NTI presidential candidate Cathy Towtongie wants to bring “structural changes” to the organization. (Photo courtesy of Cathy Towtongie)
Cathy Towtongie wants ‘structural changes’ in NTI
Longtime Nunavut politician running in NTI presidential byelection
Nunatsiaq News is publishing profiles of the 10 candidates in Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.’s May 27 presidential byelection.
There are two things every political hopeful needs to have, Cathy Towtongie says: “Fear of the Lord” and “agreement” with their family, who must understand their lives will be more public.
Towtongie, one of 10 candidates running for the top job at Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., says she ticks both boxes.
“With my knowledge and with my experience I’m running for transparency and accountability,” she said in a phone interview.
Towtongie is a veteran of Nunavut politics. She has run in seven out of nine NTI presidential elections and byelections, winning three of them. From 2017 to 2021, Towtongie served as MLA for Rankin Inlet North-Chesterfield Inlet but lost her re-election bid to Alexander Sammurtok.
She plans to bring “structural changes” to NTI if elected.
“We have a multimillion dollar Inuit organization, and yet, we, the Inuit, are poor,” she said.
Towtongie pointed to royalties that NTI receives from mining that she says should go to Nunavut beneficiaries as dividends instead of NTI-run programs. In 2024, the organization and regional Inuit associations earned just under $100 million from mining royalties.
“We’re getting poorer and yet we have a billion-dollar Nunavut Trust. Something is not balanced,” Towtongie said.
As well, she says she will push for the Nunavut Land Use Plan to be adopted within three years. It has been in the works for 20 years, but its latest draft has been waiting since June 2023 for approval from three signatories: Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the Government of Nunavut and the federal government.
Towtongie has long been a critic of NTI’s voucher program, calling it “undemocratic.” (The organization gives out a $100 voucher to each voter who shows up to the polls.)
At the same time, Towtongie praised NTI’s board for removing former president Jeremy Tunraluk after he was charged with assault in December.
“We have code of conduct, which I developed when I was the president within NTI. They are stringent. And we need to ensure that the board takes action, and they did,” she said.
Charges against Tunraluk were stayed, and he is now one of the candidates in the byelection.
Towtongie says she will be the president for Inuit of all regions.
“Let’s be realistic, we are Inuit and these regional boundaries were developed not by us. But as Inuit, we have to be united,” she said.
Towtongie is a passionate seamstress, mother, grandmother and graduate of the Native Law program at the University of Saskatchewan.
She is a residential school survivor and longtime resident of Rankin Inlet, a place she calls her “centre of the universe.”
Nothing says structural change like electing someone who held that office 3 times.
HAHAHAHA! Funniest comment today! Very sad and very about the same ole, same ole. I guess if she really wanted change she wouldn’t run hehe.
Agree that structural changes need to take place. Disagree that Trust money should be disbursed in dividends. As the proverb goes; Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
Dividends are trivial compared to wealth generation from long term gainful employment. More so given the level of financial literacy within the Territory, they are unlikely to be re-invested by the recipient, rather squandered on whatever impulse buy.
That said, right now I can understand why people would want dividends from NTI, they currently feel they do nothing anyways and so that problem is what truly needs to be fixed.
NTI should be walking hand-in-hand with the GN to build infrastructure that will lead to a better future for upcoming generations and increase the likelihood of school attendance, completion and long-term employment. Multiplex recreation, trades training facilities, etc.
Even dividending out 1 billion dollars, which would wipe a Trust out at over 32,000 Inuks in Nunavut plus urban inuks if they get included that’s still only $30,000 or less per person in a one-time payment.
That is totally trivial in a life time compared to investing into infrastructure that can lead to workforce participation and people making 80,000 plus per year recurring and increasing each year.
Touting big dividends I think is just a way of buying votes, no different than the vouchers she was against. I don’t think its actually thought out in the long run.
Disburse dividends once you actually have basic infrastructure and work-force participation in the territory as a bonus, not now.
Inuit Organizations are in a tough spot when it comes to internally generated revenue like from the Nunavut Trust (now valued at over $2B, not $1B), and from mining royalties.
Our Inuit Orgs have made careers out of whining and moaning to Ottawa to meet the needs of Inuit. This is a well established and automatic behavior now.
Over decades, Ottawa and Inuit Orgs have created a symbiotic relationship; both relying on each other to justify the existence of mutually supportive programs, initiatives and staff; Inuit orgs to do the whining and dole out the money, CIRNAC, CanNor and others to do the responding.
It is very much like the relationship many African nations have with multi-national aid organizations where there is always a self perpetuating well of poverty and misery that needs addressing.
The real fear Inuit Orgs have is that if Ottawa gets any inkling that Inuit could actually support ourselves, their federal benefactors will shift focus and attention on other issues and brush fires that need putting out.
That is the main reason Inuit Orgs are now so reluctant to actually spend money that they have on Inuit needs. That would destroy our co-dependency with Ottawa.
