The mother of Nunavut’s well-being

Even in her new office, located just down the hall from the premier’s, Levinia Brown, Nunavut’s recently-appointed minister of health and social services and deputy premier, maintains her comfortable, down-to-earth ways, offering char, tea and conversation to visitors.

“I will always be who I am. You see all this paper lying around, but it won’t change me,” Brown said in her first interview since Nunavut’s new cabinet was announced last month.

“When I was walking around Rankin Inlet this weekend, someone stopped me and asked me why I wasn’t driving a vehicle? ‘You’re a minister!’ I said walking is good for your health.”

Brown conducted her interview with Nunatsiaq News in Inuktitut – to show she wants her mother tongue to become the working language of Nunavut – and to bring her vision of a healthy territory closer to Nunavummiut.

One month into her new role, she isn’t daunted by the enormous challenge facing her.

“We have to try, especially us women,” she said. “Years ago the father would always go away to go hunting to provide for the family, and the women were left in the camp to look after the children and the home. It’s the same concept but in today’s world, where everyone still works together.”

Inuit and their ancestors were able to survive by sharing together and working together and communicating – a strategy she would like to put to use as a way of improving the state of Nunavummiut’s health.

“I want health to get better for everyone in Nunavut,” Brown said of her long-term goals. “I want to get more Inuit involved in the health profession. I would like to have more Inuit nurses without lowering the standards, to get Inuit up to par, educated to take over these jobs and to incorporate Inuit Qaujimatujangit.”

The guiding principle behind her wholistic view of health is that “well-being must come from within first – and then healthy people can branch out to others.”

Brown enters a cash-strapped department that lacks enough money and manpower to meet the territory’s growing needs for health and social services.

But she’s convinced that coping with Nunavut’s many health and social challenges has as much to do with prevention and attitude as more money.

“First, we have to do things for ourselves, once we’re on our feet, once people start to realize it’s not about money, starting in the communities by eating well, by eating the right foods. It’s emotional well-being, once people start realizing that money won’t be as much of an issue… I think that’s where it will start, from people getting back on their feet.”

That’s not to say Brown is going to stop lobbying for more health care money for Nunavut.

“A lot of people think mistakenly that I am only nice, but I also have a lot of strength, and I have the strength to fight for what we need,” Brown said. “Inuit are looking for strong leaders… we should not be lagging behind the rest of the country – we should be as strong as we can be.”

Brown’s combination of work and life experience shows she’s determined.

Originally from the Kivalliq region, Brown studied at the Churchill Vocational School in Manitoba. Then, she qualified as a nursing assistant and worked in British Columbia and Alberta.

Returning to Rankin Inlet in the late 1970s, Brown discovered that health administrators in the Northwest Territories didn’t recognize her credentials, so she was able to work only as an interpreter at the health centre there.

Frustrated, Brown turned to education, qualified as a teacher and worked in education until 1999 as a teacher, counselor and administrator.

Brown also ventured into municipal politics, became a hamlet councillor in Rankin Inlet and served as mayor. In 1999, she ran for a seat in Nunavut’s first legislature and lost, but, undeterred, she ran again in the Feb. 16 election this year, and won.

Brown also raised seven children and now has 28 grandchildren.

“The first time I stepped into the legislative assembly chamber, I didn’t feel uncomfortable, I felt in my place, like a mother,” she said.

One of Brown’s ongoing interests and achievements was the creation of a midwife-staffed maternity unit in Rankin Inlet.

“I was born when there were no nurses up here, so my father helped deliver me,” Brown said.

Brown belongs to the generation of women who were born on the land, but who had to travel hundreds of kilometres away from home to give birth. Brown, like many other pregnant women and new mothers, was sometimes absent from home for weeks or even months.

“A lot of problems happen when they have to go to another place. Some young women refused to leave to have their babies – that was one of the reasons we started working on this maternity.”

Brown wants to create more birthing centres in other Nunavut communities.

“Not only does the program [in Rankin Inlet] reduce the stress and anxiety put on expectant mothers, spouses and families, it also reduces the cost for the health department.”

She also wants to set up a Nunavut program for accrediting midwives.

“It is my hope to see Inuit women qualified as midwives, if money will allow this,” she said. “It’s something we can’t ignore. It’s all part of the whole well-being of the person.

Brown also wants to continue repatriating as many health services from the South to Nunavut as possible so, for example, that patients undergoing cancer treatment can remain in a familiar environment.