Elders support youth in quest for language, safety assistance

KUGLUKTUK – At night, youth of all ages, from tots to teens, mill around on the dark, snowy streets.

Although there's a 10 p.m. curfew for kids on week nights and a 2 a.m. weekend curfew, many hide when a bylaw officer or RCMP truck passes nearby.

Some never go home because their parents are drinking, using drugs and gambling, a "pitiful" state of affairs, according to a teenaged girl – whose parents always expected her home by the 10 p.m. curfew.

Young people in Kugluktuk need a shelter to go to when "houses are not safe due to alcohol and drug consumption and card games," Chad Keadjuk told the recent Kitikmeot Inuit Association annual general meeting in Cambridge Bay.

Other KIA youth delegates picked up on Keadjuk's call, saying youth need more programs "for and by youth," more suicide prevention activities and more ways to combat the loss of their Inuit culture and language.

Donald Havioyak, the KIA president, told the youth delegates his organization will help them any way it can. He suggested youth groups and students apply for scholarships and money to pay for specific projects from the $1 million pot that the KIA receives every year from impact and benefit agreements with mining companies.

Havioyak also urged parents and elders to speak Inuinnaqtun or Nattilikmiun at home to keep the two languages strong.

Ovide Alakannuark, a former Nunavut MLA and a delegate from Kugaaruk, admitted that elders aren't teaching youth about living on the land because many youth speak only English.

"We are not saying anything to our youth today because they aren't able to understand our own language anymore," he said.

Elders and women at the KIA meeting also had suggestions to improve the living conditions for Kitikmeot's growing numbers of youth, such as community food banks so kids don't go to school hungry and support programs for young parents.

"We need to teach them how to raise a healthy family. We need to teach them that using alcohol and drugs isn't a way to go. We used to be taught by our own parents," said elder Mary Kamookak of Gjoa Haven.

During 2007, KIA sponsored several activities to bring youth and elders together, including a workshop on Inuvialuit drum dancing in Kugluktuk and a camp for elders and youth near Gjoa Haven.

Kitikmeot youth also participated in a KIA-organized multimedia and leadership workshop last May, during a youth and elders camp run by Cambridge Bay's wellness centre, where students took photos and videos of elders, recording their experience of living on the land.