Nunavik leaders struggle with youth protection challenge

Pita Aatami, president of Makivik Corp., and Sylvie Godin, vice-president of Quebec’s human rights commission, Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse, prepare their notes for the Sept. 20 release of a report on youth and protection services in Nunavik. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

KUUJJUAQ — A Sept. 20 press conference in Kuujjuaq held to release a grim new report on youth protection services in Nunavik turned into a lengthy discussion of what must be done to make life better for many of the region’s children.

Pita Aatami, president of Makivik Corp., did not gloss over the slow progress on youth protection issues since 2007 that the Quebec’s human rights commission noted in its most recent report.

“Unfortunately, it takes time. We have to talk about it. We can’t stay quiet about it,” Aatami said.

Parents have been urged to take better care of their children, he said, but sometimes “it’s fallen on deaf ears in a lot of cases.”

The report found that one in three Nunavik children have been reported to youth protection workers.

As a leader, Aatami said he can’t see inside of houses to find out whether people are taking care of their children: “I can only do so much.”

Aatami also asked for more support from governments for more social housing construction.

When there are 15 people stuffed into a three-bedroom house, “there’s going to be problems,” Aatami said.

Aatami said he wished Nunavik could have found “a solution yesterday instead of tomorrow.”

“Hopefully, we’ll start making some headway in this, and start convincing parents that their priorities should be the children instead of the alcohol and drugs we have now today.”

But when you’re fighting people who don’t want to be helped, you’re fighting a “losing battle,” Aatami said.

The trauma of relocations, dog slaughters and residential schools are also making themselves felt now, he said.

Nunavimmiut are paying a steep price for the past: “We’re going through a lot of pain,” he said.

Jeannie May, executive director of Nunavik’s regional board of health and social services, urged communities to look after the well-being of their residents and for parents to take more responsibility.

“Without the parents, it will go nowhere,” she said, referring to the many efforts that Nunavik organizations have already made to improve conditions. “It will go nowhere unless parents reach out for help.”

At the same time, May said Quebec needs to find more money for programs dealing specifically with alcohol and drug addictions.

May and Aatami both encouraged parents to start healing, embrace their traditions and regain power over their destiny.

“The parents are not doing this on purpose,” commented Annie Popert, an educator who conducts healing sessions throughout Nunavik. “We don’t have children [in order] to be bad parents.”

People have to heal or else there will be 50 times more youth protection workers in communities and little progress to show for it, Popert said.

Nunavimmiut have to start looking at what causes their problems, not just the effects outlined in the commission report, she said.

But the urgent need for personal healing wasn’t the only issue raised by speakers at the press conference held for the report’s release.

Nunavimmiut also need a better attitude and to help youth protection workers who are there to protect the children, some said, citing the difficulties that youth protection workers experience in Nunavik communities.

Andréa Chartrand, the assistant director of youth protection for Ungava Bay communities, said if community leaders don’t step up and offer more support, the situation will go from bad to worse.

A youth protection worker in Aupaluk is quitting, she said, because he has received no cooperation from parents.

Parents don’t show up for meetings and he’s called been names and subjected to threats, Chartrand said.

The worker in charge of foster family recruitment for children under the youth protection service in Ungava Bay has also quit because of the impossible job of finding foster families willing to take children who are in crisis.

Marianne Martin, director of the Hudson Bay youth protection services, pleaded for more protection for her workers — especially
Inuit workers.

Martin said youth protection workers never want to remove children permanently from homes but “sooner or later we have to look at the best interests of the children” — the fundamental requirement of the Youth Protection Act.

Sylvie Godin, president of Quebec’s human rights commission, the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse, acknowledged that many people in Nunavik think the youth protection act is a law “by white people.”

“[But] this is a law for children. It has no colour,” Godin said.

Aatami also asked for more support for southern youth protection workers, the Inuit women who work in social services, and the difficult job that they do.