John Curran
Northern News Services
Monday, April 16, 2007

CAMBRIDGE BAY - Every day elder Annie Neglak gets one step closer to her goal.

Getting ready to take her final year of training in the human services program at Nunavut Arctic College's Kitikmeot campus, she hopes to eventually become a group counsellor.

"I'm excited these days ... nervous, but excited," she said. "It gives me another reason to be sober."

For much of her life, Neglak had a drinking problem. She finally kicked it 26 years ago, but not without some help.

"I want to be a group counsellor, because I've gotten so much help from it in the past," she said. "Things I'd buried came out with that kind of help."

She knows her chosen field does have some challenges, but this 60-year-old said she's ready for them.

"I want to help people get back on their feet like someone once did for me," she said. "We're talking about people's lives, so it is very important work."

Like many Inuit in Cambridge Bay, Neglak wasn't born there.

She can remember her parents moving her and her 10 sisters there by dogsled from the Perry River area - which is about halfway to Gjoa Haven from Cambridge Bay.

"I can see a picture in my memory of the way it used to be for Inuit with no drugs or alcohol," she said. "Now we have communication problems with our young people. I think technology has a lot to do with it."

Life has changed and she knows she has changed along with it in some ways.

"I know I can't live on the tundra anymore, I'm too spoiled," she said. "Part of me misses that life, but I can live with the good memory."

Nowadays she is content to go to her family's cabin on the land, often with her 76-year-old mother Polly.

"My mother is still very active," she said, smiling. "I'm happy I'm able to be so close to her now and live a very family-oriented life."