This problem will continue to get worse and worse, as the Nunavut Trust continues to build up, and mining royalties mount.
At some point, the dam holding back all this passive money Inuit Orgs are sitting on will break and these monies will begin to flow.
When this happens, this will probably be the single greatest development in Inuit society, social and cultural development over the past 4 generations.
However, Inuit should be well aware that at that point, our special relationship with Ottawa will be well and truly over.
Why are Inuit getting dividends bad? We do not benefit anything with the nti discount for flying because it is simply too expensive to travel. So now my dividends never helps me and many Inuit because everything is too expensive so we can’t fly out anywhere.
So do you see the problem? The airline gets subsidies from nunavut, nwt and federal government in hundreds of millions already and all our mining dividends just ends up in the airlines pockets. Imagine if the dividends actually went to the people instead of simply giving it to an airline.
Yea, that’s a hard pass. I like my politicians to be grounded in reality, not stone age fairy tales.
I pass …
She lost the possibility of getting my vote at “Fear of the Lord”…
Fear the lord? Oh, is he gonna come down and smite you? Too funny. If that were even close to true then that Orange Turd south of the border would already be in a pine box.
Putting “Fear of the Lord” itself is not a bad thing, however does her life realy show a “Fear of the Lord” type of living?
Also she has no plan mentioned in the article… even as unhinged as Natanines was atleast he put real ideas and goals out there.
To say every political hopeful needs to “fear the lord” betrays a machinery of mind that has lost significant contact with reality.
I spoke with the Lord last night. She doesn’t want people to be afraid of her – she’s actually quite pleasant and loving. She believes the rumours of her being a vengeful God are disseminated by the other guy and she thinks people should read her book again to get a better idea of what shes all about.
I like what you tried to do here. The ‘vengeful god’ we’ve carried for millennia has led to incredible amounts of needless suffering. We feel its echoes in the trauma of residential schools, just as it animates states like Israel and the United States abroad today.
Where these the last promises she made last time she got elected? I know for sure that her promise was to give out dividends when she was elected.
Fear of the Lord? Next!
But will she teach us Mandarin?
More conflict death and destruction has been justified in the name of democracy than any other reason, religion is likely a close 2nd.
Over 130 million people killed between 1920-1945 alone in the name of marxism & socialism
Easy said, what wars conflicts were you speaking of? As the indigenous say, Not even.
The overarching variable here is power and control, religion and political ideology both animate those forces but neither is inherently worse at conjuring them.
One would then think it that it depends on your beliefs because we all have something we believe in. And, that one either believes there is a Creator and another believes there is no creator and both sides still rely some type of religion to achieve its intended goal(s). So, for the Nunavut’ Treaty -to what aim do you “feel” its objectives, agenda can be achieved -Conservatism, Liberalism, Socialism, Communism, Fascism Anarchism? At the end of the day- to have order and structure that “overarching variable of power and control” clearly needs to be defined otherwise there is chaos.
Honestly, this comment feels like chaos.
When your own people are being slaughtered around you that is the reason to answer the call to defend. And it is well known that in the heat of war soldiers fight because they protect their comrades in arms, to see them live for another day, God and country is for political theatre.
You’re right about what appears to matter most to those on the ground, at the same time God and country are not only what got them there, they create the consensus needed among the populous to keep the war going. Is that theater, sure… but theater moves people. Let’s not underestimate it.
Yes, however Consensus is not what we have. In the Ukraine, in the USA where war and more war is terribly unpopular. Both Zelenskyy and Trump were elected on the promise of peace.
She has my vote as well as family and friends! God willing ,may she be the one to be placed where He chooses her to be!
Guaranteed she will end up where she is supposed to be in this. Though it won’t be God’s choice but the electorate.
How fast we all forget.
https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/nunavut-mla-called-out-for-statement-about-two-spirit/
Instead of providing, potentially, a leg up dividends entrench dependency.
There are templates around the world where Third World peoples have advanced to the First in a single generation. Take Singapore, as one. In 1965 upon independence Premier Lee began an intensive housing program for 60,000 Indigenous Malays then living in a terrible Asian slum and he also began delivering really intensive education, in English. By the 1990s children of relocatees were doing Masters degrees at Cambridge and Berkeley, in physics and architecture. Singapore retains four official languages but schooling starts right away in English, the language of business, science and commerce.
It will always be possible to retain those aspects of the culture that next generations continue to see as relevant. But the only future for next generations is their enabling for the high-tech economy, meaning for the professional, managerial and trades jobs in Inuit lands. Note that Peter Pitseolak, writing his memoirs in the 1960s in Inuktitut, expected his grandchildren could be full-fledged medical doctors. I think of Noah Carpenter, born on the trapline. From living in the Anglican residential hostel in Inuvik, he graduated from high school in 1963—before progressive and ineffectual schooling took hold. Then there’s heart surgeon Dr K, educated mostly in southern Canada.