Borrowing a slogan from the past, Nunavik youth group promotes “Inuk Power”

Nunavik youth forum president Alicia Aragutak with vice-president Louisa Yeates wearing Inuk Power t-shirts, a phrase they hope will connect youth in the region. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

This old footage shows Jimmy Johanes sitting in discussions with Nunavik and Quebec leaders in the early 1970s, ahead of the signing of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. (IMAGE COURTESY OF MAKIVIK CORP)

KUUJJUAQ — Kativik Regional Government councillors received a very different report from Nunavik’s youth leadership last week than they’ve seen in the recent past.

Just last August, the Nunavik Youth Forum replaced the now-defunct Saputiit Youth Association.

And the forum’s leadership says the new group is now empowered and motivated to get the region’s youth organization back on track, to address mental health, promote Inuit values, and create opportunity for Inuit youth.

“The future is really beautiful and the possibilities are endless,” the youth forum’s new vice president, Louisa Yeates, told KRG councillors during regional council meetings in Kuujjuaq last week. “So it’s a great time to be involved.”

But there’s work to do before the group can start putting ideas into motion.

The youth forum is still waiting for new office space at Makivik Corp.’s building in Kuujjuaq.

To re-establish the roughly $300,000 in funding it’s supposed to receive from the Quebec government, the group has re-launched under Makivik.

That funding was withheld from Saputiit for many years, while the group struggled to fix financial mismanagement problems. The new youth forum estimates the group lost more than $2 million funding that it will never be able to recoup.

“We definitely feel the after effects,” forum president Alicia Aragutak said.

“There’s been nothing happening for the last five years,” she said. “It makes us feel good to start something, but the pressure is there.”

While speaking to Nunatsiaq News, Aragutak and Yeates wore white T-shirts with the phrase Inuk Power printed across the front.

The T-shirt is a replica of one first spotted on Jimmy Johannes in the early 1970s, when he sat at the negotiation table for the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement.

The youth group has re-claimed the T-shirt and the phrase, as a sign that they’re picking up the torch once carried by an older generation of Nunavik leaders.

“They wanted us to own the responsibility of leading the region,” Yeates said.

And that’s their plan.

In many ways, the group is starting from scratch, although Aragutak, 24, said she’s received strong support from throughout the region.

In the coming months, the youth forum will host consultations to develop an Inuit youth policy, the first of its kind in Quebec.

While the provincial government’s youth body, the Secrétariat à la jeunesse, works to renew the provincial-wide policy, the organization acknowledged that Inuit youth have different needs and provided funding for Nunavik to create its own youth policy.

“Their realities are not the same as ours in the North,” Aragutak said.

The realities of life in Nunavik have become a major source of motivation for both of the young leaders, however.

Yeates and Aragutak say they experienced an “ah-ha’ moment while taking a workshop on decolonization, led by Kuujjuaq educator Mary Joanne Kauki, who they say taught them how to unpack their own history as a colonized people.

“I felt empowered as an Inuk woman,” Aragutak said. “And proud of my identity.

“We’re a great, resilient people who can go through anything without losing our values.”

It’s an attitude she wants to pass on to other young Nunavimmiut, Aragutak said.

The youth forum is now looking for help finding a new name. Nunavimmiut of all ages are invited to submit a one-word description, in Inuktitut, by Dec. 11 to louisayeates@gmail.com.