Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

IQALUIT (Feb 15/99) - Ikaargutit -- meaning bridges -- was borne out of the need to try and ease some of the pain for the residents of Kimmirut with sick or dying family members.

As Kowisa Arlooktoo explained, he helped establish the group after his lifelong community rallied around his own family.

"My wife's brother died and we had to fly one of her aunts in from British Columbia. We went on the radio and asked if anybody wanted to help us out," said Arlooktoo.

The overwhelming response they received from the tightly-knit South Baffin community gave Arlooktoo the idea of putting together a more permanent group of people to assist in raising money to pay for the transportation costs of others in need.

"We've all gone through it before. We've had money problems and couldn't attend the funerals of relatives or attend to someone who was sick down south."

Arlooktoo said it was an important part of the grieving and healing process to be able to go to the funerals of family members. After GNWT cutbacks and policy changes eliminated compassionate travel a few years ago, it became even more important for the group to pull together.

Arlooktoo said through fund-raisers like rummage sales and donation boxes, the six-person group has raised in excess of $20,000 over the last two years and has paid for the travel of several people, not all of whom were from Kimmirut.

"Once someone was stuck in Kimmirut from Cape Dorset and his sister committed suicide. We flew that person back home for the funeral," said Arlooktoo.

Because of the increasing number of requests from people outside Kimmirut, the group has started to focus its efforts on building the bridge across the territory.

"We're saying now let's slow down a little, we can't send everybody. We're starting to talk about somehow connecting everybody together across Nunavut."

Arlooktoo said Ikaargutit is in the process of planning a publicity campaign to try and generate awareness about its goal and to try and spark interest in community members in other hamlets.

Robert Jaffrey, another of the group's members, attributed their wide-reaching success to the diversity of the group itself.

"We cover a number of different areas. We've got social workers, older people, women, youth, members of the church. We have a number of different skills."