“Individuals must be able to speak without being afraid”

In a year when Nunavut’s heart-breaking suicide rate has climbed to record levels, there’s one group of Nunavummiut who are refusing to give up.

They’re the nine members of Inungni Sapujjijiit, the Government of Nunavut’s task force on suicide prevention and community healing.

This week, Health Minister Ed Picco released Inungni Sapujjijiit’s report, Our Words Must Come back to Us, the result of 17 community meetings, a questionnaire, and numerous other discussions with community leaders, social workers, youth, elders, police, nurses, government officials and many others.

“They are not the words of government. They are the words of individual Nunavummiut, spoken together for the first time through one unified voice,” Picco said at the report’s launch in the legislature on Tuesday evening.

The task force’s three goals were simple, but bold:

* Cut Nunavut’s suicide rate in half by 2007.
* Make the Government of Nunavut fully understand the needs of Inuit and how to address them.
* Increase Inuit employment in community, social and mental health occupations.

“Yes, I think we can do it,” said Kautaq Joseph, an Arctic Bay elder who served on the task force.

Joseph, along with Bernadette Saumik, an elder from Rankin Inlet who served with her on the committee, said now that the task force’s work is done, the government’s first priority should be to meet the needs of youth.

Norman Komoartok of Pangnirtung, the committee’s co-chair, said he hopes the task force’s report can be distributed quickly among Nunavut’s communities, so that they can see the advice contained in it.

Many of the task force’s 34 recommendations are aimed at communities, not the Government of Nunavut.

“I am encouraged that the results of this task force will produce some real change,” said Nunavut’s chief coroner, Tim Neily. “There are some really, really good things in there.”

Last week, Neily’s office released an update on Nunavut’s suicide count showing that 31 Nunavummiut, a record number, committed suicide in 2003.

But despite the painful nature of the subject, Komoartuk said that it wasn’t hard for committee members to persuade Nunavut residents to talk about suicide.

“As soon as they understood the purpose of our visits, they were glad to come out and talk to us,” Komoartuk said.

He and other committee members stressed that talking and communicating about suicide must continue in communities.

To that end, the report has a lot to say about “speaking out” and urges that communities allow people to speak without fear of intimidation.

“Youth said they don’t go to their parents because the parents get angry. We heard about women unable to speak out because they are afraid of their partners. We heard of elders being afraid at times because the youth or their children may abuse them. It was strongly recommended that individuals must be able to speak about issues without being afraid,” the report says.

Here is a sampling of task force recommendations:

* Preschool and school programs should help children to learn how to speak about their feelings.
* Families and communities must try to influence and help parents who are not there for their children, and to ensure no youth feels there is no one they can talk to.
* Everyone needs safe environments where they can feel free to speak about their feelings. Having safe and suitable places in every community, where talking about life and relationships is encouraged, and is a critical part of the solution.
* Service providers need effective ways to help residents understand where they can go for what kind of service.
* Training for counselling should happen in the communities; training needs to combine professional and cultural knowledge.
* Ensure court cases are heard within a reasonable time-frame – hire more legal aid lawyers if necessary; ensure that families and caregivers know when youth are facing court appearances and that ways are worked out to ensure their safety while waiting.
* Youth need “modern” skills, but they also need reinforcement in their identity as Inuit and respect for their family and community.
* Community-level caregivers need caring and support from the communities they serve, just as they need to care about those they serve.
* When people are returning from incarceration, their families, people they may have hurt, their children’s schools, and helping agencies must be prepared and ready to make their re-integration successful.
* Discipline is an important part of loving children and youth. It requires ongoing discussion in every community around the meaning and value of “discipline,” so that parents, teachers and others provide an environment where children and youth will succeed, but understand clearly what values families and communities want to support.
* A list of Inuit counsellors, competent in suicide issues, should be available so the RCMP can make appropriate referrals instead of always taking suicidal people to the hospital. The practice of off-site answering services for the RCMP should be discontinued.
* Training in suicide prevention, involving teams of people, needs to be made available in every community – and the training should be by Inuit, for Inuit.