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January/February 2009 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Nunavut Feature: Royal Ontario Museum Feature: Hero school The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations À la carte

Feature story: Nunavut Territory of unrequited dreams More... Sidebar: Project Naming Map: Explore Nunavut Photos: Life in Nunavut Videos: Pond Inlet   Throat-singing teens Info: 10th Anniversary Celebration Resources Library and Archives Canada

Judy Kunnuk Maktar pulls her black tank top down over narrow hips and tosses back the thick, waist-length mane of hair she’s been growing since she was three years old. Then, with the cheeky flourish of Hilary Duff or Alicia Keys — her favourite recording artists — the 11-year-old performs an Inuktitut song and dance she learned in school. There’s barely enough room to contain the fancy footwork in her modest public-housing unit in Pond Inlet, Nunavut, a community of 1,300 across Eclipse Sound from the glacier-encrusted peaks of Sirmilik National Park. After my applause, she offers an encore of giggling gymnastics, bending backward like a supple reed until her hands touch the floor near her feet, three necklaces dangling near her nose. She later presents me with a tissue rose she made for me during recess and a card with my name written over and over in Inuktitut syllabics. She is thrilled to be hosting someone from somewhere else.

Maina and Jacobie work hard and yet seem to have little to show for their exertions. Judy and her brother sleep on mattresses on the floor, and there are blankets on the windows. The kitchen holds tonight’s dinner but not much more. There’s no Nintendo Wii, no rug on the linoleum tile, little adornment save for Christian icons, family photos and some children’s artwork, but the Maktars are generous, and they give thanks before eating.

I ask Judy what she wants to be when she grows up, to which she replies, “A telephone operator.” Her father winces.

“Why do you want to do that?” he asks. “It’s too easy. I would rather you be a lawyer.” His words and this spartan home — like so many spartan northern homes — remind me that even though a decade has passed since Nunavut was born on April 1, 1999, two threads still compete to unravel and mend this place: scarcity and aspiration.

There are not enough senior accountants to audit government spending here, not enough teachers or doctors or Inuktitut-speaking police officers — there never were. Houses are still scarce, and so are fresh vegetables, furniture, university graduates, hardware supplies, fishing quotas, computers and affordable airline tickets. This family and this territory survive one paycheque to the next.

Despite these acute needs, the Nunavut government dreams of making Inuktitut the working language of government by 2020 and has just passed a pair of language laws that legislates its use in the public service, municipal offices, courtrooms, clinics, schools and private businesses. It’s a cultural victory, to be sure, but prohibitively expensive given compliance deadlines, Nunavut’s limited control over government revenues and the insatiable infrastructure demands of a new territory.

But Nunavut has always been stubborn that way. Just as the tundra’s ubiquitous lichen clings to rocks, erodes the surface and grows by micrometres each year, so does Nunavut change: slowly, bewilderingly. Momentum seems impossible in a place where adversity smothers any sign of progress. On the surface, anyway. Look closer, and you’ll find individuals for whom Nunavut has given hope and opportunity, people who inch forward not in spite of scarcity but because they’ve lived with it so long that it’s normal. That’s why little girls in Pond Inlet can sing and dance and become lawyers if they so choose.