Residents talk about elders, think-tanks and youth

Here are just a few of the many issues raised and comments made at last weekend's roundtable held at Iqaluit's Inuksuk High School following Siila Watt-Cloutier's Baldwin-Lafontaine lecture.

Former federal Parliamentary candidate for Nunavut Kurt Ejeesiak said Nunavummiut lack a safe forum for critically reflecting on the actions of mining corporations, their government and the land claims organizations.

He said he would like to see some kind of "think tank" established, where people can bandy about ideas and have the necessary discussions without having to worry about pressure from the powers-that-be.

Citing her law-training experience in the Akitsiraq program, Madeleine Redfern called for a real "bricks-and-mortar" university in Nunavut. It's important, she said, for those seeking higher education to be able to continuing functioning in their communities. And it's important for southerners who want to study the north to come here to do it.

Jack Anawak said Nunavut "can't get where we want to go" until it deals with the many mental-health issues facing the population from "the amount of trauma Nunavut residents have gone through since contact."

He also decried the loss of role for elders in Inuit society.

It's "been taken away, by social workers, by teachers, by hamlets, by the city council, by hunters and trappers associations," he said. "It's up to us to take that role back for the elders."

"The elders are our university," said Meeka Mike, project director for the Pirurvik Centre, which is working to collect and catalogue the knowledge of the few remaining elders of the last generation before Inuit were moved into settlements.

She said that while students in southern universities earn PhDs with information collected from elders, the locally based Pirurvik Centre could only access $200,000 over three years from the $150 million available for International Polar Year research.

With a pointed nod in the direction of mining companies, Bernadette Dean recalled a tradition that if a person was new to the land they could not freely take from it for a year, even so much as to gather cotton grass for lamp wicks.

Someone local would have to do it for them, to ensure the harvest was appropriate and done with respect.

Polar Man spoke up for the mentally and physically challenged, who, he said, lack the facilities and teachers they need to help them cope.

Udloriak Hanson told of gathering a panel of young Inuit leaders from across the north to talk about their dreams and visions for the north.

It all came down, she said, to preserving and strengthening "culture, land and language. It was at the root of everything they were talking about."