Suicide prevention ITK's top priority
National group which represents Inuit releases strategic plan
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Monday, March 14, 2016
OTTAWA
Suicide prevention is the top priority in Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami's (ITK) three-year strategic plan, president Natan Obed told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development March 8.
Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami's president Natan Obed speaks to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development on March 8, the day the national Inuit organization released its three-year strategic plan. - NNSL screen shot |
The national Inuit organization released its strategic plan March 8 while its suicide prevention strategy and action plan is scheduled to be unveiled in the summer.
"We have great belief that this particular strategy and accompanying action plan will be able to create a new path and a new direction and one that denormalizes suicide in our communities and reduces the rate of suicide for Inuit as a whole," said Obed.
Obed's address came the day after the Government of Nunavut and its partners - Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the RCMP and Isaksimagit Inuusirmi Katujjiqatigiit (Embrace Life Council) - released its own one-year year action plan, titled Resiliency Within, at the legislative assembly in Iqaluit. The partners are planning a summit in May from which a longer-term plan for Nunavut is to emerge.
Obed framed his speech to the standing committee by clarifying how Canada's 60,000 Inuit are organized politically across the four regions - the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Nunavik and Nunatsiavut - and nationally.
"We have a very tight government structure. I present you with a very clear model from the individual Inuit who live in Canada to the national body that is an unbroken chain of representation, an Inuit democracy."
He spoke of the Inuit-federal relationship.
Obed said he was encouraged by the inclusion of indigenous peoples at the Paris climate change conference last year and the recent meeting of first ministers and First Nations, Inuit and Metis leaders in Vancouver, as well as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's presence at an Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami board meeting in January.
"But we know there are systemic problems we need to overcome with the way in which we interact with the government of Canada," he said, adding he hopes for "a structural relationship that doesn't vary from person to person or from department to department.
"Our rights don't fluctuate that way, therefore our engagement with the federal government should not be at the whim of a public servant or at the whim of a particular minister or limited by the lack of understanding of the realities of Inuit who don't live on reserves."
He noted the relationship is dictated by land claim agreements and public governments.
"The relationship that we have is based on the constitution," said Obed.
Ultimately, he said, the aim is to have a consistent relationship between Inuit and all federal departments.
The six other national priorities in ITK's three-year strategic plan are:
- improve access to appropriate housing
- work towards reconciliation - in relation to the 94 Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action and reconciliation amongst Inuit
- continue to work toward self-determination in education, by increasing student attainment, curriculum development and the way in which Inuit language and culture is infused in all that Inuit do
- protect the Inuit Nunangat environment, which links with climate change and protection of wildlife
- strengthen Inuit self-determination in research: and
- enhance the health and well-being of Inuit families and communities
About research, Obed said, "Evidence drives decision making but evidence also drives the creative process in which we solve our issues. We still have massive gaps in key components in our lives that we want to improve but we also have a fundamental discontent with the academic community and also sometimes the federal government system for research."
The challenge for Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said Obed, who noted Inuit did not live in settlements prior to the Second World War, "is to respect the relationship we have with the land, traditions and the fact that 60 per cent of our population still cites as its mother tongue Inuktut and the fact that we still feel we live with the environment, that we are still coming to terms with this new reality of melding southern Canadian values and southern Canadian governance concepts with the way which we have always lived our lives."
