Tuberculosis documentary shows healing through sharing stories

Iqaluit’s Astro Theatre was filled with people Tuesday evening for the première of a documentary that follows a group of tuberculosis survivors and youth as they find closure over their forced relocations decades ago.

Between the 1940s-1960s, the federal government transported thousands of Inuit to southern sanatoriums for tuberculosis treatment without their consent or without informing them about what was happening.

Many Inuit never returned home.

Taqqut Productions joined hands with The SeeChange Initiative to create Our Elders are so Important to Us: A Tuberculosis Sanatorium Healing Journey, a 29-minute documentary that follows youth and survivors as they connect over these relocations, in an effort to provide healing and closure.

“If we value our elders as much as we say we do as Inuit, why not listen to their stories,” asked Naomi Tatty, the intercultural health lead at SeeChange, a non-profit and one of the leads for the documentary.

“Why not put their words out there and help us younger generations, and the generations ahead of us, understand what our families went through?”

She was on site for the screening and to help facilitate discussion afterwards, at the Storehouse.

Tuberculosis is an airborne bacterial disease characterized by a cough, weight loss, night sweats, and a fever. Without treatment, it can cause serious complications and death.

In 2025, a group of TB survivors who had been relocated while sick, alongside others who were affected by the relocation of family members, made a journey to the former Mountain Sanatorium site in Hamilton, Ont. While there, they shared their history with youth and discussed how tuberculosis continues to affect people to this day.

Astro Theatre was filled with survivors, youth, health-care workers and community members to view the film and participate in the discussion afterward.

The idea for the healing journey was sparked by former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s 2019 apology over TB sanatoriums, and his subsequent announcement of the The Nanilavut Initiative, a collaborative project that helps Inuit locate family members who never came home.

Tatty told Nunatsiaq News that her mother, or anaana, Ida Atagoyuk, was a TB survivor who spent three and a half years alone in treatment. She was present when the apology was given. But she wondered, Tatty said, what else was being done for healing. The 2025 healing journey was a product of that question, and the documentary followed.

Tatty also highlighted the importance of youth for facilitating healing how important it is to share stories.

“Hopefully there’s a ripple effect of the younger generation to be able to have a mindset of understanding and to gain that knowledge and more understanding towards their upbringing and their homes,” she said to Nunatsiaq News.

Tuberculosis is still a crisis within Inuit Nunangat, and Nunavut has the highest rate of active tuberculosis of any province or territory in Canada.

So far this year, there have been 32 tuberculosis cases reported in seven communities.