May 9, 2008
Kuujjuaq’s karate kids excel last month
A positive event took place on April 19-20 weekend in Kuujjuaq.
Karate has been an ongoing activity in Kuujjuaq since 2002, but since August, 2006, there has been no actual adult instructor permanently on site.
With support from Kativik Regional Government's employment and training department, we have been able to continue coaching five selected youth leaders, who have taken on the responsibility for teaching and keeping the Kuujjuaq Karate Dojo alive.
This past weekend was a huge success. Not only have the youth undertaken a leadership role, but they also have continued to excel in their own training. This led three of them to successfully complete their junior black belt exam.
Words can't explain how pleased I am with these young individuals.
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Their dedication and commitment paid off and they have no intention of stopping there. They are determined to continue to excel and strive for self-excellence and to lead by example, and motivate other youths to do the same thing.
This is the first time I've ever heard of such a thing, where youth take on such leadership roles, continually struggling to keep other kids motivated let alone themselves.
There are many factors that they have to deal with, which normally an adult instructor would take care of, be they conflicts among the students or simply the structure of the class itself.
Parents involved with the Kuujjuaq Karate Dojo have also been a huge asset. During a practice the parents arrange it among themselves to have at least one adult present to supervise and ensure all-round safety. They, too, have made a commitment and have demonstrated unconditional support to the youth, which has served as a factor for their success.
The Karate style practiced is called Shorinjiryu Kentokukan Karatedo. Kentokukan is the development of morals and virtues, which are studied through the practice of karate.
Therefore, the youth leaders are not simply learning and teaching karate material (how to punch and kick), rather they are learning and teaching other youth how to strive to be the best they can be in everything they do.
In the fall of 2008, the Kuujjuaq Karate Club will invite a certain number of youth from all communities across Nunavik, to participate in the first annual karate festival in Kuujjuaq.
This will allow other youth in all communities to see first hand, what dedication and commitment can result in.
Giovanna Taddeo
Investigator
Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit
Westmount, QC
A tale of friendship, lost and found
In your Feb. 18, 2005 issue you ran a story about a teen who was fatally shot while another teen was hospitalized.
Timothy Fleming, then 17, was taken by our Lord from the face of this earth.
His friend Abilie Weetaltuk, then 15, was hospitalized for months. He made it through his rehabilitation despite all the pellets still lodged in various parts of his body from the two shots he received.
But Abilie's physical pain was not equal to the pain of losing his best friend Timothy. When Abilie was being medvaced by air ambulance to Montreal, he saw his friend through the other side of the window.
Timothy, shining bright, asked Abilie to come with him, but Abilie refused. He refused so that Abilie could live a bit longer on this earth to show strength, even when losing a best friend. On Feb. 23, 2007, you ran the story of the trial that took place in connection with the incident that happened on Feb. 2 and Feb. 3, 2005.
On March 2, 2008, which was one of the most beautiful days of the winter, Abilie went joyriding and sightseeing only to never return home. March 3 and March 4 brought some of the stormiest weather of the year. The Canadian air force joined the search, along with the Canadian Rangers and Air Inuit. I would like to thank them and to thank those who came from other communities by air and snowmobile.
On March 8, 2008, which we assumed was the last day of searching for him, Abilie was found. It brought a great outburst of joy to all, great joy to all those who prayed and assisted in every way possible. Despite Abilie being found not alive, the friendship grew bigger and stronger within.
Despite the violent world we live in, Abilie never mentioned revenge. I want all friends to do the same if possible. Stick to each other as friends, help your friends, and make friends.
Abilie left this earth so peacefully and quietly, in a clean way. Abilie is now with his best friend Timothy and with our best friend, the Lord Jesus Christ. Abilie lost his best friend but now has found him.
The parents of Abilie Weetaltuk again would like to thank all those who helped throughout this time of hardship.
Jeremiah Kumarluk
Umiujaq
Inuktitut-speaking nurse did care for elder
"My mother was unable to get an interpreter when she was admitted to Qikiqtani General Hospital," said Lizzie Flaherty on CBC radio in Iqaluit on the morning of May 5.
While hiring and keeping interpreters can be difficult, I believe a chance to celebrate Inuit successes by daughter Lizzie was lost.
Since Lizzie was interviewed by our national radio service, I am breeching no confidentiality rules by what I have to say.
For three days, while her mother was in the hospital, she was cared for by a very capable and caring Inuktitut-speaking Inuit student nurse who did indeed interpret for her when needed.
Inuit nurses are being trained at home in the North to work in the North with Inuit patients. This is an opportunity to laud the benefits of Inuit nurses and I believe that this particular Inuit student nurse contributed greatly to the health of the patient.
