Lost in the immense hype of it recently being 20 years since I came to Nunavut is the less-known 20th anniversary of Nunavut being created. That happened on Monday (April 1st). This is of course a time to take stock of where Nunavut is at and how we are making out.
This, along with the collapse of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, have come together in my mind and have me thinking about the barriers between us and the futures we want.
Here’s the ending: As we look back on 20 years of Nunavut, I think it is helpful to jump forward 20 years and look back on the next 20 years – see our future past.
But first, a look at the distant past:
There was a time when I was a baby.
Just ask my wife.
No, no, no. I mean there was time when I was actually a baby – only a few months old. I couldn’t walk or talk. I would hit myself in the face by accident with out-of-control arms. I have long since learned to walk , talk, and minimize the number of times I hit myself in the face, but I try to remember that I used to be like that, even if I don’t actually remember it.
I remind my children frequently that there was a time that walking just seemed almost impossible for them. Now walking is so easy they don’t even think about it, and they can do even more advanced manoeuvres such as hop and spin and skate. I suspect that inside their heads they are shrugging and saying, ‘whatever, dad, everyone can do those things, it’s just natural. It’s not a big deal.’
Well, it’s not a big deal now. That’s the way we are with things we can do. We quickly adapt to the new normal and carry on. When I tell my children this, it is because I want them to see that things that seem super hard now can be mastered with perseverance.
Things we can’t do are walls in front of us. Big, smooth, strong, hard walls that go on for ever to the left and right so we can’t get around them. I picture a terraced hillside like the Mayans built in the steep Andean mountainsides, or rice fields in Thailand. Once we climb the wall, we walk along at this new, higher level, then we hit the next wall.
Unlike rice fields, our personal and societal walls are often very high and very demoralizing. So my thinking is, if we know we’ve climbed walls like that before, it really should help, shouldn’t it?
Well, I do think it is worth remembering that, but the trouble is, once you climb the wall and start walking, you can’t even see the wall you just climbed. All you see is the next wall.
We live our lives in the shadow of the walls we have not yet climbed.
In the case of governments and organizations, they are often better than individual people at reminding themselves and everyone else what walls they have climbed already. For one thing, they are often more tangible than the walls we climb personally – we can see their statistics, or see the program that was created. For another thing, they have a need and an opportunity to defend their record – to shareholders, to their membership, to their employees, to their publics. Perhaps we as individuals should have an Annual General Meeting of our own and report back on our accomplishments for the last year. We might surprise ourselves.
As for looking ahead, I think organizations are the same as people – they fluctuate between thinking they can accomplish ridiculously ambitious things and just trying not to fail spectacularly. With organizations, though, they get smoothed out most of the time because of the number of people involved, and the weigh of them, which provides inertia to speeding up, but forward momentum that prevents slowing down or changing direction too quickly. Organizations are run by people, though, and can choose in what direction they carry their momentum. Those people will see walls looming in certain directions and react to them like individuals do.
In most cases, that means avoiding them if they can. Maybe not consciously, maybe out of fear, or lack of confidence, or lack of momentum, or maybe just procrastination. What does that look like? Studies, reports, incremental workplans, conferences and the climbing of any little walls that can be found in the area. These aren’t inherently bad activities, but they are tools that can be used to avoid the big walls.
I think we need some examples.
Happy Anniversary, Nunavut
It is a time to celebrate the benefits of Nunavut – Inuit self-determination, Inuit governance over many of their own programs and affairs, growing raw Inuit employment numbers, and the entrenchment of Inuktitut as a official language of the territory, and the government, and as the primary working language of our Legislative Assembly. These are important accomplishments.
It is also a time to beat ourselves up for all the problems and challenges that remain. Two that are particularly salient: that Inuit employment in the Nunavut government was supposed to reach 85% by 2020 (representing the percentage of the population that is Inuit), and Inuktitut was supposed to be the core language of the school system also by 2020. In both cases the current state of affairs is not much different from 20 years ago, despite both being priorities for the last 20 years.
I don’t know which half of the glass is dominating discussions around the water coolers and dinner tables, but the public discourse has thankfully been civil and generally positive, which I think is appropriate at a moment of celebration. At the fireworks Monday I heard the occasional snippet of Happy Birthday being spontaneously sung to Nunavut. It reminded me that I am proud to be Nunavummiut (a person from Nunavut).
Nunavut’s Big Walls
The smoke has cleared from the fireworks, and the moment of proud reflection is replaced by the day-to-day realities once more. What are we going to do about our problems that all feed each other? Overcrowded housing, educational attainment, trauma, mental health, unemployment, and a sieve economy, where the money all drains away to southern Canada?
We need to see over the wall – see our future pasts. Look back on our currently problems as if they have been conquered and we are on top of those walls. See ourselves in 20 years looking back on now and saying “yeah, remember those times when Inuktitut was threatened, when housing was a wall we couldn’t climb, and when we couldn’t get enough high school or university graduates to fill key jobs?”
It takes some hard imagining. It needs to be less grainy than the vision of 85% Inuit employment and bilingual education with Inuktitut to grade 12. How do things look when we look back? We see the fears that were converted to understanding. We see the doubts that were converted to facts – one way or the other – and that we built on, bit by bit. We see the acts of courage converted to a society wide normal when others follow the courageous. We see confidence and we see the sacrifices that we made to be successful.
Now we need to put on that confidence, and get ready to do the hard thinking and take the risks and sacrifices it may take to get there. This second part – thinking and sacrificing – is key. I have seen too many times where we have wanted something oh, so badly, and we run straight for it only to smack into the wall. Hard. After a few smacks against the wall, we lose confidence. Now we alternate between stagnant resignation and irrational exuberance.
Canadian Women’s Hockey League
In other news this week, the Canadian Women’s Hockey League announced it is folding. This at a time when women’s hockey is still on the ascendency. The Clarkson Cup was shown nationally live in Canada and the US. Women hockey players showed off their skill at the NHL skills competition. Participation rates for girls in hockey are at about 87 000 in Canada. That is not far off the rates of hockey for both genders in Russia (110 000), and is more than both genders in Finland. Yes, really.
What is the problem? Where’s the media? Did you watch the Clarkson Cup? Did you know it was on? Did you see ads for it? Did you feel the hype around town?
Even as hockey participation for boys is off its peek and women’s hockey and other sports are on the rise, men’s hockey dominates the TV landscape. About 30 years ago TSN took the world Junior Hockey Championships, which no one watched, live or on TV, and turned it into a thing. How? Through attention and hype. Using that, and looking back at a future past, can’t we see a time when women’s hockey is in a similar position? Women’s tennis exists very competitively along side men’s tennis. There is no reason hockey can’t be the same, except that it takes media companies to see that as a reality and climb the wall to get there.
Seeing our Future Past – and Going There
Meanwhile, back here in Nunavut, we need to see a future where learning Inuktitut is the norm – children in schools, and newcomers through courses, apps, employers and the community. We need to see a future with graduates pouring out of our schools and into higher education and top jobs. We need to see a future with a developed economy that recirculates money in the north, supporting northern manufacturing and retail. The wild west isn’t that wild anymore. Mining towns become diverse cities. Places do change. We just need to look back at how far we have come, and project ahead to how far we can say we have come 20 years from now. Then we just need to shelve the reports, ignore the little walls, and scale ourselves to new heights.
We did it as babies, we can do it now.
References:
Statistic on hockey participation in different countries:https://www.statista.com/statistics/282349/number-of-registered-ice-hockey-by-country/
Statistic on girls hockey in Canada: https://sports.vice.com/en_ca/article/8xa9j5/how-the-sports-landscape-in-canada-is-changing
