EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
This is a very stressful job for a social worker, it’s like a band-aid solution for the real underlying problem that we have in suicide when you just send social workers to the communities to talk to people who are suicidal.
Also, the government employees who are social workers are not getting adequate support that they need from their government.
Their directors don’t visit them in the communities to give them moral support although they talk to them over the phone.
The social workers could be people who can be a life line to the people who need them.
The department has to provide an adequate number of social workers that they need.
They provide for the nurses and the RCMP.
In his opening remarks, the Minister stated that the number one health crisis is the issue that we’re discussing.
If that’s the case, there should be more than one social worker within the communities.
The social workers could have a very big impact on helping and counselling people within the communities.
When you’re trying to help your community and when you have to travel to another community to help them, and you stay only for a certain period of time, for a few days, it’s not a long enough time to try to deal with the problems.
Mr. Chairman, I am trying to think of suggestions on how we can prevent suicide or how we can resolve the problems and how we can find out if there have been studies done to date on what kinds of reasons they have for committing suicide.
What can we do within the communities to help prevent suicide and how much support do we need to give the communities?
As the Minister mentioned, there are many support systems in place in the communities who can help people who are in a crisis situation.  Perhaps we should start trying to find funding to help those people who are already in the communities and help them to provide adequate counselling training that they need.
Also, it would be very hard for family members to try to counsel their own children in their own families.
There are some people who are already available in the communities who have been trained in suicide prevention.
There are also church services or care givers from the church groups who are very well qualified to help the local people, who are volunteers.
How do we empower them so they can help prevent suicide?
So, I am going to be supporting that, Mr. Chairman.
Also, the Minister stated that it starts in the family.
I understood that when he said it starts in family.
For those of us who are a little bit older, we had parents who were unilingual Inuit.
They had their traditional values and principals whose foundation was for compassion, consideration and love.
For those of us who are a little bit younger, we have to live two worlds, two cultures.
We know a little bit about Inuit tradition, about the Qallunaat culture.
Can you imagine what our younger generation has to go through, what they have to face today because they have to live two worlds?
They are bilingual; they have two cultures that are always in a tug of war with either culture.
We have to start supporting them in either culture.
We have to be able to support them because it’s amazing that they are able to adapt to such an environment.
They are able to live in a bilingual environment.
I can eat traditional foods like igunaq, and I can eat apples as well, like fruits, but the younger generation has different things today.
I think that we should empower our children, or help our children to build up their self esteem.
How can we help our young people to build their self esteem?
I keep getting back to that 100 people that the Minister referred to who have committed suicide since the creation of Nunavut.
What kinds of ideas or suggestion can we come up with?
Can we provide additional funding for Counsellors?
Are we going to have volunteers only at all times in the communities when they help people in suicide?
I am not blaming the Government.
As MLAs, we are here to try to help our Government to come up with ideas where we can help our young people.
We already know that there is a problem.
Even if we are not affected directly by suicide, we have been affected.
We have helped families who had people commit suicide in their families.
I wanted to bring something up where we were told to be frank and open about the discussion that we are talking about right now, and that we should not hide anything.
We should point blank talk about it.
There was a suicide by a non-native person who was older.
The coroner stated the reason why they committed suicide.
We have to start doing the same thing about inquiries about suicide within Nunavut.
Why is it when a suicide that happens in Correctional Centres, there is an inquiry that goes on?
Why do we not do that for the other suicides that happen in the homes?
Perhaps we should try to find out what the background was of that person who committed suicide?
That person who committed suicide at the Correctional Centre, they did an inquiry about the people who worked at the time and what kind of crime that they did.
Everything was looked into.
They got the necessary information that they needed, because they were incarcerated.
I am not blaming anyone at all; because of that person was non-native, who had an opportunity to have an inquiry done on them.
I am not blaming because they are non-native, but maybe we should start doing the same thing for Inuit suicides.
I will have further questions to ask on this issue.
Chairperson (interpretation): Please be open and talk about anything that you want to say, be frank even if it is hurtful.
We need talk about suicide whether they are non-native or not; suicide affects everyone.
We as individuals make choices of our own.
So we need to start expressing ourselves whether it might be hurtful to someone else.
We cannot do anything about someone who has completed suicide.
As soon as they have passed away, we cannot do anything about it, although we have so much compassion and empathy for the parents.
We have to start talking about this issue at this time.
Mr. Havioyak will make general comments.
Mr. Havioyak (interpretation): This is a very touchy issue, as we all know.
