Kanguq - Automne / Fall 2013 | Page 12

Nouvelles de la FCNQ / FCNQ News\r\nDe notre interprète et traductice en inuktitut\r\n\r\nFrom Our Inuktitut Interpreter and Translator\r\n\r\n\r\nI cannot recall exactly what month it was\r\nin 1965 when my parents and the co-op\r\nmanagement in Puvirnituq decided that I\r\nwould be working at the co-op as a cashier\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n(cash registers still with handles) and earn\r\n15-18 dollars a week. I was 13 years old at\r\nthe time, and someone else was trying to\r\ndecide my fate. The Federal Day School\r\nteacher at the time, Mr. Mallon, argued\r\nthat I was about to finish grade 7 and that\r\nI would be eligible to go on to a higher\r\neducation but this had to be somewhere\r\noutside my community. However, my\r\nmother would not hear of it.\r\n\r\nSo it was decided that I would finish my\r\neducation, up to the highest grade available\r\nin Puvirnituq, grade 7; and work at the coop at the same time. They ingeniously set\r\nit up so that I would work Monday, go to\r\nschool on Tuesday and work on Wednesday\r\nand so on... to make sure I finished grade 7.\r\nThe reason it worked very well was that my\r\ngirlfriend took my slack at the co-op and\r\nvice versa. But we both worked together on\r\nFriday nights and Saturday all day cleaning\r\nup the store.\r\nI worked that way until 1970, and in\r\nthose years, Peter Murdoch and Father\r\nSteinmann were my mentors in all that\r\nconcerned the Cooperative movement. And\r\nthe information that I recieved from them\r\nbirthed my need to become autonomous\r\npersonally and collectively as a community.\r\nI was not afraid to dream for impossible\r\nthings after that period. And that became\r\na very easy thing to do at the time having\r\nexperienced both cultures being instilled in\r\nme by the environment around me.\r\n\r\nAfter becoming a mother I left the working\r\nworld and enjoyed the next fourteen years\r\nof the most informative career of my life\r\n(homemaking). I launched out again to\r\nthe outside world and found myself again\r\nin the co-operative movement. This time,\r\nhowever, it was at the FCNQ main office in\r\nMontreal in October 1989. Peter Murdoch,\r\nthe General Manager then, saw me as a\r\ntranslator and he even gave me an electric\r\ntypewriter, which I did not even know\r\nhow to turn on. This electric typewriter\r\nI was to use for my translation work was\r\naccompanied by an Inuktitut typewriting\r\ncourse booklet, which coincidentally, was\r\nwritten by Mick Mallon himself, the former\r\nFederal Day School teacher who lost the\r\nbattle with my mother to send me south to\r\nschool years before.\r\nAnd so from there I have never looked\r\nback. Lucille Murdoch was my teacher\r\nregarding office work and Peter Murdoch\r\npicked up where he left off (from 1970) as\r\nmy teacher in the co-operative movement\r\naspect, and Mean-Bonn Taing up until\r\ntoday is still my teacher in the computer\r\nworld. So I have had even better professors\r\nthan the ones I believe I would have had in\r\nthe Universities. Working with languages\r\nhas been my occupation for the last twentyfour years and a very educational career.\r\nCooperative Movement for me had\r\nsummed up my whole need to be an\r\nautonomous Inuk. Independant! What\r\nbetter satisfaction is there!\r\n\r\n