Far from home, she’s learning and growing alongside people just like her. Aggiu Dimitruk is originally from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut but she is now at school in Ottawa at Nunavut Sivuniksavut. She’s been pursuing her education for two years and she’s now at the Inuit cultural program affiliated with Algonquin College. The program covers language, culture, history, contemporary issues and includes performance. Her favourite parts so far have been performing and connecting with likeminded Inuit who share her goals. Learning her language has also been enjoyable. 

In her first year in Ottawa, she took a business program so this is her first year of the cultural program. A class called academic success and participating in counselling helped her get through her heavy course load in the previous year. Family support helped, too. Since she was young, Dimitruk has played sports. She plays soccer, hockey, basketball, and volleyball. She has joined leagues in Ottawa, played intramurals and played at outdoor hockey rinks. 

Her advice for Indigenous students thinking about leaving their home community would be, “I think it can be very scary thinking about leaving home and going out into the big world, but there's so much support for us as Inuit, and we really need to take advantage of it while we're young, especially because we can always go back home…. When you have motivation when you're young, I think it's a really good time to get out and just take advantage of all the supports that are available to us.” 

With so many activities and groups to connect with other Inuit, she thinks Ottawa is a good place to come to school. There’s TI which has foodbanks for students who want country food and she shares about how there are often many events happening. ITK is another organization that has activities and her teachers have connections to other Inuit in Ottawa and they get to go to performances or do crafts. 

If she could give her younger self advice it would be “You don't have to have it figured out, and there's a lot of room for trial and error in what you want to do. You can always try out so many different things, and there's so much support for us to be able to do this, to be able to try different programs and see what we like. Just be open to opportunities that may seem impossible at the time. There's so many resources that can help us make our dreams become reality. There's a lot of hope.” She felt a lot of pressure to know exactly what she wanted to do coming out of high school and she didn’t. 

When it comes to inspiration, Dimitruk looks to Nunavut role models like Jordan Tootoo and other prominent people who have found success. She also looks to alumni who attended the same cultural program she is attending like Nunavut’s premier. One of her friends who is in second year has also been an encouragement to her. She’s also been inspired to want to work with the proposed ITK university one day.  

Working with Inuit organizations over the summers has helped Dimitruk get a feel for the real world. She had the chance to try human resources and to surround herself with a supportive community full of Inuit. She worked with Arctic Child and Youth Foundation most recently and got to learn about societal issues and the resources that are available that she had no idea about.Working in different jobs is one way to learn about available resources and about different issues, Dimitruk has found. 

She might be far from home, but what she’s learning is close to her heart. Aggiu Dimitruk is learning about her language, culture, history and so much more while connecting with other Inuit at Nunavut Sivuniksavut. She started off in business but she found her way into the cultural program that has inspired her so much.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.