Deline & Learning English in Korea

Deline, Northwest Territories. Photo: Eilís Quinn, Radio Canada  International Saturday, March 17, 2012

Deline, Northwest Territories

I can’t stop thinking about a conversation I had with a local Dene woman when I was in the hotel this evening.

We were taking about education in the Northwest Territories and she brought up how unfair it was to the aboriginal population that they weren’t educated- from kindergarten through to university – in their own langauges.

The example she gave me was how she grew up speaking Slavey at home, but was never educated in it.

Then, when she went to school, she was educated with an English-language curriculum from southern Canada that had no relevance to her day-to-day life.

“Now, I don’t speak either language fluently,” she said. “Why do they do that to us?

“It would be like forbidding people in Korea to be educated in Korean and focing them to be educated in English only. Would that seem fair? Than why do they do the same thing here?”

Write to Eilís Quinn at eilis.quinn(at)cbc.ca

Eilís Quinn, Eye on the Arctic

Eilís Quinn is an award-winning journalist and manages Radio Canada International’s Eye on the Arctic news cooperation project. Eilís has reported from the Arctic regions of all eight circumpolar countries and has produced numerous documentary and multimedia series about climate change and the issues facing Indigenous peoples in the North.

Her investigative report "Death in the Arctic: A community grieves, a father fights for change," about the murder of Robert Adams, a 19-year-old Inuk man from Arctic Quebec, received the silver medal for “Best Investigative Article or Series” at the 2019 Canadian Online Publishing Awards. The project also received an honourable mention for excellence in reporting on trauma at the 2019 Dart Awards in New York City.

Her report “The Arctic Railway: Building a future or destroying a culture?” on the impact a multi-billion euro infrastructure project would have on Indigenous communities in Arctic Europe was a finalist at the 2019 Canadian Association of Journalists award in the online investigative category.

Her multimedia project on the health challenges in the Canadian Arctic, "Bridging the Divide," was a finalist at the 2012 Webby Awards.

Her work on climate change in the Arctic has also been featured on the TV science program Découverte, as well as Le Téléjournal, the French-Language CBC’s flagship news cast.

Eilís has worked for media organizations in Canada and the United States and as a TV host for the Discovery/BBC Worldwide series "Best in China."

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