Adult education was an integral component of the colonisation of the Canadian Arctic. Between the 1960s and the 1990s, educational programmes were explicitly developed in order to shape Inuit adults in particular ways: from teaching them how to live in permanent houses, to teaching them how to work as administrators and tradespeople. Inuit did not unanimously embrace such programmes. This article examines how Euro--Canadian adult educators during the 1980s made sense of Inuit resistance to schooling. Educators perceived resistance in terms of 'problems' relating to student attendance, punctuality, attrition and work habits. Educators interpreted such problems in terms of individual deficits of motivation and sometimes linked such deficits to cultural or social factors. Educators offered 'solutions' ranging from moral exhortation to social marketing campaigns and community-based research. While this article describes how Euro--Canadian adult educators interpreted the resistance of Inuit students, its implications are of value to scholars and practitioners working in a range of contexts where educators and students have different cultural, demographic or socio-economic backgrounds. The article provides a nuanced account of what it is like to be an educator in an environment where many adults do not appear to welcome the education being offered to them.