Trust fund set up to help Rankin evictees

DWANE WILKIN

Concerned Rankin Inlet residents started a trust fund over the holidays to help four Inuit families faced with eviction notices.

Trust fund organizers say they’re encouraged by the response they’ve received from donors as far away as Baker Lake and Holman Island.

Administrators with the local housing assocation, meanwhile, have all but stopped talking about the affair.

The Rankin Inlet Housing Association ordered the families out of their homes last Friday for failing to come up with back rent that in some cases totals as much as $13,000.

“Something like this is really close to peoples’ hearts,” said Peter Ernerk, a trust-fund organizer. “Inuit have always helped each other, for many thousands of years.”

Fellow Rankin Inlet resident Marius Tungilik was also involved in setting up the trust fund.

Nunatsiaq MP Jack Anawak also sent a letter to Goo Arlooktoo, the deputy premier of the Northwest Territories urging him to look into the matter.

As of Nunatsiaq News’ presstime, Ernerk said he didn’t know how much money had been collected. Funds have been collected at the CIBC and Royal Bank branches in this community since the trust was established last week.

Bad time of year?

News of the pending eviction, which came to public attention a week prior to Christmas at the coldest, darkest time of the year, struck many observers, including Ernerk, as the height of cruelty.

“If I were the housing authority I wouldn’t have kicked them out in the middle of winter. It’s not the way to do it.”

Among the tenants affected by the eviction are a pregnant mother of five, said Ernerk.

Minnie Tatty, the acting manager of the Housing Association, declined to comment on the eviction before press time, but said a report on the association’s actions was being drafted and would be released to the public “as we see fit, when the time comes.”

“Part of my job is to protect these people,” said Tatty. “This thing has got totally out of proportion and I’m not really interested in talking about these families.”