Bringing Diverse Backgrounds and Perspectives to ESDC - Jalen's Story

Transcript

I'm Jalen Tagurnaaq. I come from a small town of 2,000 people, from Baker Lake, Nunavut. It's the geographical centre of Canada.

I'm a second-year Sociology student at Carleton University, and I work as a student advisor in Indigenous recruitment, retention and advancement

The main objective of my job is to increase Indigenous representation in the government. I set up career fairs, I create communication products, I tell people I know about the work that we do here. And I feel like my work at ESDC impacts my community even if it might be subtle. Because it'll encourage people to make that step to hand in an application to start a career.

As an Indigenous person I came to work for ESDC because I'd never spent a summer outside of Nunavut and I was interested in working in a line that was related to my background. Coming from Nunavut, I've always found that a lot of people don't know a lot about Inuit and that's not their fault. It's just that education on Nunavut is not very often taught widely. So getting the chance to spread knowledge about my people, and to see that people were actually interested, made me feel good.

I feel that it's important for Indigenous people to work in ESDC and the federal government because getting that different perspective on things helps shape policy in a manner that is inclusive of everybody, and it helps the groups that are often left out.