It would seem that, in the end, one of the consequences of honouring women's stories, is that our definitions of literacy are radically challenged.

• Working with women and their lives in a literacy program challenges the definition of literacy in a very concrete way.

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• This business of discussion versus supposedly literacy-reading and writing-gets very confusing for me. And I'm still trying to work it out. I'm beginning to feel that the point of view here is really that the expression, the verbal expression, is valued. But that varies depending on who you're with.

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• The women who came to our evening upgrading-I know one that was even afraid to go out and now she talks and she visits around and almost seems a different person. Like when she talks with somebody... now she's outspoken. She just turned around...

  I didn't see any improvements, great improvements, in her writing and reading skills, but her attitude and the way she acts towards the world is completely different now. And that is what I call literacy. She took control of part of her life that she wasn't controlling before. And to me that's literacy. Learning how to do things for yourself.

  And we see a lot of that. It's almost like watching a garden grow. Flowers blooming. That's what excites me is to see other people find themselves, how to watch out for themselves, help themselves. Because, I think especially here, women have to learn how to be proud of themselves, to think they're special, build their self confidence. And once they get over that, they can almost do anything. If they want to do upgrading-they'll succeed. But if they keep on saying, "I'm just a woman. I'm just an Inuk. I don't have any skills..."

  They are special, I think. Until we learn to help them see that, I don't think we can do much more. We can drill them and drill them with mathematics and stuff like that. But what good is that if they won't use it because they lack self confidence?

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• I mean for me literacy means access to information... And sometimes the information is that there is nowhere you can go.

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• I think that a lot of things get talked about here. They get talked about because something happens and everybody will talk about it on staff. So there seems to be concern. And yet, lots of times, whatever we've thought about or we've said we would do, doesn't go anywhere.

  And, actually, like again, I think that some of it has to do with the fact that literacy isn't considered to be-like that isn't the main work of literacy, dealing with that stuff. Although we all know that we do, to some extent. But because it's not clearly acknowledged it's hard to find the time or the place or the way to go through what you wanted to do or what everybody said they wanted you to do. And to actually feel that you're dealing with what you're feeling. And so I think that we probably talk a lot more about issues than we actually act on here....

  I don't really know how to make a transition. I haven't known how to make a transition from a place that was about dealing with that to a place that doesn't have any mechanism for dealing with it. Even though people talk about it...

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