Kuujjuaq gears up for two days of Pride events
Schedule packed with panelists, on-the-land activities, parade and concert
Kuujjuaq’s Pride celebration has grown into a two-day event showcasing expert panelists and a variety of activities. This file photo shows participants from last year’s celebration, many of whom are organizing this year’s events. (File photo by Cedric Gallant)
Kuujjuaq is organizing Pride celebrations over two days next week that will be highlighted by a parade on Tuesday.
Pride is “about being yourself, it’s to be prideful, to say ‘We are here,’” youth organizers say in a video promoting the event.
On the docket for the two-day celebration are panelists, concerts and on-the-land activities all leading up to the Pride parade on June 6.
“We are very attentive to the needs in the communities and to try to find ways in which we can support them,” said Diane Labelle, a panelist and director of the First Nations Regional Adult Education Centre in Kahnawake, near Montreal.
She started her teaching career in Nunavik nearly 30 years ago and has worked in Tasiujaq, Kuujjuaq and Kuujjuaraapik.
Labelle will host the panel discussion on the impacts of colonization on First Nations and Inuit gender and sexuality. She said colonization is why exclusion grew among Indigenous communities.
“It caused such intense fear of speaking out, of being visible, and not just in terms of gender and sexuality,” she said.
To her, Pride events are the first step to creating more inclusive communities.
As LGBTQ+ people get more local support and acceptance, the hope is they won’t feel they need to leave for larger, southern urban areas to feel comfortable being themselves.
“We’re not here to convince you of anything,” Labelle said.
“We want to say simply, come and listen with an open mind, take it into consideration and give yourself time to reflect upon it.”
She said she’s looking forward to her trip to Kuujjuaq and opening a dialogue with people in the community.
Kuujjuaq’s Pride event begins June 5 with a focus group on sexual and gender diversity and ends with the parade Tuesday at 5 p.m. More information is on the Kuujjuaq Pride Week page on Facebook.
“She said colonization is why exclusion grew among Indigenous communities.”
Is there anything that isn’t blamed on colonization? Was Gay Pride stolen from the Inuit, just like the fish-skin parkas were? The relentless incursion of Gay Pride into indigenous communities seems pretty colonial, actually, but activist spin can take care of inconvenient inconsistencies like that.
It’s a narrative that consumes history, reduced to a cartoonish formula comfortable erasing nuance and complexity it creates an imagined past to normalize modern values.
Why is it that every aspect of life for some people uses colonialism for causing it? Labelle appears to ascertain that exclusion of sexual orientation with indigenous peoples are caused by colonization. What causes exclusion among non indigenous sexual orientation then? These kind of conclusions makes life worse for indigenous people. It’s cheap and it’s brain washy to so many young people. Another step towards segregation of people. Let people be what they are in a harmony way, don’t make up these cheap judgments.
These kinds of statements are predictable and formulaic, which betrays their origins in reflex and mimicry. They are, quite literally, the noises parrots make.
No Thank you
You get them know it all, all the time in Nunavik, but when you get a non Inuit , but otherwise indigenous 30 something years on the books with us, know it all, it’s even more concerning. We don’t need to be under such an umbrella with that kind of judgment. Colonization didn’t cause Inuit to get all confused and exclusive with sexual orientation, that’s incredibly incorrect. As a matter of fact, lot of older Inuit still don’t accept anything about being gay or lesbian, nothing to do with colonization, it’s just some old ways of thinking that’s been there all along. As much as we don’t like it, it’s there, nothing to do with anyone, but the ones that think that way. It’s getting better over time, it’s not a hate thing, it’s just different, lots of cultures are the same. Stop this ridiculous encouragement of hate towards Inuit and non Inuit.
Why would I want to sit in on such a dialogue about , not LGBTQ and pride, but nonsense about colonialism as a perception of this indigenous, non Inuk . Why should I listen to hateful free speech hidden under a ridiculous twisted misinformation ?
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