Nunavik community looks for help, healing in light of recent deaths

Charlie Nowkawalk, centre, the KRG’s regional councillor for Inukjuak, listens to a presentation by the KRPF May 28. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

Leaders in Inukjuak are working to launch a wellness plan to help community members cope and heal after a series of traumatic events and deaths in the Hudson Bay village. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

INUKJUAK — Local and regional organizations have begun working towards a community wellness plan to help the people of Inukjuak cope with a series of traumatic events and deaths.

The Hudson Bay community of 1,600 is still struggling to find answers to explain a number of recent suicides and violent altercations with police in which community members were killed.

“This past year we’ve had traumas and it has impacted us,” said Inukjuak mayor Siasi Smiler as she welcomed members of the Kativik Regional Government to the community last week, where its regional council held meetings May 25 to May 28.

Those meetings became a sounding board for the community’s pain, with regional leaders calling for changes to policing in Nunavik as one solution.

“There are a lot of people in pain and who do not like the police at the moment,” Inukjuak’s regional councillor, Charlie Nowkawalk, told KRG meetings May 28.

Nowkwalk referred to an incident in late April, where a local man tried to enter the Kativik Regional Police Force station in Inukjuak, armed with a knife.

A KRPF officer fired at the man, who died shortly afterward from his injuries.

Only a month before, another armed man in the community faced off with police for three days, until he’s reported to have turned his weapon on himself.

And those are just some of the more recent violent incidents to hit the community.

Nowkawalk, who worked for years as a local social worker, has since left that position, saying he couldn’t cope with the intense pain and loss the community sees on a regular basis.

“We have lost too many people now,” he said. “People are in a bad situation. People are frustrated and we need help.”

The frustration stems from the gap between a southern policing model and life in Nunavik’s communities, where only a handful of Inuit work for the region’s police force.

In Inukjuak, Nowkawalk said residents are doubly frustrated with a lack of communication between police and families impacted by recent deaths.

“There’s been some investigation by the police [into these incidents] but we don’t get the report right away,” he said. “We don’t even have information from last year’s incidents, where another man was shot and killed.”

Pierre Bettez, interim chief of the KRPF, explained that when outside police forces investigate injuries or death involving the KRPF — as required by Quebec law — the information in those reports is not made public unless an officer faces charges.

But Bettez assured KRG councillors that there is transparency and good will on the part of police, and the KRPF is no exception.

“There’s no way the police will act voluntarily to harm someone,” Bettez said. “We act in self-defence, but we are here to protect life — the life of the citizens and the life of the suspect.”

“I want to reassure you that we are not here to hurt people, we are here to work with the people,” Bettez told KRG councillors.

But violence in the North is almost always related to alcohol use, he said, which can create volatile situations with police.

Inukjuak is also the Nunavik community with the highest rate of incidents involving firearms, Bettez said.

The community also suffers the highest rate of unemployment and use of social assistance in the region.

That’s why the region needs designated Inuit negotiators to liaise between police and community members when those altercations happen, said Muncy Novalinga, KRG’s regional councillor for Puvirnituq.

“We need one in each community, to prevent people from killing each other, or from being shot,” Novalinga said.

“When an Inuk talks to another Inuk, they listen and the anger goes.”

Bettez said that is something the KRPF could consider, but noted that it is usually Quebec’s provincial police, the Sûreté du Québec, who are called in to respond to armed stand-offs or hostage situations.

He added that anyone negotiating a stand-off requires training to manage a situation that can potentially put in the negotiator himself in serious danger.

Still, something needs to change in Inukjuak, its regional councillor said.

“We’re told that they’re professionals coming from the South,” said Nowkawalk. “But we have absolutely no way of doing anything at the community level.”