Igloolik will celebrate suicide-free year tonight

MICHAELA RODRIGUE
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — This fall, the people of Igloolik will celebrate their first suicide-free year tonight, when they kick off their community channel’s new fall television season with a three-hour, live TV special on Igloolik’s Channel 24 .

This milestone falls one year after Igloolik Isuma Productions joined forces with the Inuusiq youth group last year to launch a new anti-suicide program. Their show tonight can be seen only in Igloolik.

For years, Igloolik residents had debated and discussed the rising tide of suicides in their community.

Isuma began training Igloolik’s youth in video and film work at the Tarriaksuk Video Centre last year after two suicides touched members of their staff.

One year later, a new production company developed by Isuma and Inuusiq is providing Igloolik’s young people with new career opportunities. They’re also preparing to open a new youth drop-in centre.

Igloolik has been free of suicides for the past 12 months, said RCMP Cpl. Bob Smith, though he said there have been numerous suicide attempts during that past year.

An Isuma news release says Igloolik’s suicide rate had climbed to an average of four to five suicides a year before Isuma and Inuusiq joined forces. But this year, Igloolik will celebrate a suicide-free year

“I would never say we single-handedly conquered suicide in Igloolik,” said Norman Cohn, Isuma’s secretary-treasurer. “What I know is if I wake up some morning and some terrible thing has happened, at least I can look at myself and know I’ve done my best.”

Isuma and Tarriaksuk approached youth committee president Eric Nutarariaq a year ago with an offer: If youth group members wrote an outline for a video about their lives and the reasons behind suicide, Isuma would train them in film-making and find money to finance the project.

Now, 15 Igloolik youths are on staff and are paid by Isuma Productions. Their salaries come from money raised by Isuma.

Nine young people have been trained in acting, writing, camera work and editing. Four others have been trained in video production.

Members of the new Inuusiq Productions team are now creating a film, and will produce some of the programming on Igloolik’s Channel 24. The youth group was also behind the idea of bringing a circus troupe to Igloolik this past summer.

Nutarariaq has worked on youth issues for five years. During those years he has asked the hamlet council for a building to use for a youth centre. But cash-strapped governments were of little assistance.

“We couldn’t get any support,” Nutarariaq said.

But Isuma was able to find the money for the TV project from groups such as Telefilm’s Canadian Television Fund and the Canada Council’s Millennium Arts Fund, because a film was going to be produced, Cohn said. Other groups, such as the Kakivak Association and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, also contributed money.

“If you’re having trouble getting funding for your elders, you can make a film about elders and get money through a film-making budget. If you’re having trouble getting money for your youth, you propose a film about youth and you create 15 jobs,” Cohn said.

The project shows that real resources and real job opportunities are the solutions to Igloolik’s suicide rate, Cohn said.

Inuusiq Productions hopes to have their film completed and ready for national broadcast by next spring.

While the final concept still isn’t final, it may include other TV shows that Inuusiq has produced, footage of the circus they brought to town this summer, and footage from Igloolik’s new drop-in centre. The building for the drop-in centre was donated by the hamlet of Igloolik.