Intergenerational transmission in Iqitauvik and Tumiapiit Childcare centers, Nunavik, Quebec Arctic - Ariane Benoit

Since 1981, children from Nunavik attend to preschool institutions, called childcare centers (CCC). In this environment, educators make use of communicational practices to guide them, in particular when emotional tensions arise. To study the expression of silatuniq in CCC, specific interactions are described and analysed. Commonly defined as wisdom, silatuniq encompasses a set of social skills and values needed to be respectful towards others at all age (B. Annahatak, 2014). These selected situations are part of an ethnographic work gathering data collected during observation practices and interviews with mothers and educators living in Kuujjuaq in 2014 and 2015. While using non-intrusive means of communication, adults indirectly encourage young children to act in a similar way. Their knowledge of education favors such skill development and young children integration of social standards. In addition, witnessing young children « inconvenient » behaviors can be a possibility for adults to deepen their own system of values. A comprehensive approach of child-adult relationship could consolidate intergenerational bond. By comprehensive approach, I mean adopting an extensive and reflective view of this relation. It would then require a full commitment from adults who are not merely « transmitters » of knowledge, but also actors of their own development while interacting with children. To that extent, education involves situations of co-transmission and co-development.