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In Northern communities it is quite common for aunts and uncles, grandparents, in-laws and siblings to care for the children of their relatives.

The reasons vary from the child's parents not having the resources to provide proper care, to allowing the child more space due to an already crowded home.

What many don't know is these long-term arrangements with family members are more than favours. They constitute a foster home and that means the caregiver may be eligible for government assistance.

This is vital information for families. If more people access the available support it may mean more children remain in the care of a family member and are not placed with foster parents they don't know.

We commend the selfless giving of each foster family in the NWT. The harsh reality is there are never enough foster families to adequately meet the needs in the territory.

With the knowledge that support is available for relatives, more children will stay within the support system of their family and the strain on the foster system will be reduced.

It's not free money. Anyone who applies for funding is assessed by a social worker to ensure the child's best interests are met.

If the home is safe and the people caring, being placed with a family member should be the first choice.

Taking on the nation in any sporting event is difficult when you're from the North.

On Nov. 8 a curling team from the Inuvik Curling Club headed to Iqaluit for the Canadian Mixed Curling Championships.

The result? Well, if you took only the scoreboard into consideration you might not think the trip was worth the while. Posting a record of 16 losses and no wins with some pretty big blowouts can be hard on any team's morale. But, the Inuvik team took the losses in stride, choosing to instead appreciate the value of the experience.

This was the first time curlers George Lennie, Donna Maring, Edgar Maring and Diane Baxter have competed at the national level. Instead of dwelling on the negative, the team remained upbeat and positive.

Lennie, the team's skip, said one of the best parts was how much his foursome learned, coming away with new strategies.

Congratulations to the Lennie rink for giving its all and making the NWT proud. As in any sport the only way to get better is to play teams who are better. The next time Lennie and his crew head to a national event they will be in a better position to chalk up a few in the "win" column.

Nunavummiut voted for change and change is what they have: a new premier and an almost entirely new cabinet made up of MLAs who are either brand new or who had been sitting on the opposite side of the chamber.

Eva Aariak is the territory's first female premier. Lorne Kusugak, Keith Peterson, Daniel Shewchuk, Peter Taptuna, and Hunter Tootoo are all first-time cabinet ministers. Only Louis Tapardjuk was re-elected to cabinet and retained his previous portfolios.

The election of this premier and cabinet was greeted with expressions of joy and hope seldom seen in relation to the legislative assembly since the creation of the territory almost a decade ago.

This is a clean break from the activities of the previous government and what Aariak called the "culture of fear" that permeated the civil service.

She has pledged a more approachable leadership that will listen to the people.

The accomplishments of Nunavut's second legislative assembly were tarnished by scandal after scandal - a former premier calling the head of the Nunavut Association of Municipalities an obscene name at a public event, a former finance minister keeping in contact with his businesses while in office, a former housing minister who wasn't paying his mortgage, a former head of the status of women council forced to resign because she criticized the government - her employer.

Aariak is not only a new premier, she is a first-time MLA. Her learning curve, and that of the new cabinet, will be steep and the amount of work ahead of them is enormous.

Nunavut's public service has been understaffed and under stress for some time.

As well, other pressing issues such as the housing crunch, low graduation rates, high unemployment, family violence and a suicide strategy won't be addressed overnight.

Just as it took years and many governments for these problems to get as bad as they are, it may take years and many governments to fix them.

We hope as the new government gets down to business and the daily grind of paperwork, meetings and more meetings, they don't lose the desire for change that put them there.

As anyone who watches television will already know, the season of Christmas-themed commercials has begun.

For the next month and a half, and even longer if you count Boxing Day sales, we'll all be bombarded with advertisements telling us how we'll all be much happier or be able to truly show our love for someone else if we buy them a certain gift.

The real target for many advertisements is the younger generations.

That's why it's so nice to hear about youth who are doing more than just sharpening up their pencils to write out their wish lists for Santa Claus during this consumer driven season.

At Thomas Simpson school in Fort Simpson the student body, all 143 strong, is starting their annual Christmas campaign.

Instead of thinking about what they can hope to receive on Christmas morning, the students are contemplating what they can give others.

For the third year in a row the student council has decided to support a program run by Samaritan's Purse, an international relief agency.

Students will raise money and using Samaritan's Purse's gift catalogue they will purchase items that will be given to people in developing regions around the world.

There are no iPods or laptops on this list. Instead $350 will buy an ox while $70 is enough for a goat. A mere $6 will purchase warm blankets while those with deeper pockets can buy an emergency shelter for $100.

Last year TSS raised $2,500 and used it to purchase 107 items.

When asked about the reasons they support the program members of the student council had a difficult time expressing their thoughts verbally.

The gist of it was they know they have a lot while many people have little and it's so easy to help them.

In different forms many schools around the Deh Cho promote this idea during the lead up to Christmas.

Collecting non-perishable food items for donation is one popular option for schools.