Why did daughter Lizzie not know this? Or why did she not recount this aspect of the story?
Maybe it's time we celebrate good news and the positive aspects of the North. There are certainly enough nay-sayers to do otherwise.
I am proud to be teaching in the Nunavut Arctic Nursing Program and proud to have students such as the one who cared for Lizzie's mother.
Sally Naphan
Nursing Instructor
Nunavut Arctic College
Paying homage to the late Gideon Qitsualik
I want to my pay respects to our Inuit leader and elder Gideon Qitsualik, who recently passed away. He was from Uqsuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven), Nunavut. I also want to send my condolences and sympathies to his entire family.
I began hearing about Gideon in the early 1970s, shortly after the formation of Inuit Tapiriiksat of Canada, now Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.
Gideon was someone who was highly regarded and respected by his fellow Inuit in Nunavut and his advice was sought by many Inuit, politicians and non-politicians alike. We heard much about this man through CBC's airwaves, because organizations like ITC used Gideon's knowledge about wildlife issues as well as land use occupancy by Inuit of Nunavut.
He was enormously wise and knowledgeable about wildlife, and the use of the land for hunting and harvesting purposes by Inuit. During the early days of discussions on the Nunavut land claim, Gideon made our arguments about Inuit land use and harvesting rights with the federal government much easier.
Gideon helped many people in Nunavut, as an Inuk, as an Anglican minister, and as an elder. During my term as Commissioner of Nunavut (2000-2005), Gideon was one of the people nominated to receive the Commissioner's Award for lifetime achievement at the highest level.
I was very honored to stand beside this man, whose footprints I would like to follow, and he was someone who was a role model for many Nunavummiut. The last time I saw Gideon was in Kangir&iniq (Rankin Inlet) in June of 2007, when the Government of Nunavut and the Inuit Heritage Trust sponsored a meeting on repatriation of skeletal remains back to Nunavut from southern Canada and overseas. Gideon made an enormous contribution to that meeting.
Gideon is going to be truly missed by Nunavummiut and those he knew in the rest of Canada. His intimate knowledge about Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit will be remembered and passed on to the future leaders of Nunavut. All Nunavummiut will be mindful and thankful for his service to making Nunavut a better place, in which to live.
For me, it was a great honor to have known him in life and I will always have a mental image of hearing his voice on CBC radio and at meetings, as well as his ever-welcoming smile. Gideon lived the true Inuitness of being an Inuk. He didn't ask for recognition for the help he provided to his fellow-Inuit. He was a true Inuit leader! He made us all feel welcome.
Peter Irniq
Ottawa
Nunavut francophones clarify position on Bill 21
The article by John Thompson on May 2, 2008, "A Nunavut school system everyone loves to hate," did not convey the full flavour of our submission to the Standing Committee on Health and Education with regard to Bill 21, the proposed new Education Act.
While we believe that Bill 21 is an improvement for the francophone minority of Nunavut over the current Education Act, Bill 21, in its current state, is flawed.
We have proposed many amendments to ensure that Bill 21 fully meets the requirements of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and it is our hope that amendments will be introduced to rectify these shortcomings before the bill passes into law.
Among others, we believe that Bill 21, as it currently stands, is a lost opportunity to ensure the necessary support for early childhood education that anchors language skills in children. Why should daycares be the poor cousins to schools when they hold such a great responsibility?
Further, we have always maintained that, for the francophone community to flourish, we cannot be an island of rights in a sea of inequity. The francophone community of Nunavut can only thrive when the Inuit majority flourishes.
This is not just theory for us. Close to half our students who hold rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to French first-language education are also beneficiaries of the Nunavut land claims agreement.
The Francophone community does not speak for the other linguistic communities of Nunavut, but we can only have respect for all those who are looking to have more control over the education of their children.
Carolyn Mallory
Présidente de la Commission
scolaire francophone du NunavutSuzanne Laliberté
Présidente de l'Association
des francophones du NunavutRobert Nevin
Président de la Garderie
des Petis Nanooks
May 2, 2008
Old activists don't lie, they just spin away
I was not surprised to read in your April 25 edition yet another misleading diatribe against the nuclear generation of electricity, "Nuclear opponents don't resort to lies."
I was surprised, however, that it came not from the usual purveyors of innumerate pseudo-scientific poppycock, but from one as literate and as numerate as a former GN policy official and GN chief statistician.
Purporting to denounce the lies of others, Jack Hicks proceeds to distort, dissuade, distract and dupe us from a truthful comparison of contemporary methods of generating electricity, using the cheap rhetorical trick of ranting over the subordinate issue of "mining" (cited no fewer than 10 times), as though that were a synonym for generating electricity.
