When the annual supply sea-lift arrives in a few weeks in the isolated community of Clyde River above the Arctic Circle, the 830 residents will be receiving more than their normal supplies. Building supplies for the new state-of-the-art Inuit cultural school will also be arriving.

The new school, Piqqusilirivvik, is going to be so different from conventional schools that government officials are saying that it shouldn’t even be referred to as a “school”.

The cultural learning center has received $10 million from Nunavut and $24 million from the Canadian federal government. Once built, it won’t have any affiliation with the territory’s education department and students won’t need to have stellar grades to be accepted to take classes in its “learning studios”. And, perhaps most importantly, tuition and living expenses won’t have to come out of the students’ pockets, but will be paid by the territory.

While there are currently cultural programs across Nunavut, Hugh Lloyd, the center’s project coordinator, said that many elders consider the programs inadequate, especially those that are associated with conventional schools, mainly because they don’t take into consideration weather or hunting conditions.

“Elders found it very frustrating that when they would just get going on something, people would say ‘We’ve got to go back now,’” Mr. Lloyd said.

Piqqusilirivvik, which means “a place that has those things important to us,” was in part inspired by Greenland’s Knud Rasmussen Folk High School and will concentrate on the present and preserving Inuit culture, not trying to correct past injustices.

The 2008 territorial report about the new learning center states that the center “should not be viewed as a means of correcting past errors. However, it should help students to adjust to modern life stresses by renewing their self-confidence and sense of identity.”

Piqqusilirivvik is scheduled to open its doors in April of 2011 and the plan is to admit 26 students from across the territory who are over 18 and have the support of their community for their studies.