Nunavut land claims org to spend $5M on addictions treatment training
“We need many different types of healing, across the territory, in our own language and with our families”
Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. President Aluki Kotierk says her organization will spend $5 million to train Inuit to work in addictions treatment in Nunavut. (File photo)
Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. says it will spend $5 million on training Inuit to work within a forthcoming addictions treatment centre for Nunavut.
“As a demonstration of our commitment, we are allocating $5 million of Inuit-specific health funding towards the system improvements and we will work with the territorial Department of Health on an Inuit workforce development plan,” said President Aluki Kotierk in a news release.
The announcement follows a resolution passed by NTI’s board of directors on Jan. 23, which says the organization will seek training funds from Makigiaqta Inuit Training Corporation to help develop an Inuit workforce to staff the addictions treatment centre.
The news release calls upon the federal government to fund the proposed addictions treatment centre, saying the need is “urgent.”
“Inuit have carried burdens for long enough,” said Kotierk. “We need many different types of healing, across the territory, in our own language and with our families. The system improvements will be based in Inuit culture and ways of being through the development of a made-in-Nunavut program and Inuit workforce.”
Since 2017, NTI has been a partner in talks with the territorial and federal governments to develop a plan to provide addictions treatment in Nunavut.
A consultants’ report describes “three pillars” to the plan: on-the-land treatment, community-based facilities, and a Nunavut Recovery Centre, to be built in Iqaluit.
The plan is expected to cost $102.5 million over five years.
It would see up to 256 residents treated annually through the centre’s residential treatment programs and services, and up to 80 residents per year treated through on-the-land healing programs offered in each region of Nunavut.
Construction of the centre and staff housing and other capital costs are expected to total about $73 million. The Government of Nunavut is expected to contribute $23 million, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. would contribute $15 million and the federal government would pay the remaining $35 million.
Money from the federal government would likely be committed in its 2019 spring budget.
When Nunavut Premier Joe Savikataaq met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier this month, he emphasized the need for an addictions treatment centre in the territory.
Good, we Inuit need to get off this substance addiction heavily instilled into our communities today. The bootleg sales of “mikkis” in the communities is astounding, at $150 / bottle, those that send the bottles to be sold up north are laughing at our dismal social situations that make us dependent on substances. Cannabis is now legal but due to reasons of being northerners, we are not ordering on-line but still depending on the “black market” dealer down the street, so incorrectly there was a report only a few kilos had been sold in Nunavut. Am happy and hope many of us Nunavummiut will take advantage if it materializes.
So happy to hear this, we need an addictions treatment and mental health facility in every community, but at least this is a start. Many communities do not have local support groups, AA groups, anything, except maybe one overworked mental health worker, who becomes a catch-all. This Centre may not see much success if the in-patients return to the same toxic environment which fostered their struggles in the first place.
About time.