Of course, this reference to the environmental rape of the land by so many mining techniques is entirely justified, when examined as such. We need only visit Canada's own "stupid to the last drop" tar sand operations to witness the most systematic and egregious mining sacrilege on planet Earth.
Mr. Hicks is also correct in stating that the environmental impact of any given type of fuel source must be openly and honestly assessed through all of its stages, including mining, milling, enrichment, fuel fabrication, plant construction, generator operations, decommissioning, dismantling, clean-up, disposal and long-term storage of waste.
But from that point on, Mr. Hicks's own analysis succumbs to the same facile distortions propagated by the real villain in the energy debate: the lack of sufficient intellectual rigor and attention span to sustain the homework required of today's more demanding environmental issues.
Choosing instead to distract us, Mr. Hicks shrouds his sophomoric poppycock with Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith's amply debunked "study" of the energy balance of nuclear electricity generation. Rather than taking the time to master the independently audited statistical methodology of Environmental Product Declarations (EPD), Mr. Hicks lazily resorts to borrowed assertions from Messrs. van Leeuwen and Smith.
The difference is that EPD measures real energy consumption, at every phase of the power-generation life cycle, for power generators currently in actual production!
By contrast Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Smith only guess at their numbers, fabricating them from merely theoretical postulates and outcomes. As a consequence, their paper grossly overstates the energy cost of green mining by a huge ratio and fantasizes the energy cost for construction and decommissioning a Nuclear Power plant at some 240 peta-joules (PJ) versus the actual EDP measurements of eight peta-joules.
To repeat, the physically proven measurements of EDP are based on the real world nuclear generation of electricity measured over the total "cradle-to-grave" of a comprehensive life cycle assessment. They are based on scientifically-accepted and recognized information covering all stages of the life cycle from raw materials acquisition to final waste handling.
Based on his borrowed reasoning, Mr. Hicks concludes it is much better to work in a remote region like Nunavut, "one of the last places on the planet where a politician can argue that there should be a nuclear reactor in every community - and not be publicly ridiculed."
Mr. Hicks would do well to consider Arthur Schopenhauer's adage that all truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, then it is violently opposed and, finally, it is accepted as self-evident. Europe understands. America does not.
Mr. Hicks and all those of his knee-jerk ilk, in politics, the press, and the public, need to read the seminal book Smelling Land, by David Sanborn Scott, or at least listen to the two hours of discussion with him that aired recently on CBC's Ideas program.
No discussion of the role of energy in our contemporary context can be taken seriously that does not begin by first understanding then either accepting or refuting the conceptual frame of reference provided by Dr. Scott.
Peter Baril
Iqaluit
Are wolves out of control?
I have to applaud the Alaskan government for introducing their wolf control program recently. No amount of talk about caribou population depleting in their state was doing much good, as their wolf population has gone out of control and needed reduction.
That, in itself, is a positive wildlife management program that others, such as Canada should follow.
As an elder now, originally from Bathurst Inlet, I witnessed a very large herd of wolves following the Bathurst caribou herd, south of Daniel Moore Bay, in the late 1950s.
In their wake, my late dad and I saw and witnessed thousands of dead, uneaten caribou killed by this very large herd of wolves. My late dad and his dogteam were almost killed by this herd of wolves, while he was checking his trapline.
Since the Canadian Wildlife Service removed its wolf control program in the late 1960s, the wolves between the Northwest Territories and Bathurst Inlet has become extremely over-populated. During the wolf control program at that time, the Bathurst caribou herd was healthy, with 500,000 caribou. Today, that herd of caribou, is down to 100,000 and in five to 10 years, that caribou herd will permanently disappear.
The First Nations of the NWT, the Government of Nunavut, sports hunting organizations, hunters and trappers organizations, and independent wildlife biologists in both territories should find funding to hold a meeting to discuss and gather information about the density of the wolf population.
During the meeting, they should charter aircraft to see and witness for themselves just how immense this wolf population, which hangs around the Bathurst caribou herd, really is.
It would be wise if Clarence Klengenberg and Joseph Tikhak of Bay Chimo be invited to show the group where this very large herd of wolves are located, as they, too, have encountered and been chased by this herd of wolves.
If this herd of wolves wiped out the Bathurst caribou, other smaller animals become their next food and they would be wiped out as well. If that happens, you're not going to see any animals wandering in their habitat, whether it be here in the NWT or in Nunavut.
Maybe, humans will be their next food? A group of wolves killed a worker in northern Saskatchewan going to or from work last year on a road.
John Komak
Yellowknife
Nunavut mine camp workers have no voice?
It is very clear that the exploration boom in Nunavut is holding and everyone ought to buckle-up and enjoy the ride.
