Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

Kugaaruk (Dec 20/99) - For the low, low price of $1, youth and elders in Kugaaruk (Pelly Bay) will soon have a room to call their own.

Truth be told, it'll be more of a community centre to improve the way the young and the old in the Kitikmeot hamlet communicate -- or so says Quinn Taggart, the senior administrative officer.

"This facility is really a great thing," said Taggart.

"It will sprout out all kinds of tangible benefits. Perhaps the biggest one has to do with language. A lot of the youth are losing touch with that and this will allow them to interact with the elders," he said.

The desire to improve the rapport between the youth and elders in Kugaaruk has been on the table for some time.

Launched last year with the marionette-making project, the recent acquisition of the building firmly puts into place a way to improve the manner in which the two generations relate to one another.

The underlying hope is that in time, the work done at the facility will not only seek to promote and preserve Inuit heritage, but will improve the social conditions and problems faced by the future generations of Inuit youth in the community.

"We want to put youth and elders together in a fun and comfortable atmosphere that's their own. They will have put it together themselves so the facility will mean more to them and they'll feel more comfortable," said Taggart.

Purchased from the hamlet's Koomiut Co-op, the vacant building will have to undergo some renovations before the interested parties can get down to work. But in the hopes that their proposal for federal dollars from the Gathering Strength project is successful, Taggart said he was hopeful the youth and elders would be firmly ensconced within the walls of the centre by the fall of 2000.

That's something that Jesse Apsaktuan is eager to see.

"When we get that youth and elders centre, I could get more of a chance to be with the elders and I would get to know the language more," said Apsaktuan, a Kugaaruk youth.

Visiting with his grandfather regularly, Apsaktuan said the experience would give him the opportunity to further improve and diversify his traditional skills and knowledge of names for the land.

He also spoke of the role the centre will play in keeping youth busy and off the streets.

"Sometimes when the youth are bored, they could be drinking to have fun, they could sniff or smoke pot and have homebrew -- just to have fun. The gymnasium is closed sometimes, but the youth and elders centre will be open all the time and that should really help," he said.

Apsaktuan's grandfather, Otto, said through his son, Teddy, that along with the survival and skill-related information he would pass down to the youth of his home, in a setting that will provide privacy and fewer interruptions, he was looking forward to offering the kind of counselling available in the days gone by. That, he said, will help to stave off many of the problems faced by his grandson's peers.

"When I was a teenager, if an individual had problems, they got together with the elders and talked about the problems. The elder would talk about how to live a better life, how to treat human's rights, lots of little details," said Otto.

"That's how it was in those days. That's why the centre will be useful."