Latest news with #HelenKalvakSchool
CBC
3 hours ago
- CBC
WATCH — Here's how some Inuit teens are keeping their cultural traditions alive
Students in Northwest Territories explain how to use these traditional tools Have you ever been to Canada's North? Like North of North? CBC Kids News visited Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories, at the beginning of April to learn more about how the youth there are keeping their traditions alive. Ulukhaktok is an Inuvialuit settlement on Victoria Island. It has a population of around 400 people, according to the 2021 Canadian census. A group from CBC Kids News partnered with the students and staff at Helen Kalvak School to help document a journey they took across Canada to Ottawa, Ontario. Our team met up with them in Ottawa, and followed them back to their community north of the Arctic Circle. What is an ulu? They showed us how to use an ulu, which is a tool used by Inuit across the northern hemisphere. It is a sharp tool that comes in a variety of sizes and is used for everything from cutting meat to snipping sewing threads. One of the community elders, Adam Kudlak, said that the tool was traditionally made by Inuit men and used by Inuit women. He also told us that the name of the community — Ulukhaktok — loosely translates to the 'place where one finds material to make ulus.' Click play to watch 17-year-olds Alyssia Irish-Memogana and Krissy Kitekudlak explain how this traditional Inuit tool is still used today.⬇️⬇️⬇️ Ice fishing, the traditional way The staff and students from Helen Kalvak School also invited us to join them for an ice-fishing field trip. Everyone on the trip travelled on snowmobiles, with some people packed into the back of wooden sleds. Teachers and students stand on a frozen lake during an ice-fishing field trip. The ice that day was between 1.5 and 1.8 metres thick, so there were no worries about falling through, even with heavy snowmobiles. (Image credit: Lisa Fender/CBC) The temperature that day, April 2, was around -25 C. The holes that were drilled in the ice were around 1.5 to 1.8 metres deep. Everyone used what the locals call an aulatit, which is a short stick connected to a line and hook. The field trip lasted a few hours and we only caught one fish: a lake trout! Click play to watch 17-year-old Keir-Anne Joss demonstrate how to jig to attract fish. ⬇️⬇️⬇️ How to make a fire starter We also learned how a traditional Inuit fire starter works. Earlier this year, Grade 7 students Bella Irish and Jimmy Memogana took home a prize for a fire starter they made. They won first place for the Passion Award at the Beaufort Delta Divisional Education Council's Wisdom Fest. Wisdom Fest brings together eight schools in the Beaufort Delta region to honour science, trapping and other traditional and modern-day skills. This fire starter was made out of a softwood block with four holes in it and a bow-like tool that comes from a muskox rib bone. Click play to watch Bella demonstrate how to use a fire starter. ⬇️⬇️⬇️ Have more questions? Want to tell us how we're doing? Use the 'send us feedback' link below. ⬇️⬇️⬇️
CBC
12-04-2025
- Science
- CBC
Students in Ulukhaktok, N.W.T., building app to preserve Inuinnaqtun language
'I'm hoping that it revitalizes [Inuinnaqtun], the speaking of it in our younger generation,' says elder Students at a school in Ulukhaktok, N.W.T., have teamed up with the British Columbia Institute of Technology to develop an app to help preserve the Inuinnaqtun language. An official language of both the N.W.T. and Nunavut, Inuinnaqtun is the primary Indigenous language spoken in Ulukhaktok and is also spoken in western Kitikmeot communities of Cambridge Bay, Kugluktuk and Gjoa Haven, Nunavut. But the small number of residents who speak it are growing older in both territories. In the N.W.T. alone, the territory said back in 2019 there were just 259 speakers. That's part of the reason it became a topic of conversation at a parent-teacher night at Helen Kalvak School. David Leitch, a teacher there, said parents and students wanted to do more with the language and together they came up with the idea last year to create a simple translation app. "As soon as we got into it, the kids had some pretty fantastic ideas about what they wanted to do, and one of the biggest ones was they wanted to capture the voices of their elders." Leitch said students started working on the project this year, and it quickly exceeded his capacity for programming – but there was a big breakthrough when they reached out to the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) for help. A group of students in a computer technology program there agreed to take the project on, said Leitch, and they're creating a large language model – a type of artificial intelligence – that's learning Inuinnaqtun now. The app is being called Echo of the North and once it's done, Leitch said it'll translate full sentences and will also feature recordings of elders speaking. When someone asks the app for a translation, it'll use that large language model to respond. Joanne Ogina, an elder in Ulukhaktok who has done some translations for the app, said she likes that it's preserving her language. She said Inuinnaqtun is rarely spoken, unless conversing with someone who is older. "I'm hoping that it revitalizes it, the speaking of it in our younger generation, because a lot of them rarely speak the language or even have a chance to hear it," she said. A lot more work to do Leitch said now that BCIT is helping out, students in Ulukhaktok are focusing their time on interviewing elders, recording their voices, and also uploading "every bit" of Inuinnaqtun to the internet so the AI program can learn it. "There's actually different dialects of Inuinnaqtun…. Depending on where you are or where you're from, where your family is from." To reflect those differences, Leitch said users will be able to flag a word in the app and add more information about how it's spelled or pronounced in another dialect – and those details will appear to users as well. Although students have been working hard on the project, Leitch said there's a long way yet to go. The artificial intelligence has learned the entire Inuinnaqtun dictionary but that means it can only translate word-for-word. "To really function, it's going to take months and years of our students and our community and elders putting the language, the sentences, the sentence structure, into the database [so] that the AI can learn the language well enough to translate it," said Leitch.