In looking through the schedule of events for the recent Nunavut Mining Symposium I wonder why there wasn't a single session held to discuss the realities of employment.
A session where the dishwashers, cleaners, cooks, labourers and heavy equipment operators from mining camps across Nunavut could provide input.
If so much discussion is focused on the optimism the mining industry holds for Nunavummiut, then why aren't we all hearing about the first-hand experiences of such a fortunate group of Nunavut society?
I think this is because the voices and opinions of these people would be an inconvenience to those attending the Nunavut Mining Symposium.
No one wants to hear about the realities of working in the mining industry. No one wants to talk about true systemic barriers being faced by Inuit when they set foot in a mining camp. Let's call it like it is: blatant racism and sexism.
But why do these problems plague Nunavut's economic savior? I think it has something to do with the fact that our sacred socio-economic monitoring committees can't even get off the ground. It also has something to do with our glorious IIBA agreements that don't want to deal with social costs, but merely blue sky social benefits.
Not to mention the fact that once discussions on racism and sexism are allowed to take place outside of closed-door environments the benefits that come with mine development won't be painted so brightly. After all aren't mining projects approved for development only once the benefits are weighed against the costs?
People shouldn't be wary of raising these and other issues simply because their employment in this industry (direct and indirect) will be jeopardized.
As the mining boom continues we all need to grow-up together and we all need leaders to take us there. Anyone else willing to stand-up?
Responses can be sent to nunavut.mining@gmail.com. Strict confidentiality will be observed.
(Name withheld by request)
Iqaluit
Youth say thank you
On behalf of the all the volunteers and the Nunavut participants of the 2008 program of Northern Youth Abroad, I would like to thank the 2008 Nunavut Mining Symposium delegates for their generous contribution to our program during the 2008 Nunavut Mining Symposium held in Iqaluit April 8-10.
We much appreciate the support of the steering committee in selecting us to receive the charitable proceeds of the auction.
NYA is a not-for-profit charitable organization developed in Nunavut and designed to promote success in education through fostering leadership, cross-cultural awareness, individual career goals and international citizenship amongst northern youth. The Government of Nunavut, NTI and the regional Inuit associations have been key funders for many years now.
NYA was the recipient of proceeds in excess of $24,000 collected from the fur fashion show and auction, held April 8 as part of the 2008 Nunavut Mining Symposium.
By donating the proceeds of this event to NYA, symposium organizers and delegates are supporting the 29 Nunavut youth participating this year as they volunteer in southern Canada and Botswana while developing many leadership and career skills. It is great to know that the mining industry understands that if Nunavut and its communities are to benefit from the mineral resources of Nunavut than an investment in the youth of Nunavut and their education is the way to begin.
With currently 93 per cent of our NYA graduates graduating from high school, we are confident that NYA youth will be key players in the northern workforce and are the next generation of Nunavut leaders.
Keith Irving
Chair of Northern Youth Abroad
www.nya.ca
Perverse KSB housing policies in Nunavik
Your April 18 article, "Chronically ill teacher loses job and home," brings to mind other matters related to Nunavik's housing shortage and the staff housing policy of the Kativik School Board.
For example, I am grateful that the Kativik School Board sponsored me, as I completed the requirements to graduate from CEGEP as well as three university degrees in the field of education.
But there is a catch: the same school board that paid my way through these years of higher education is not permitted to provide me with a place to stay unless I live in some community other than Kuujjuaq.
Meanwhile, especially these days with a shortage of qualified teachers, there are examples of less qualified people being hired from the South to teach in Kuujjuaq who are provided a full package of benefits, including housing, because they are not local beneficiaries of the JBNQA.
I encourage any Nunavik beneficiary who is studying to be a teacher, despite the fact that Kativik School Board can't provide you with a place to stay, to continue your studies and strive for good marks. Although you will not be able to work in the classroom, the likelihood that other organizations can use your expertise seems to be quite high.
William Robert Mesher, B.F.A., G.D.Q.E., M.A.
Kuujjuaq
More union members should have voted
I am writing in response to the letter written by John Thomas of Iqaluit, "Union member questions strike vote result."
While reading the article, the words really stuck out were, "Those of my fellow NEU members who I've spoken with say they did not vote nor do they want to strike."
The lesson here is:
- Support your union - after all you are paying them to represent you;
- Get out and vote - therefore, your union will know what you want of them and that is your right; and
- If you don't vote, you don't have any right to criticize.
Maybe John Thomas of Iqaluit could work as a representative for the union and could help his co-workers understand the concept of a unionized environment. It is important to get out and vote and make your voice heard. You have rights.
Good luck John!
(Name withheld by request)
Iqaluit
