be in high school in four years! I'd like to live in Nunavut when I'm older, but I think I'm going to have to move away for awhile so I can go to university or college, especially if I go to pilot school. I don't think I'll be able to just stay here if I want to have a good paying job. Although, I really like hunting, so if I want to be able to hunt I'm going to have to find some way of living and working here.

Nunavut is our territory and there's mostly only Inuit that live here. So, Inuit are the ones who have been elected into the government. To me, self-government means that Inuit are in control of the government.

A lot of southern Canadians think it's really cold up here. They probably know about the darkness during the winter. Some of them might think we still live in an igluvigaq¹⁵ and get around with dog teams¹⁶! I was actually down in Ontario a couple of summers ago and we were driving in a taxi. When the taxi driver found out we were Inuit, he asked us: "Do you live in igloos?" I bet most southern Canadians get their ideas about Inuit from TV or movies. They probably only see the stereotypes of an igluvigaq and a dog team. I think more people should come up here to see it for themselves. We have a different language and culture in Nunavut, so that's different than down south. It's still part of Canada, and I bet most Canadians never see the arctic. I live in Canada, so I'm a Canadian. I live in Nunavut and Nunavut is just as much a part of Canada as anywhere else I guess.

I think if people wanted to know more about Inuit¹⁷, they should come up here to visit and see Nunavut for themselves. We've got a totally different language up here and a different culture too. There are lots of things that are similar like the TV and southern food, but I think they should see the land. It's so different from the land down south. If you came up here to visit, I'd take you out on the land. Maybe I'd take you out by the big lake south of here and if you came in the winter, I'd take you on a sled and let you see how cold it is. I'd give you some tea when we got there of course — to warm you up! I'd make sure you had some warm clothes too. Maybe we could go on my snowmobile to some places on the sea ice and go hunting for some seal. I think it would be good for you to see the land up here.