EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
If we put out information to the young people as to where they can seek support or advice, especially if we can put a support network out there available to the youth, I feel that we could save lives even without putting all of these recreation facilities in the communities.
I feel that having the proper information for a place of objective and compassionate advice is more important.
We are discussing personal thoughts here, as this issue is a very personal one.
Further, our federal government established the Charter of Rights including human rights, so that if an individual is abused, there are certain rights that this individual has, as long as they are in Canada.
Following the constitution and the charter of human rights, I cannot physically abuse my children nor can I verbally abuse them.
Because of that, this is one of the challenges we are facing because we cannot deal with our children in the traditional Inuit manner.
The elders had their ways of dealing with children, whether it be tough love or something.
I think that we should focus on legislation where it would reinstate the elders’ role and their child rearing responsibilities.
These days, it seems like we are constantly running into a legislative barrier in our daily lives.
If I physically abuse my girlfriend, I would be charged and taken to court.
If I were charged, I would be very scared because of the court charges and especially if it is my first offence.
We do not know why suicides have been rampant in our communities.
As Rebecca had mentioned earlier, we have to work harder on giving support to our social workers and counsellors at the community level.
As the Minister of Health and Social Services had stated earlier, there was training offered in Clyde River and we should use these trained and skilled people.
They are just sitting there without any support and basically on their own.
They work really hard to raise money to pay for the airfares, their accommodations and their per/diems to attend meetings.
If we were to give them more authority or support, then they are more than willing to go to other communities to counsel and to help their fellow Nunavummiut.
If we empower them, they will be able to go into the schools, to give talks to the students.
They will be able to put out the information to the schools and to the young people.
We keep saying that our children are our future and in Pond Inlet, there was one individual who made a proposal so that they could have bible readings at the school.
According to the Inuit who want to have these bible classes, there is a God and Satan that our children have to know about.
But, because they are talking about a particular religious denomination, it cannot be practised in the school.
In regards to suicide, there are these same types of barriers that are put in front of us.
The traditional knowledge is not really geared towards this issue.
We all know that Inuit had shamans.
The shaman wanted to find out what happened to a person who committed suicide in the afterlife.
They went into a trance to find out and it was stated that the people who commit suicide are in perpetual darkness.
This is something that we do not talk about.
As I said before, if I lost a child to suicide, I would be visited by laypeople who are there to comfort and assist me.
They do not give you the entire healing process.
We cannot be told where that individual goes.
If there was an individual who would give the facts to the youth, I think that it would give a lot more support than providing expensive recreational facilities, and other distractions.
We need to be more vocal.
We have to be frank.
We have to have communication with our children.
We also must not infringe on the Human Rights Act.
Would it make a difference if we empowered the Inuit Counsellors doing their counselling in the traditional fashion?
The community counsellors, I am not talking about the social service workers, the health nurses, maybe we should put the counsellors under the umbrella of the hamlets.
If they could be given more powers, or empowerment, then they should be freer to do what they have to do at the community level.
That is one of the possibilities that we can discuss.
I am not an expert, but of course, I have been affected by suicide.
When I was a young child, I had an older brother, whom I dearly loved, and protected when anyone should do anything to him. In anything that he did, he was my role model.
I wanted to do everything that he did.
Whatever he did, I did, because I loved him.
I was very proud of my older brother.
Of course, he was addicted to what is available now, to drugs.
He broke laws and as a result was arrested.
Because he did not want to be incarcerated, he took his own life.
A piece of my heart died that day.
This is painful and I still have those same feelings.
At that time, I was very mad at the RCMP.
I was very mad at the Justice system.
At that time I lost a good part of my life.
Being a youth, I was following his tracks.
I was turned to drugs and alcohol.
I was addicted to drugs.
I did not care about anything.
I rebelled at the RCMP.
I was incarcerated.
As I got older I did think about suicide.
I did not feel that my life was worthwhile.
I looked at what would be the least painful way to commit suicide.
Hang myself?
Overdosing on pills?
What if I took the pills and did not die?
Would I become mentally ill?
I used to think about that.
Today, I am very thankful to my mother, Annie who is not alive anymore, for telling me that I was loved, and that I should not commit suicide because in the future I have a role that I have to play.
She used to tell me that although today might be hard, it will be a better tomorrow, what you are going through today will teach you how to cope in the future.
So, today I am very grateful to my mother.
I never thought that I would come to this point today because I felt totally worthless.
I did not value my life.
