Internet culture doesn’t suit everyone

By Karyn Pugliese

No bookstores grace the small and remote towns of Nunavik, Quebec’s Arctic region. Books must be ordered by air mail. But suddenly last year, electronic information rushed in and pounced upon the communities of Kuujjuaq and Salluit, only to miss its mark.

A pilot project called NunavikNet brought the Internet to Kuujjuaq and Salluit for less than a year. Just as Inuit youth were swerving onto the electronic highway, overwhelming costs severed the link to both communities.

So far most people living in the North are only vaguely aware of the Internet fad raging in urban centres. The Internet may be a privilege, but there is no consensus on whether or not it is a privilege the people of the North can live without.

Taqramiut Nipingat Inc. (TNI) and its partners, a diverse group of government, private and non-profit organizations, want to wire northern communities, says Montreal based TNI’s director-general Normand Pelletier.

They have applied to Industry Canada for funding to build computer centres in Nunavik. Computers and modems will be donated by IBM, TNI will install them and users will pay a fee to access the Internet. TNI hopes funding will be made available sometime next year.

So far cost has been the greatest barrier to linking the North. Renting satellite time costs $5,000 per month for each locale and that is too expensive for small communities like Salluit and Kuujjuaq, with populations of 800 and 2,000, respectively.

If Salluit and Kuujjuaq manage to reboot their Internet links, users will likely pay long-distance charges to a server located in urban Canada.

“It’s a tool for information, like a library,” says Pelletier. “Some kids go to school in the south and when they go home they’re lost. There’s no library. They get completely cut off.”

Internet access would allow Inuit youth to access information more easily, but wiring the North also means the Inuit must adapt to a new tide of urban culture.

TNI is also Nunavik’s radio and television broadcaster and is experienced at addressing cultural concerns. When cable brought American telecasts to the North, TNI developed original Inuktitut language and cultural programming to offset the influx of U.S. cultural products.

“We are there to ensure they don’t have to just watch (Beverly Hills) 90210. This is about balance,” says Pelletier. “I’ve got friends who are going on the Net and still going hunting and fishing.”

Still, northern lifestyles are not always compatible with urban technology, says Andrew Southworth, a former journalism student at Carleton University who spent a year studying the impact of the Net on Salluit and Kuujjuaq.

Adults don’t have the time to orient themselves on the Internet. When rumours of a nearby caribou herd reach the adult school in Salluit, parents bolt from the classroom to hunt for their supper, says Southworth.

“Many adults in the North are too busy for the Internet. They’re busy surviving,” says Southworth. “A lot of adults in the North said they didn’t need the Internet. They’ll tell you, ‘I don’t need this. It doesn’t give me a job.’”

Most adults also faced a language barrier and lacked the technological skills to use the Net, he says.
But teenagers enjoyed using chatrooms and describing life in the North to cyber-friends as far away as the Bahamas and Australia, says Southworth.

Pelletier agrees young people master the Internet more easily, and with more enthusiasm, than adults.
“They (adults) have gone from the igloo age to the computer age in fifty years. But the kids going to school are starting at the same place as kids here (in urban communities),” says Pelletier.

The impact of the Net on Inuit lifestyles will ultimately be decided when people discover, for themselves, the benefits and pitfalls of the technology, says Paulusie Saviadjuk, formerly Salluit’s Internet co-ordinator.

“We want to see what it is, what it can do and if it can be of use to us,” says Saviadjuk.