How can we rectify the problem?
I don’t know but as my colleagues were stating earlier, what they have come across, I would like to say that on this subject, as I stated yesterday during my Members' Statements, there are people who are in the community who are there to help in the community.
They’re the people who have regular contact with the young people, who interact with the young people. When they interact with the young people, they help to start finding out the problems that are hidden inside a young person.
The people who are the help line, who are volunteers, are there for a reason.
They chose to stay in the community to help and work with the young people.
That was my Members' Statement.
I am still 100 percent behind that.
I used the police officers as an example.
We also have agencies like the nurses.
We’ve talked about the problems that we have and how can we solve this.
We can’t solve this alone.
We have to encourage our communities to work together as a community.
You have counsels, DEAs, you have parents, young people who are active and don’t forget our elders.
We’ve come to a conclusion at times and wonder why a person has committed suicide.
We wonder, is it because they have a problem dealing with something in their personal life?
You may think that you’ve seen that particular person the day before and he seemed okay.
But deep down inside, he’s been hurting for a while.
There are some signs of a person who is in depression or in need of help but still he is able to carry on with that hurt.
I will use this as an example. Just the other day in Kugluktuk, as I was in my constituency office, I received an email from a young person.
This young person wrote to me through the internet saying, I have a problem today.
How can I deal with this? Perhaps tomorrow I will not be here.
He does not have any parents and this young person was asking for help, and here I was wondering, am I the only person here to deal with this?
So I replied back, we all have problems one time or another but we have to deal with our problems.
Perhaps today is not a good day for you but you have to be encouraged to carry on tomorrow or on another day we might find a solution to your problem.
I continued responding to him, if your grandfather was here today he would advise you and say that I have lived a long life.
I lived a long life to help others and therefore I would like you to live a long life too, to help yourself, to help your people.
That’s the way I responded and I further said that we all have problems to deal with, when you deal with a problem it can’t be solved overnight sometimes, but you can’t stop there.
Having said that each community whether it’s a big community or a small community, we have agencies, we have individuals that have to get together to help one another to tackle this problem.
Prior to coming in for the session I had met with the elders and there was a discussion around the table about ignoring problems like this.
The elders have said that if we continue to ignore the problem we’re losing time where we should have helped this person and we didn’t help him.
The person who should have been helped is gone the next day.
We as the Nunavut Government, we need to be working together to find solutions.
As Minister Picco had stated we want to tackle this problem but we can’t do it alone, we have to work together.
But as we know, we try to overcome some problems in a hurry and it gets worse.
How can we tackle this problem?
As you stated earlier Minister, we have this National Suicide Prevention Conference here in Iqaluit.
This is a good start for suicide prevention strategies.
We have youth committees in the communities who try very hard to stand on their own.
We have elders committees who struggle on their own and wonder why they’re left alone to tackle problems.
We need to put both groups together to help one another.
We can’t leave one group alone and have them trying to tackle this alone.
We have always been advised that when we look at a problem and see a problem, we can’t ignore that.
I will comment a little bit further on that later.
Just to let the Members understand that with anybody, whether they’re elders or young people, they commit suicide at any age.
Everybody grieves.
Young people are not the only ones who commit suicide.
Adults also commit suicide.
All of our minds can be affected one way or another, so let’s not forget that while we’re talking about suicide.
It can be anyone who can have their minds affected by something that can perhaps be a problem for them.
Now it’s time for Mr. Arvaluk.
The report that was provided to us in March 2002, talked about the strategy and I will briefly talk about it later on.
But at this time I would like to contemplate back on our parents’ experiences.
Our parents have been affected greatly by the government’s policies.
It also talks about in this paper.
Inuit are being affected by people taking away their culture.
For instance, at the beginning, when they went to school in Chesterfield Inlet and Yellowknife and other residential schools, their languages were affected.
It even states here that in Herman Report on page 51, because they no longer can relate to their parents because they went to residential schools.
This affected the parents as well because they have not raised their children because they went to a residential school, especially for those male individuals who went to residential schools.
People have also been affected by the RCMP eliminating the dog teams of Inuit.
I have heard some people saying other things that have affected them.
Also, about the dogs that are out on the loose get shot, and that’s also affected the people out there, that affected our parents.
Also, by the religious people, the Inuit people’s beliefs were changed by those religious people who came to the communities.
Some of them wanted to follow the religious beliefs of the people who came into their community to preach to them and they felt that they had to believe in what they were told.
