NTI wants guidelines for Qallunaat adopting Inuit children

Nunavut Tunngavik is working on guidelines for making sure adopted Inuit children keep in touch with their culture.

Inuit leaders peppered president Paul Kaludjak with questions about cross-cultural adoptions earlier this month during their general meeting in Rankin Inlet.

They wanted to know whether NTI was ensuring that Inuit children adopted to non-Inuit families were still getting contact with their traditional culture.

Kaludjak said NTI had been receiving calls about the topic, and was researching how to deal with it.

He said in an interview that a future policy should filter out non-Inuit families who might be trying to unfairly take advantage of the harvesting rights given to Inuit.

“Our job is to protect the rights of Inuit,” Kaludjak said. “And that’s what we’re doing.”