Photo: Inuit youth leader “wants to see suicide eradicated”

Maatali Okalik, president of the National Inuit Youth Council and the host for a celebration of life held Sept. 10 on Parliament Hill to mark World Suicide Prevention Day. “We as Inuit youth want a new relationship with our country to see a reversal of the grim statistics of suicide among Inuit. We, as Inuit youth, want to see suicide eradicated,” Okalik said. The suicide rate among children and teens in Inuit Nunangat was 30 times greater than for youth in the rest of Canada in the five-year period between 2004 and 2008 and is responsible for 40 per cent of deaths among Inuit youth. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)