Chisasibi’s small Inuit community welcomes next week’s big Makivik meeting

You can find Chisasibi on the lower left of the map, located on James Bay, below Nunavik, shown here in purple. (MAP COURTESY OF MAKIVIK)

Chisasibi’s Mitchuap community centre, with its distinctive metal tipi design, will host 60 Makivik Corp. delegates, along with staff and other officials, when the organization gets its 2012 annual general meeting underway there March 26. (FILE PHOTO)

People in Chisasibi are getting ready to welcome more than 100 Nunavimmiut who will arrive in their community March 26 to attend Makivik Corp.’s annual general meeting.

Chisasibi, the southernmost Inuit settlement, located on James Bay in the Cree territory, is home to 4,000 Cree and 110 Inuit beneficiaries, who call the community Mailasik in Inuktitut.

This year marks the first time that Chisasibi has hosted a Makivik meeting – but it’s an event which local Inuit have been pushing to host for a long time.

Makivik’s board member in Chisasibi, Raymond Menarick, said he’s always put his community forward as a potential meeting site during the board’s nomination process for an AGM host community.

Makivik finally decided to give all communities which are home to Inuit beneficiaries a chance to host an AGM — and so, in 2012, it’s finally Chisasibi’s turn.

“People are really happy to be participating,” Menarick said. “Some local Inuit would like to meet with Makivik’s executive, so this will be a good chance for them to talk face to face.”

The Inuit community has also helped put together a line-up of social events for the 60 Makivik delegates and other guests who will descend March 26 on Chisasibi.

While they’ll be busy at the meeting during the day, in the evenings they won’t lack entertainment, which includes a talent show on March 27, more Inuit-focused entertainment March 28, and a feast and square dance on March 29.

That last event will feature local musicians and beneficiaries who will perform pow-wow dances, along with throat-singers from Nunavik.

Makivik will also host a “candy drop,” in which a small aircraft releases candy and many other gifts, like furs and parkas, as it flies by which lucky people pick up below. That tradition will be another Nunavik first for the community and its mostly Cree population.

The local Cree nation band office has lent a hand in preparing for the meeting, and Cree community members are welcome to attend all the evening events, Menarick said.

As for the birthright organization’s meeting, which will be held in the Chisasibi’s Mitchuap community centre, Menarick doesn’t expect any major themes to dominate the week-long meeting.

The AGM will be the first in 13 years to be chaired by a new Makivik president: Jobie Tukkiapik, who beat long-time president Pita Aatami by 13 votes in a January, 2012 election.

Although Chisasibi Inuit were able to vote in the 2011 referendum on the Nunavik Regional Government model, Menarick said local Inuit never had the chance to fully understand or participate in the agreement.

“There’s no mention of Chisasibi in the agreement,” local Inuk Pat Ekomiak told negotiators in March, 2011. “We would prefer to be included in the Nunavik Assembly.”

Inuit from Chisasibi complained that they already have limited access to services offered to other Nunavik beneficiaries.

But the agreement was voted down in April 2011.

Inuit from Chisasibi did participate in a November meeting on Nunavik’s future government, which took place in Kuujjuaq.

“They emphasized that we want to play a role in a Nunavik government,” Menarick said. “And I think they were able to get that across.”

Makivik’s annual general meeting runs until March 30.