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Marchers plead for Qimaavik

“If there wasn’t a women’s shelter in Iqaluit, I’d probably be dead”

JOHN THOMPSON

Nutaraq Lucasie says she used to be a frequent visitor to the emergency room of the Baffin Regional Hospital, because of beatings she suffered from her husband.

Now, with the expected closing of the Qimaavik women’s shelter in Iqaluit on March 31, 2007, she says she fears what will happen to women trapped in similar abusive relationships across Nunavut.

“If there wasn’t a women’s shelter in Iqaluit, I’d probably be dead, and I probably wouldn’t have my son with me right now,”she said as she addressed a crowd of more than one hundred Iqalummuit, young and old, inside the Parish Hall after the annual Take Back the Night March, held last Thursday evening.

For years, Lucasie said she wanted to leave her husband, but she feared what would happen if she did.

“He told me he was going to give me a scar I was never going to forget,” she said.

When she did decide to flee, she went to the Qimaavik shelter. If the shelter does close, Lucasie said that leaves abused women in Nunavut with few safe places to turn.

“You’d go home to home with little kids. It wouldn’t be good,” Lucasie said.

“If there was no women’s shelter here, I bet there would be a lot of women dead right now.”

Last month the Baffin Regional Agvvik Society, which runs the 21-bed shelter, said it plans to stop accepting clients on Jan. 31, 2007, and will close the shelter at the end of March that year.

Board members say the shelter, which receives about $600,000 annually from the Government of Nunavut, has been chronically underfunded for years.

As a result, they say the shelter lacks enough money to pay its employees competitively, or offer them assistance with housing costs.

“They don’t give us that,” said board president Sheila Levy. “It’s so frustrating.”

To continue, the board says it needs at least $200,000 more a year to cover operations.

But Ed Picco, MLA for Iqaluit East, where the Qimaavik shelter is located, told Nunatsiaq News that money isn’t the only challenge the shelter faces.

The frequent turn-over of staff in the shelter, and of board members, are matters that need to be addressed first, he said.

Presently there are only three board members remaining. Levy said that’s because when Qimaavik was “always in the hole” — that is, running deficits — no one wanted to sit on the board.

Picco said he was confident a solution would be found before the shelter’s proposed closing date. The board is expected to meet with officials from Health and Social Services later this month.

“You need it there. No one what’s to see it closed. We need that facility not just for Iqaluit, but for Nunavut as a whole. I hope it doesn’t close down. I can’t see that happening. There’s a huge need for it in Nunavut,” Picco said.

During the Take Back the Night event in Iqaluit, organized by the Qulliit Nunavut Status of Women Council, president Kathy Hanson spoke of the need for women, and children, to speak up about abuse.

“It starts with little kids, to adults,” Hanson said. “Don’t be scared. Talk to somebody.”

“If you talk to somebody, it will stop.”

Similar marches were planned in each of Nunavut’s communities, organizers said. Marches were held that day in Repulse Bay, and that evening in Clyde River.

Traditionally, candles are carried during the march. But strong winds led participants in Iqaluit to march without them.

The turnout in Iqaluit was about half the size of last year — perhaps because this year no announcements were made until only several days before the event.

As for Nutaraq, she said that ending an abusive relationship isn’t easy, but she offered advice to those who seek to stop violence in their homes.

She said anger management counseling helped her, and that she thinks there would be less abuse if more women and men tried it as well.

“I used to be scared of seeing counselors. Not anymore,” she said.

She’s also been sober for the last three years. And she’s decided to live alone, so that she can focus on raising her six-year-old son.

“I still love him,” she said of her ex-husband. “But I can’t live with him.”

The last thing she wants, she said, was to see her son grow up to abuse women as well.

Taking these steps, she said her life has turned around. She doesn’t worry about being scarred for speaking out any more.

“I haven’t gone to the hospital in a long time.”

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