Rejuvenated QIA gets set for the future

After forming a circle to hold hands and recite the Lord’s Prayer in Inuktitut, delegates from around the Baffin region began the Qikiqtani Inuit Association’s annual general meeting in Iqaluit on a somber note Tuesday morning.

But they did so with the backing of new staff, new governance policies, a balanced budget and a rejuvenated organization.

“We started the year with no senior management and no financial managers,” QIA’s secretary-treasurer, Joe Attagutaluk, said in his activity report.

“But we have corrected these weaknesses.”

By the middle of 2001, QIA was down to only 10 full-time employees, having lost executive director John Amagoalik and numerous other staff members. And after a long war of words, the board later removed president Meeka Kilabuk, who had been elected in the fall of 2000 to replace Pauloosie Keyotak, another elected president forced to resign before finishing his term.

All those vacant staff positions have been filled, and the organization now has 24 employees in its Iqaluit office and another 10 serving as community liaison workers around the Baffin region.

Those community workers are paid through a $1-million contribution from Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., but they’re hired and controlled by QIA.

Thomasie Alikatuktuk of Pangnirtung has served as interim president since the fall of 2001 – a job that will be up for election on Dec. 9.

The organization is also in strong financial shape. Attagutaluk and the organization’s comptroller, John French, told delegates that QIA produced a $768,000 surplus in 2001-02.

For the 2003-04 fiscal year, they’re projecting a balanced budget – in which they will spend approximately $6.4 million. Most of that revenue will come from NTI – about $4 million through a regular annual grant, and about $1 million to pay for community liaison workers.

The rest of the budget is made up of various grants and contributions from the territorial and federal budgets.

Delegates also learned of efforts to streamline and reorganize QIA’s staff, including the creation of a new department of social policy.

Policy analyst John MacDougall will head the new department, which merges five old departments responsible for youth, women, elders, health and policy.

MacDougall said in an interview this week that one of the team’s top priorities will be suicide and suicide prevention, subjects that weighed heavily on delegates’ minds this week.

Just last week, a young man from Qikiqtarjuaq hanged himself in the very building they were gathered in – the old student residence in Iqaluit’s federal building.

Attagutaluk said he’d heard that Arctic College students have been withdrawing from school because of the incident, and he suggested that chaplains be invited to come out and bless the building.

Even before elder Iqaluk Juralak had lit a qulliq to start the meeting, QIA’s women’s co-ordinator, Lissie Anaviapik, read a letter from a woman whose son had killed himself just two months ago.

“When you have been affected by a suicide, it’s then that you know how other people feel [who have also been affected],” the letter said. “Suicide should never be accepted.”

The woman ended her letter by urging QIA’s board and staff to do something about suicide.

Meanwhile, Thomasie Alikatuktuk urged delegates to work together, and to help him chair the meeting by keeping their comments on topic.

As of Nunatsiaq News’ press deadline this week, delegates were still waiting to here reports from QIA’s two controlled organizations: the Kakivak Association and the Qikiqtaaluk Corporation, as well as members’ concerns.