Nunavik school board names new director general: Annie Popert

Annie Grenier, who is retiring as director general of the Kativik School Board, accepts a gift from KSB president Alacie Nalukturuk June 21 in Montreal. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE KSB)

Annie Popert is returning to the Kativik School Board as its director general, a position she held previously from 1983 to 1992. (FILE PHOTO)

The Kativik School Board said good-bye June 21 to its director general Annie Grenier, who is retiring after 15 years in that position.

On June 23, the KSB announced Grenier’s replacement: Annie May Popert, who returns to the position she held from 1983 to 1993.

Popert starts work on July 18.

“The Commissioners and the staff of the Kativik School Board thank Annie Grenier for the successful years she spent with the Board,” said a June 23 news release from the KSB. “They welcome Annie Popert back, and look forward to working with her for many years to come.”

After Popert left the KSB in 1993, she became an independent consultant working on health and educational projects.

Popert also served Director of Adult Education from 1982 to 1983, and from 1979 to 1982 as Centre Director of the school in Kuujjuaq.

In 1999, Popert was appointed as a Nunavik commissioner, charged with developing recommendations on the new Nunavik government’s structure, operations and powers.

Popert later had misgivings about the Nunavik commission’s recommendations for a new regional government for Nunavik, saying it was compromised by a narrow vision as well as political interference.

The Nunavik Political Accord, signed in November of 1999, gave the Nunavik Commission a mandate to “develop a timetable, plan of action and recommendations… as the basis for the discussions to create a government in Nunavik.”

But Popert said commission’s final report fell short because it sidestepped such important issues as Quebec sovereignty and native rights.

The commission has also lacked independent legal counsel, she said.

Popert did not sign the final report, the 100-page Amiqqaaluta, or “Let us share: Mapping the road to a government for Nunavik,” when it was tabled at Makivik Corp.’s 2001 annual general meeting in Kuujjuaraapik.

Earlier this year, Popert maintained she was unjustly fired from Nunavik’s board of health and social services, which had hired her to re-assess youth protection services in Nunavik and ensure that these programs included Inuit culture and values.

“Anytime we talk about making changes, people get scared and I don’t know why,” she told Nunatsiaq News.