When we were younger, the Government assimilated the people into the communities, even though they were living in individual camps.
The reasoning behind that by the Government was that the children could receive an education, and that they can have better healthcare.
Those are the types of things that happened, maybe because the Government employees did not want to go to individual camps because they maybe thought it was too cold, maybe that is why they put them into communities, such as Arctic Bay, Clyde River, and other communities that are settlements and hamlets today.
There is Grise Fiord and Resolute Bay that were never settled into before because they were relocated from Northern Quebec.
That was not part of the Inuit way.
Our parents have been ruled by the Government so much that they figured that the Qallunaaq is automatically a leader at that time, whether it be a preacher, or RCMP, as long as they were non-native, they were identified as leaders by our parents.
There were students sent to Aklavik, Inuvik, and Yellowknife, and Chesterfield Inlet to boarding schools.
When they came back home, because they were not raised by their parents, the parents did not really know how to go about looking after their grown children that became teenagers.
And also with the children who keep losing their teeth because they were bottle fed.
What I am trying to say is the topic that we are discussing at this time, it just seems like we do not give them any social skills anymore.
We do not teach them about death, like we were taught.
We used to teach our children to fear death.
We had to teach them survival skills.
We have to remember to keep our lives by watching over each other and watching ourselves to make sure that we do not get into an accidental where we can die.
Mr. Chairman, I think that we have to look for ways to make sure to keep our children alive, to prevent them from committing suicide.
We are not teaching them any survival skills anymore.
They seem to be growing up on their own.
We are not saying enough to the children to make them fear death.
There are different reasons such as losing their culture, addiction to alcohol and other drugs, and not being a close knit family, and losing your parental skills.
Those are the different types of reasons for suicide nowadays.
Those are the other things that we should think about.
We cannot just think about what is in this mental health strategy.
We also have to think about other things.
This way we can recognise or realize that the people who commit suicide also have different reasons for committing suicide.
There are various reasons.
It does not matter that there are different reasons that they have out there.
We have to let them realize that tomorrow is going to be a new day.
I think we should start expanding the mental horizon of our children as parents, without imagining them committing suicide, so that we can prepare them for their future and teach them about life’s cycles, and to have better expectations, that there will be good things coming in their future.
We should start pointing out to them personal perspectives like that, that there will always be a tomorrow.
When our children have expectations of the future, for me it was seeing my father making preparations the night before that made me wish the tomorrow would arrive right away so that we could get on the road.
These days, our youth are really soft and when they are given a retort, it affects them personally and they lose all perspective other then the problem that is affecting them.
So, Mr. Chairman, at this time I have lost my sleigh of thought so I will be asking some questions later, but that is it for now.
When you saw your time expiring, your mind went blank and lost your thoughts. I believe that some people commit suicide because their mental perspective gets lost and they see no other way out. I hope that is not the case.
Mr. Anawak.  Hon. Jack Anawak (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
July 4, 1977 and December 18, 1977, are the two days that I will never forget.
When I was growing up, we grew up when there was no structured housing in the communities, at least our generation.
The only people that had housing were the Bay boys, the RCMP and the Catholic priests.
When I was growing up to the age of 27 years in 1977, in the community of Repulse Bay, I never even heard about suicide.
I think it was in the 1970s, there used to be suicide but I do not remember if there had been any suicide, which occurred within Repulse Bay itself.
But, July 4, 1977 and December 18, 1977 were the days that I will never forget because it was very shocking to me because I had never heard about healthy people committing suicide even though I heard about it before that.
At that time, when the elders did not feel that they were useful anymore, they seemed to lose hope and just let things happen to them.
It was unheard of to hear about suicide in the younger generations.
Those two days I talked about were very shocking days at that time in Repulse Bay, because it happened to my brothers.
The reason why it shocked me is the endless question of why?
Although this occurred in 1977, even though over 26 years have passed, I still feel pain deep inside and still ask myself why?
There has been over twenty-six years, why did it happen?
Why did that happen to my two younger brothers?
For that reason, I am happy that the Minister is trying to resolve the issue of suicide.
As Members, we have been trying to resolve this for a long time.
We did this in the Kivalliq region in the previous years; thereafter what we have been doing is manning the Crisis Line to help those people who are in need of assistance.
It is very hard to deal with.
I know that people who commit suicide have different reasons, but even though they have various reasons for committing suicide, as a Government, if we work together we could probably lessen it a little bit to help our young people.
