Peter Ittinuar emphasizes communication in his run to lead ITK

Peter Ittinuar, Canada’s first Inuit member of Parliament, is running for president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. Elections will be held on August 16, where he will run against incumbent Natan Obed and Peter Williamson. (FILE PHOTO)

This is the second of the profiles of the three candidates running for the position of president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami to appear in Nunatsiaq News. ITK’s board of directors will pick a new leader in Inuvik on Aug. 16.

Canada’s first Inuit member of Parliament, Peter Ittinuar, says he’d prioritize more face-to-face communication and tangible action if he were chosen as the new president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.

ITK’s board of directors will elect the organization’s new president on Aug. 16 during its annual general meeting in Inuvik, N.W.T. Ittinuar is running against incumbent Natan Obed and Peter Williamson.

Ittinuar said he wants to see more headway made with improving graduation rates and addressing suicide rates. He also said his fluency in Inuktitut gives him an advantage over Obed.

“I like Natan. I don’t put him down. It’s not his fault he can’t speak the language and I know he’s trying his best to learn,” Ittinuar said.

“However, ITK is responsible for all Inuit in Canada. It’s no fault of his own,” he said.

But there are about 4,000 Inuit who speak Inuktitut only, and ITK is supposed to be the unifying body for Inuit, Ittinuar said.

Ittinuar said he was surprised to see how much money had been allocated to suicide prevention.

“I knew there was a strategy but I had no idea what they were actually doing. Is it working?… I have not heard what they’re actually doing.”

Addressing tuberculosis rates among Inuit should be another priority, he said. His mother spent time in a sanatorium, and so did he.

“Is ITK’s [tuberculosis] strategy working? If recent media reports are any indication, I think not,” Ittinuar said.

Ittinuar served as MP for the riding that has since become Nunavut between 1979 and 1984. He made a failed bid for Nunavut’s seat in 2008 under the Green Party’s banner.

Ittinuar said he’s spent almost his whole life working on Indigenous issues. He was once ITK’s executive director. Currently, he works for the Ontario government to help negotiate land claims agreements.

Born in Chesterfield Inlet, he spent one year in a residential school.

When Ittinuar was 12, he was selected to participate in a federal government social experiment. He and two other Inuit children were brought to live in an Ottawa foster home and attend an English public school, to “see how they’d fare.”

“It turns out we did OK,” Ittinuar said.

There were challenges. When he later went back north, he found other Inuit were unwelcoming to him for having grown up differently.

“Just because I speak Inuktitut, people think I am running on just that principle.”

“Language is absolutely critical to maintaining our identity,” he said, but there is more to his platform than that.

“How do we get our kids to school?” Ittinuar said. “We have less than a 50 per cent rate of high school graduates. That’s way too little.”

People often blame residential schools, he said.

“But at a certain point, a leader has to say, ‘Look, you still have to get your kid to school.’”