By seeing a stack of cans and boxes grow even young students quickly learn they are never too small to make a difference.

It's important for communities to support student initiatives of this kind whether it be fundraising for Samaritan's Purse or collecting cans of food.

In a world where the distribution of wealth is so uneven but material goods are promoted as a way to happiness everyone needs to be reminded that a far better feeling comes from unselfishly giving than from receiving.

They say that admitting you have an addiction is the first step to overcoming it. In 2006, president George W. Bush admitted in his state of the union address that the United States is addicted to oil.

Canadians, like our neighbours to the south, are equally if not more addicted to oil. Single-use shopping bags are just one example of this addiction because, in case you didn't know, all plastic is made from oil. The bags are also an addiction in themselves. Let's admit it. We are addicted to plastic bags. As long as they are available, we will use them.

Councillor Terry Halifax is absolutely right when he says this is something that is easy for town council to do and a pain for everyone else. He is right when he says there are bigger waste management issues to address. If plastic bags are a problem, then littering is a crisis. But we have to start somewhere. This tiny step may only be symbolic at best, but it may lead to a huge change in the way Inuvik consumers think.

Plastic bags are frivolous. It is stupid to use any amount of a non-renewable resource on the production of an item that will ultimately be thrown away, especially when we have a superior alternative readily at hand.

Some Inuvik residents have said the bags are handy when out on the land. They use them for meat and fish. This is a time when we should turn to our elders for traditional knowledge. Let's ask them: what did you use to store your fish before we had plastic bags?

Let's not stop there. Creating a green world is going to be a mixture of embracing clean technology and giving up dirty 20th century habits in favour of the old ways. It would be foolish to think we could simply return to the land, but it would be equally foolish to think that the old ways were useless. They served us well for millennia while plastic bags are only 40 years old.

A bag ban would have an immediate visible effect on the town. Perhaps more important than the esthetic effect, banning bags would send a message to the world and to our residents. It would force people to come to terms with the fact that the age of disposable products needs to end.

Bringing in biodegradable bags or a bag tax will only prolong our addiction. Like an alcoholic quitting hard liquor and drinking only beer, we would be fooling nobody but ourselves.

Let's quit cold turkey. Ban the bag and be done with it.

The hockey season has been going for about a month now in Rankin Inlet, and already Iqaluit has been rumoured to be sending a team to Rankin-hosted tournaments.

There is talk Iqaluit will send a team to the midget territorial, Polar Bear Plate, Avataq Cup senior men's, Challenge Cup junior 'C', Powerful Peewee and new Atoms Championship events.

Regular readers of Kivalliq News will remember the string of events that took the Iqaluit vs Rankin rivalry to new heights this past year.

It began with Iqaluit promising victory at the Avataq Cup and then not even showing up when one or two of its, supposedly, top players couldn't make the trip.

Things escalated when an Iqaluit player then sent an insulting email to Rankin, bashing the local hockey scene with colourful language and promising "the best team Iqaluit ever put together" would kick Rankin's hockey butt at Toonik Tyme.

Rankin, you recall, promptly went to Toonik Tyme and became the first Kivalliq team to win the event.

There was another element of irony added when the Toonik Tyme championship trophy was mistakenly put in among the player's equipment and ended up back in Rankin (what are the odds?).

But, other than the giggles over the ever-increasing amount of egg on Iqaluit's hockey face, why should anyone care if the capital sends its teams to Rankin events?

First, Iqaluit is missing the qamutiik when it comes to fuelling what could be one of the all-time great Nunavut hockey rivalries.

Rankin hockey fans can only imagine the fun they would have had welcoming Iqaluit to the '08 Avataq after its promise of victory.

And, if that wasn't enough to send a shiver down your spine at the arena, we're sure the fond farewell if and when Iqaluit was eliminated would have done the trick.

The second reason is far more rudimentary.

For years Rankin, a community less than half the size of the capital, has raised the money at every age level to send teams to Iqaluit events.

Iqaluit's decades-old whining about the cost of coming to Rankin has grown tired with local hockey fans.

We sincerely hope Iqaluit starts to show the same level of commitment to growing Nunavut hockey as Rankin and, in fact, the entire Kivalliq region has.

If not, it may be time for Rankin teams to realize it's local fans and players who keep bank accounts strong by supporting them so much.

It hardly seems fair for hundreds of Rankin fans who support hockey four times a week, every week, during the season to go without, while the handful of Iqaluit fans who only make their way to the arena during a big event get to see the teams collide.

We'll give the senior men's team a pass to defend its Toonik Tyme title, but it's time to draw a line across the ice.

Either the capital sends teams to Rankin events, or the hottest drawing teams in Nunavut don't go to Iqaluit.

It's a tough stance to take, but, until Iqaluit starts to put its pucks where its lips are, it's the right choice.

The money spent to go to Iqaluit could be used to help teams from Pangnirtung, Northern Quebec or Manitoba come and create new rivalries.