Pitquhirnikkut Ilihautiniq
Kitikemot Heritage Society
Access to Online Cultural and Linguistic Learning to Sustain a Vibrant Inuit Workforce
The Pitquhirnikkut Ilihautiniq / Kitikmeot Heritage Society is building on learning that took place in 2019 with Makigiaqta’s support and continuing to strengthen the foundation to deliver a long-term Inuinnaqtun Mentor-Apprentice Program (MAP). This program pairs a fluent speaker (Mentor) with a language learner (Apprentice) for 300 hours of one-on-one immersion. This year, the PI/KHS is developing an online course to support participants in their introduction to Mentor-Apprentice programming, protocols, and approaches. This course will be piloted live, with regular live sessions, but also recorded and available in a downloadable format where participants can go through at their own learning pace. The project will help support Mentor-Apprentice teams across Inuinnait communities or wherever they live.
The PI/KHS is also working on the development of an online learning portal, which will house the MAP virtual course. This portal will become a repository that contains all kinds of digital content for Inuinnaqtun revitalization, including online language courses, global Inuinnait collections (objects and archival material currently stored in cultural institutions around the world), step-by-step photo and video demonstrations of traditional technologies and other artistic and cultural forms, and more. The learning portal will be developed locally in Cambridge Bay, facilitated by Pinnguaq through a series of workshops designed to train budding software developers.
This summer, our partners spent a week filming segments of the online course. The concept was teaching the main principles of Mentor-Apprentice through a traditional Nuu-chah-nulth story. In this photo, we’re behind the scenes as the story of the Son of Raven unfolds.