Create Nunavut education channel, IBC urges (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Nunavut
October 26, 2007

Create Nunavut education channel, IBC urges
“I do not want to speak English now. I’m an Inuk.”

JIM BELL
http://www.nunatsiaq.com/news/nunavut/71026_633.html

With Johnny the Travelling Lemming watching your back, there's no good
reason to ever call it quits.

Johnny, the well-known puppet character from the Inuit Broadcasting Corp.'s
Takuginai children's show, popped his furry head up in Iqaluit this week to
help IBC officials make a pitch for the creation of an educational TV
channel for Nunavut.

Okalik Eegeesiak, IBC's chair, and Debbie Brisebois, IBC's executive
director, told MLAs on the the legislative assembly's Ajauqtiit committee
that such a channel could be modeled after provincial services such as TV
Ontario or Télé-Québec.

[photo inset - For more 20 years, children have learned Inuktitut from
watching the Inuit Broadcasting Corp.’s puppet-based program, Takuginai.
IBC has been forced to cut back on the number of episodes it produces each
season, because of declining revenues and an APTN policy requiring English
translation.(FILE PHOTO)]

The IBC officials had been invited to give Ajauqtiit an oral submission on
the Nunavut government's proposed new language laws.

They pointed out that it's getting harder now for IBC to continue its
25-year-long role as a promoter of the Inuit language - because of
declining funds and new policies adopted by the Aboriginal Peoples
Television Network.

In recent years, APTN has produced slick, youth-oriented aboriginal
television shows that have increased viewership and brought in new revenue
from advertisers. Two of those programs won Gemini awards this week in
youth-children categories.

But those new offerings are in the one language that most young aboriginal
people in Canada share - English. At the same time, IBC has seen its Inuit
language production drop by more than half.

"While at one time, IBC has the capacity to produce close to seven hours per
week ... we are now producing only three hours per week," IBC said in a
written submission dated Aug. 17.

That's because APTN now requires that Inuit-language shows such as Takuginai
be run with English-language text translations running across the bottom of
the screen, creating a new expense for the cash-strapped IBC.

"There wil be less new Takuginai shows because we have had to use our
limited resources for Johnny to learn and speak in English," Eegeesiak told
MLAs.

To make this point, Johnny refused to speak English at the committee
hearing.

"I do not want to speak English now. I'm an Inuk," Johnny said.

The IBC officials say they get about the same amount of money from the
federal government now that they were getting in 1990, when Ottawa reduced
grants to aboriginal broadcasting societies. Taking 17 years of inflation
into account, that adds up to a cut, IBC says.

The Nunavut government has given IBC between $250,000 and $350,000 a year
since 1999, but the broadcaster must apply for it on a year-to-year basis,
depending on specific projects.

In contrast, IBC received fixed and guaranteed annual funding from the
Government of the Northwest Territories before 1999, IBC said in one of its
written submission.

Eegeesiak and Brisebois told MLAs that a Nunavut education channel could
serve several purposes: a better vehicle for IBC programming, and a vehicle
that the Department of Education could use to offer education programs,
including Inuit language instruction.

To that end, they're urging that the Government of Nunavut bring a group of
partners together to produce a feasibility study on the creation of their
proposed TV Nunavut service.

They also want IBC to be given one of the five member positions on the
proposed new Inuit Language Authority that would be created by the Inuit
language protection bill.