The youth of Pond Inlet write to MLA about suicide

In the winter session of the Nunavut legislature, Tununiq MLA Joe Enook tables a series of letters about suicide from Pond Inlet high school students. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

Students from Nasivvik high school in Pond Inlet recently took their concerns about how suicide and how it has affected their lives to their MLA, Joe Enook, who tabled them in the Nunavut legislature Feb. 29.

The Grade 11 students wrote a series of letters describing how suicide has touched them and offering their ideas how suicide could be prevented for future generations.

Young people are turning to suicide because they don’t know who to go to for help, student Stephanie Pitseolak said in one letter tabled by Enook.

“Teenagers need to learn how to talk to their parents,” Pitseolak writes. “When they stop talking, like when they are becoming a teen, they start to get quiet and keep it to themselves.”

Suicide in Nunavut is caused by a number of factors, including health problems, drugs and alcohol, bullying, poverty and hopelessness, she said, and “in order to stop people from committing suicide, we need to look at these issues. If we don’t see them or hear about it, it won’t go away.”

“So we need to let it all out and understanding the meaning.”

James Akpaleeapik wrote to Enook about losing his uncle and some friends to suicide.

“We are losing people, our future leaders, and most all, our loved ones, because of suicide,” Akpaleeapik said. “On behalf of youth in Pond Inlet, I want to build a youth centre so we can have more counseling in our community.

“I think us teenagers need a place to go where there is support and friendship.”

In another letter, Gelena Koonark suggested creating a local club where teens can talk about their feelings, a place for people to “let it all out.”

“I also think we need to build a council hall so the elders can go there and talk about our feelings to them every month and make sure that people are not thinking of killing themselves.”

Shelly Ootova noted in her letter that suicide is also an issue for many struggling adults.

“When parents are fighting or trying to get a divorce and getting far away from each other, a few weeks later or months later, they suicide,” she wrote.

“I feel that’s a bad idea and teenagers shouldn’t do any of this because we really care about them and love them very much.”

“I have a dad and he suicided when I was 11 years old,” Ootova said. “I still really want to spend time with him and see him everyday.”

The Government of Nunavut’s Department of Health and Social Services said last month that it is “making progress” in rolling out its Nunavut Suicide Prevention Strategy.

The strategy and its subsequent action plan mobilize government agencies and territorial organizations to work together to reduce Nunavut’s high suicide statistics.

But a commitment to have in place a referral service for children at risk of suicide by January 2012 has yet to come to fruition.

Thirty-three Nunavut residents, including a 12-year-old boy from Kugaaruk, died by suicide in 2011, the second-worst year in the territory’s history.