Like the Member from Amittuq stated that some of the younger people today are committing suicide.
Perhaps if we can involve the younger people and to ask them questions about how they can help if they are involved with our work, because today is a different lifestyle that we led years ago.
Years ago we did not see anything such as computers.
We did not see any games that the kids play nowadays.
We did not have television.
Not very many times we did not hear the radio, because we did not even have radios at that time.
I think that when I was nine years old that I finally heard a radio in Chesterfield Inlet.
Those are the types of lifestyle that we led, and this is the lifestyle that the kids are now experiencing, is all different kinds.
There is also a lot of work outside of our communities for young people.
There is all kinds things out there that can be used by our young people.
There isn’t much employment in Nunavut in the communities.
There is a lot of unemployment out there.
Even when I go to Rankin Inlet, or when I go to Repulse Bay, or another community, I often think about the young people.
If we were younger today, how would we feel?
We have a job.
Today’s youth have no employment whatsoever out there and some of them are not trained to take on jobs.
What do they do if they do not go out hunting?
There is nothing very much to do in the communities.
The only thing that they do is watch TV, and to try to keep themselves occupied by petty theft, and petty crime, and everything else.
They do not have any daily expectations that they can look forward to for tomorrow.
That is a very hopeless situation that they are in.
We have to try to feel for them, because we realize that they have no employment in the communities.
How can we help them to gain employment?
And to give them some activities such as there is not very many Arenas over there, and there is not very many young people who occupy themselves by recreational activities and stuff.
This way we have to try to help them to make sure that they have activities that they can have in the communities.
We have to try to find something for them to do to make them more confident about themselves, such as bowling perhaps.
We were in Greenland, there is a bowling alley over there and many young people go over there to bowl.
Those types of things are what we have to try to provide for our young people in the communities and to involve our elders.
We are taking over the traditional elder’s role right now whether you are a Member of a committee or whatever.
It is just like we are taking over role of our elders because we do not have anything for them to do.
We have to try to make sure that we provide them with something.
How can we best utilize their skills, experience and ability to help?
Sometimes people talk about those of us who went to school in Chesterfield Inlet, to the residential school.
We have been hurt in many different ways, such as sexual assault or physical abuse while they were going to residential school.
They continue on with the cycle of violence with their children.
How can we help those people that went to residential school?
There has to be other things to help those who have been abused and we have to look at stopping the cycle.
We have to put the young people and the elders together to try to prevent suicide.
I know there are a lot more youth, especially young males who commit suicide, but we have to try to help prevent them from completing suicide.
In development of things over time, we are taking over everybody’s traditional role and we are leaving behind a bunch of displaced people and there are people in front of us in a difficult situation.
When I was a young man, we had to go hunting to help out with the food, but today a person can survive at home even though they do not have a job and do not go hunting; they can be provided for by their parents.
We have to look at the situations where their traditional role has been usurped and ensure that we have activities for them, including employment and training so they can be self-reliant and feel self-secure.
I am happy that as Members of the Legislature, that we are finally talking about suicide.
But again, I say, let us try to involve the young people and the elders and our support people and remind them about their spot in our communities and this world.
And we require experienced and competent social workers to deal with some of these problems, but we have to debate these issues to have those things happen.
I will now give Mr. Nutarak an opportunity.
On the issue of suicide, I do not know the reasons why people commit suicide.
We have an idea based on the gossip as to the reasons, but we tend to be quiet about these reasons.
That became obvious when we were in caucus this morning when we were talking about the issue of suicide.
There are Members of the Legislative Assembly who have lost children through suicide and although it is a concern, we tend to avoid the issue in the fear that our colleagues will become devastated and these types of perceived barriers exist.
So when it comes to that point, we have been quiet about it.
It was out of respect to our colleague that we purposefully avoided the issue.
It has come to the point where it would be safe to say that it is not so shocking anymore.
On the issue and as Enoki touched on a bit, there are compassionate and strong feelings we all retain in regards to this personal issue, but which we will have to set aside if we are going to discuss the issue of suicide frankly, and to the point.
If I were to hear that one of my children committed suicide, I would be devastated!
A layperson would come to inform me and to comfort me, but there would be some issues that we would not talk about.
We do not talk about some personal issues to people, especially to our youth.
There is nobody leading the debate and who can give advice on the issue of suicide.
Maybe the volunteers at the crisis center give advice on that issue and it is logged on their computers, but not the ordinary Nunavummiut.