Living in Nunavut: the dream becomes a nightmare

One night, a little over a week ago, for the first time in a while, I curled up in bed, and I cried myself to sleep. I have come to live in a dream, which has become a vivid nightmare, a harsh reality from which some would never find escape.

I came to Kugluktuk, Nunavut a couple of years ago, to live and work, because as an Inuk, Nunavut was a sort of Promised Land for the Inuit people.

It represented all the hopes and dreams of the Inuit people as a place the Inuit people could call their own, where we would have access to the same education available to all others in Canada, where we would have plenty of available work, affordable housing and ample assistance to build our own homes.

Though I was raised elsewhere, I have plenty of family in Nunavut, and I have long wanted to reconnect with my roots.

Not long after the creation of of Nunavut, and although I had already established myself in a good trade (I was an experienced cabinet-maker managing a custom kitchen manufacturing shop), I longed to see Nunavut, and the desire to actually move there to live and work increased exponentially each year.

A couple of years ago, the opportunity to come to Nunavut to live and work finally presented itself, and I seized that opportunity.

I would need to make sacrifices to come to Nunavut. But if it turned out to everything it was made out to be, it would be worth it. Alas, as it turns out, very little was as it was seemed to be.

Looking back on the time before I came to Nunavut, from nothing I earned myself a good trade, working and earning enough experience and a good enough reputation to have a fair selection of work within the trade, whether within management or working at the trade itself.

I was earning fairly decent earnings. I had found affordable housing. I had a good reliable vehicle. I could afford to pay my living costs and have a decent amount of spending money.

Since moving to Nunavut, I make more money than I ever have, but I don’t have a home, there isn’t any affordable housing available to me.

The only vehicles I have are a quad I am fixing up that I got from my cousin, whose husband assembled it from spare parts, and a snowmobile I am assembling from spare parts.

I don’t have any spending money. In the short term I may no longer be employed in my chosen trade any more because I may not be able to afford to continue my education.

And my stuff is subject to a significant amount of theft and vandalism because I am considered “rich” simply due to my having a job.

As I live in complete and total poverty, despite being a positively contributing member of society, I can’t help feel a strong and utter sense of betrayal, as I find myself in a situation that should not even be possible to find oneself in.

The sense of betrayal I experience deepens significantly when you consider that commitments have been made to make available to the Inuit health care, education, affordable housing and protection from poverty and crime.

Difficult as it is, I had already made something of myself before I came to Nunavut, and knowing what to do, I can do it again. If I must, I will sacrifice myself and live in complete poverty if it means I can work towards improving my lot in life.

Through my personal experience, since coming to Nunavut I have been denied medical care, education, affordable housing and protection from poverty, something that is completely unbelievable in that it could happen in one of the supposedly richest areas of the country.

Despite many of the people in Nunavut being quite affluent, most living here are living in total and absolute poverty, and not only do I now understand and sympathize with why many of our youth are killing themselves, but I can understand the sense of entrapment and oppression they must be experiencing that must lead to their suicides.

Drawing on my experience, the only good options I see that exist for our young people to better their lives, lie in moving away from their homes and family, never to return, and otherwise, they must stay in poverty for the rest of their lives.

I am writing this to give voice to what I have experienced, in the hopes that someday my voice will be recognized and heard, so that I could begin to advocate and work towards eliminating poverty in Nunavut.

How I came to be in this situation is detailed in my blog at http://poverty-nunavut.blogspot.com/.

Hopefully, with some hard work and determination, I hope I can restore the nightmare I have been enveloped in, back into the dream that I pursue.

As I finish this letter, I would like to remind everyone that, almost universally, the Inuit I know living in these conditions do not wish to live in poverty.

Every individual, not just the Inuit, wants fair access to education and health care, affordable housing, decent and affordable food, protection from poverty and crime, and freedom to pursue typical traditional activities.

Unlike most other Inuit, I know most of the rest of Canada has complete access to all these things, and when these things have been denied to the Inuit people, and when these things have been promised to them, denying them is not only not fair, it is outright wanton cruelty.

Give me, or any other Inuk, access to education and health care, affordable housing, decent and affordable food, protection from poverty and crime, and freedom to pursue typical traditional activities, and I, or any other Inuk, will free ourselves from poverty.

Deny me these things, and unlike most other Inuit, I still have the capability and experience, having already learned how to do so, to free myself from poverty, but I will suffer greatly in the harsh struggle.

I do not need a handout, and neither do the Inuit people, when all we have only ever asked for the same rights and services every Canadian has, that our tax dollars afford us.

Vernon Plamondon
(No Street Address Due To Being Homeless)
Kugluktuk

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