Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Coral Harbour (July 31/02) - Organizers of a suicide-awareness walk in Coral Harbour are hoping to use a day of sore feet to talk about one of the North's darkest skeletons.

About 50 young people and elders, most trudging through coastal gravel in flashy new hiking shoes, will walk about nine hours from the hamlet to the Pingo, a large igloo-shaped gravel pile located 20 kilometres away. They leave Aug. 2 and return three days later.

"It's going to be good for the youth. They're quite excited and they need that, to have something positive with this terrible reality. I think this could help them get a bit of closure," said Silu Connelly, who helped organize the walk.

At the Pingo, elders will teach the youth about skinning a caribou and building a fishing weir. Connelly has also invited some suicide counsellors to attend.

Teen suicide is a problem across the North, but Coral has been hit particularly hard. In the past year, three young people committed suicide in the community.

"Nobody really talks about it (suicide)," said Connelly.

"It needs to be brought out more. Everybody's lost someone to suicide but no one seems to want to talk about it. I think they should talk about it a bit more."

Many of the youth have been looking forward to the walk for some time now.

"Everybody's talking about it," said Crystal Netser, who is planning to go on the walk "to prevent suicide, if it will help."

Simeon Dion said it would be a good chance to hang out with friends, and also to meet other teens coming in from other communities.

"People are excited about the walk," he said.

To make the walk happen, Connelly applied for and received almost $16,000 in funding from the hamlet and the government of Nunavut.

That money will be used to buy 50 pairs of new hiking shoes, 50 new track suits and airfare for 11 from different communities.

The timing of the walk coincides with the Coral music festival, which begins the day after the youth return from the land.

Veronica Tattuinee will fly to Coral from Rankin for the walk.

"I asked my nephew to come with me," she said. "One of my nephews committed suicide last year and I wanted to go there with him and go to his grave. I don't want the same thing to happen to him."

She said the weekend would be an opportunity "to deal with things, not to run away from them but to face them. It will be like a healing for people who have lost family to suicide."