But my mother was very insistent and kept telling me that I was loved and they were extremely grateful that I was here, that is what has kept me going to today.
So to the young people out there, the young people who think that they are not loved, I want to tell them that you are loved.
It might not seem like that all the time that people love you but your sister, your brother, younger and older siblings, your mother and your father who loves you dearly and have a special place in their hearts for you.
Please keep that in mind and I urge the young people to keep that in mind.
Think and focus instead on the future because none of us know what our future is going to hold.
There will come a point when you will be in a brighter environment.
Yesterday, we were talking about what we can do about suicide, about suicide prevention and what we as a government can do.
I will do all I can to help because we sympathize and empathize for the survivors when they are going through that period in their lives.
Hon. Manitok Thompson (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman and also the Members who have made their general comments.
It gives you a better understanding of the issues and we do not know how or what we can do as a government on the suicide issue.
I am very proud of and especially commend the Department of Health and Social Services on their activities on the issue of suicide because they are working extremely hard in this area.
On more than one occasion, during these conferences on suicide prevention, the public walks and travels on suicide prevention, I hear they are not making a dent on the preventive side.
I think it would be best if we are quite frank about what we hear out there, especially on the issue of suicide.
There has been more than one person who has told me that we are not making a dent through suicide prevention conferences, through youth walks, through national travels, on this issue of suicide.
People have told me that it is not doing anything to alleviate the devastating number of suicides that are committed and I am sorry to think like that.
There are many people who have committed suicide after these walks or conferences, so we need to find a better approach.
My uncle, Robert Tatty, my mother’s brother who is an elder in Rankin Inlet, I met up with him recently.
He state that he is starting to think about the issue since he has been going out on the land, and being with young people to tell them that suicide is not okay.
He says that he has not been sparing in his advice about the way life gives you challenges, instead he said that taking the tough love stance is more effective then the youth walks and the suicide prevention conferences.
It is more effective if you go out, one on one with the youth on the land, take a tough love stance and tell them the truth.
If you are no longer patronizing them and tell them the truth, especially the part in the bible about not murdering people.
The same elder told me that he is thinking of going the schools to talk about suicide.
I told him that I would talk to the school and set up an appointment when he can go visit the school. He said that he does not have to get paid for doing this service.
I talked to the school administration and I was told that they have an open door policy with the elders.
They can come into the school at any time.
We all know that the Inuit will not go to those types of institutions uninvited, because that is not our tradition of barging into a place uninvited.
They have to get a phone call saying at two o’clock, you are going over there and that way they feel that they are invited.
There is the difference between the Qallunaaq culture, and the Inuk culture.
A lot of times it is due to this miscommunication that nothing happens.
So tell them at what time and what date that they can go in.
That is what I wanted to say and the parents are going through extremely hard times in their lives.
Some of them have very good parental skills, and they have a good home environment, so it seems.
The parents are working extremely hard and some of them are at their wits end.
They have come to this feeling of hopelessness, because they have no support system out there.
No one is going to call them just to check to see if they are okay.
They have to approach these clinics or these counsellors, and then they are emancipated by all of these bogus words without resolving the initial problem.
I think our young people are going through a crisis at this time.
They have come to the point of hopelessness that there is nothing for them to do.
They are in this state because they have this feeling of hopelessness and of committing suicide.
I do not know what the reason is myself.
That is why they feel so useless, so uneventful and purposeless.
In the school environment, the children are taught to read, to do mathematics, to do geography, social studies, and there is nothing in there about parenting or life skills.
When they go home, they turn on the TV.
Their parents do not have the time because they are also overwhelmed by responsibilities.
In the schools, at least they have things to do.
There are many dropouts who have absolutely nothing to do.
Here the parents cannot find the jobs for those children.
The children will not take the initiative to go out there and look for a job.
They do not say that they want a job.
There are many young people just in their rooms watching TV, playing their Playstation and they do that all night.
That is the way we now live our lives, constantly interrupted at every turn.
It is very hard on the parents.
It is extremely hard on the parents.
You have to hold the child and say here is a job.
You have to hold their hands in order to give them a little bit of a push.
What about the unilingual Inuit?
They must be in a harder situation than we are; they have no job or other options available to us.
I wonder what else we can do or say to alleviate this issue.
There is Jesus and there is God, and it is something that I am not ashamed to say.
Many times we have come to the point of hopelessness.
We go to Church and the answer comes and then again on the other side there is Satan.
