Recovering the Traditional Art of Sanikiluaq Basket-Making: A Case Study of the Development of a Community-based College Curriculum, with Inuit Women of the Belcher Islands

• Main Author: Cindy Cowan
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Belcher; Belcher Islands; Canada; Nunavut; Sanikiluaq; inuit
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.164.5371; http://www.ed.psu.edu/ICIK/2004Proceedings/section5-cowan.pdf

Historically and currently in Canada, as in most other parts of the world, indigenous people are not well served by the type of adult education typically envisioned and offered by the institutional mainstream, including the community college system. Even in northern Canada, where the population is primarily made up of people of aboriginal descent, college adult education continues to reproduce the values, beliefs, and biases of the dominant southern Canada culture, as they have done since the college system was established in the 1960s. My work in the field of adult education is situated in the community college system in Nunavut. Within this context I am enmeshed in the problems and possibilities of adult education as it relates to the situation of indigenous peoples. An important development influencing the provision of college programs in the Arctic was the creation of the territory of Nunavut in 1999 through a land claims process with the Inuit of the Eastern Arctic. With a population of 85 % Inuit, the new territory was created to reflect more clearly and to respond to the unique social, cultural, and political goals of the Inuit. Specifically, the legislated provision through the claims process to “increase Inuit participation in government employment in the