There is a lot of danger that we do not worry about.
We do not hear about death and it is a very scary thing.
Again the Churches are not being aggressive enough in their teachings.
As a parent today, it’s extremely hard if we’re going that crisis.
Look at our children who are going through something heavier.
We have to keep going forward.
Those are very good words, what Arvaluk said.
Why have we lost this looking at hope, not giving up, having a goal?
There’s unemployment.
There are people who drop out of school even though they’re advised by their parents not to.
They have no support from the government.
You can only come here and get a job.
They’re not going to go to your houses.
There are some people who are just drug addicts or just smoking everyday.
They just smoke to make themselves feel better.
I think we have to teach religion in the schools.
That has been taken out because we have to be the same as everybody else.
I want to hear from the other Members.
I think you have recommendations or plans of action.
We the parents are hopeless now and if we’re in that state, our children must be going through something harder.
If we don’t make changes, the government won’t do anything, and have employees who are willing and have home visits and so on.
At this time we’ll have Mr. Kattuk.
The comments from our colleagues are very interesting comments and they’re very true.
We were told earlier that we can speak out on anything that we’d like, just to be frank and straight forward.
I have something to say that is brief.
And I’d like to talk about suicide as well.
I am one of the oldest Members of the Legislative Assembly in the house and my colleague, Anawak mentioned earlier, that those of us who were born out on the land, before they were amalgamated into communities, we knew the traditional way of life having said this we have literally lived on two worlds.
I am happy to see that I know where I am today.
I know where I stand and what I’ve accomplished to date.
And I am proud of that because I was fortunate enough to be given a foundation that is solid because I was able to hunt and travel by dog team with my father.
I’ll never forget that and one of the reasons might be that I am one of the eldest of my father’s children and I was given the responsibility of taking on a role as one of the older children.
It was a role where I had to help my family to support the rest of my siblings.
I was given the responsibility of going out hunting for any bird game and also to go out on dog team to hunt for food.
I was able to, on my own, harness my dog team and go out on the land to hunt.
I had to learn those life skills from my father in order to survive, for our family.
But as soon as the Government came to the North, my life totally changed and it was because they said that it was mandatory that we go to school.
It was like we were taken from our parents and it was like being put into an institution where you are incarcerated.
And no wonder, a lot of the young people or young adults are going through such a hard time because we feel worthlessness and full of hopelessness.
As Jobie stated earlier when you are suicidal, if you commit it, then you would go to this dark place.
I too have heard of this place, that it is so opaque that it is a very dark place.
Although it may hurt people when we talk about it, but the things we heard this morning about speaking from our hearts is true.
I have also heard about this place where you end up if you have committed suicide.
All this is on top of the pressures that our young people have to go through within the schools or the education system is tremendous.
They have such stress on what they have to learn and we need to start advising our young people that if you commit suicide, you are going to this certain place where there is darkness.
And we have to start teaching them that suicide or taking one’s life is not the way and it is against the laws of nature.
And when we are talking about suicide prevention within the Government system, I sometimes wonder how and what I can do to help prevent suicide.
Or what can we do to make it proactive that in a way that it influences young people to be positive about life and themselves.
And when we start talking about suicide out in the open, we seem to be passing on the responsibility to somebody else other than the Government.
And we seem to pass this responsibility on to people who are in the assistance profession.
And when we talk about our Suicide Prevention in the House, although it is a program under the umbrella of the Government we give these programs to the existing councils or groups within the communities and we pass the buck along.
We have to make sure that we talk about suicide in the open and like Minister Thompson said that there are a lot of different things that cause suicide and we have so much research and programs to combat it, but the suicide is not decreasing; it is increasing.
And when we say that we were going to talk about suicide, I was so happy.
At least we are trying to talk about it in the open and here we are talking about it.
This is a start and we are now able to talk about it openly as a Government and I encourage you as my colleagues to try and find ways we can prevent suicide and help our young people to live proactive lives and give them stronger self-esteem.
It was mentioned earlier, there is God, there is Jesus, and there is Satan.
I believe that myself.
But on the other hand, when it’s almost Christmas time, in the month of December, there’s such a force, an evil force that comes into our communities or into our lives, that Satan, that evil force, that energy, that goes into these young people’s lives or anybody’s lives and turns everything upside down.
That seems to happen especially during the month of December when its Christmas time, during the celebration of the birth of Christ.
Evil Satan doesn’t want us to be happy.
There are volunteers within the communities who help other people who are care givers because they have committed themselves to helping others.
I know of a person just recently during Christmas, who was going through a hard time just before Christmas.
That person came to our place to have supper with us during the month of December and that care giver stated that this is the heaviest month for young people who want to commit suicide and this is the busiest time of the month for me to try and help young people.
Although there are not too many suicides that have happened within my constituency, and I am thankful for that, but I think that we should be exposing our compassion and help each other within our community because it’s quite remote from here and also it’s a small community.
We’ve been able to work together to have compassion and help others.
We need to have more compassionate and love towards one another because we said that if you have any problems or concerns, you can come to me or go to someone you feel comfortable talking with.
That’s what we announce over the radio.
We even announce over the radio a number of times during the year that if anyone is going through a hard time, that there are people in the community who you can turn to if you’re going through a crisis situation.
I think my time is up. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We still have some time.
All the things that I am hearing are making me want to cry.
I believe in Jesus and I believe in Satan.
I’ve gone through everything that I am supposed to follow.
I used things that I am not supposed to use and then on the other hand I can resist temptation.
The majority of the time I resist temptation and follow Jesus in the path that I was given.
But I cannot be perfect all time.
I am not bad all the time either.
I come into situations where sometimes, I go through bad situations and then I go through good situations.
We need to make rooms within the education systems as a government, to start helping our children with life and coping skills because as parents, we have taken away the responsibility that we have as parents in teaching our children about life skills.
And when our children come home from school, what they have learned and what we are supposed to teach them at home, it is different and we do not always have the time to tend to our children.
Even right now as MLA’s, we have left our families at home, left our children at home to attend this Legislative Assembly.
And we leave them in the care of others and sometimes their grandparents will come and see them now and then, but not everyday.
Suicide is something that has always been there, from a long time ago.
Even our Shamans, who had tried to figure out through spiritual travel, went to see where people who committed suicide went to.
The Shamans traveled to the other side, to the supernatural world and saw those people who had committed suicide were hanging, their tongues hanging and other forms of suicide.
The person who had committed suicide is in the hands of Satan and they are in the Lake of Fire, eternally in pain because if we do commit suicide, that is where we go.
There are people who go who are judged within the Court System; they are not the only ones that are going to be judged.
They are only judged in this world.
When we come to the Judgement Day, everyone will go through Judgement Day.
And if I am in the Book of Life, I will be able to enter Heaven, I will be so happy, but if God said, you did not listen to me, you will be thrown into the Lake of Fire and we have no choice but to go there.
Although we are judged through the Justice System, through the Courts, if we have committed a crime, I do not think that is nothing compared to what we expect in the afterlife if we were thrown into the Lake of Fire because that is what I was taught from my elders and I firmly believe that.
I have experienced this a little bit myself because I have had to fight with a spirit, physically fighting a spirit who was trying to kill me, encouraging me to commit suicide, doing things to me to try and kill myself.
There are so many things that we encounter that might want us to commit suicide because there are spirits out there; there are demons who will physically fight you.
They’re physical, they look like the real person that committed suicide and they look like a person but they are cold to touch and cold all around them.
James mentioned earlier that as Inuit, there were many things that were imposed upon us, such as killing off our dogs and amalgamation into the communities, taken from the home to attend residential schools.
And also, policies imposed that changed the way we live in the home.
And I grew up with my father for about two years, when I was two years of age, I started going out hunting with my father.
And what I learned from my father in a practical sense, I use today for my life skills.
One time, when my father and I were out hunting and we got really cold and we got stuck out on the land.
I was so scared that I didn’t want to die.
So, I started running towards our camp and I ran all day until I reached it to keep warm.
That’s the kind of thing that we need to encourage our young people to do is teach them how to have survival instincts.
Because of the education system, because of all the things that have been imposed upon us, we have no choice but to let our children attend school.
Them most valuable thing that seems to run our lives today is money.
We can’t run anything without money.
We can’t purchase anything without money.
We can’t start programs without money.
Monetary value is more important than human value.
Although it may change in the future, but monetary value is such that we need to pay for every little thing material things that we have today.
I am sure that has a detrimental effect on our lives.
When those people who are victims of suicide, or have had loved ones who have committed suicide, we’ll always feel for those people who are going through the situation at the present time, where they have committed suicide.
Another thing that I would like to mention is that if there was no communication system at the time, when there was no radio or anything like that, we were told that we have to try and communicate somehow through spiritual means.
Nowadays, we have the media.