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Wellness at its best

Kathleen Lippa
Northern News Services

Pond Inlet (Oct 20/03) - Founder of Naurainnuk Daycare Ester Leck talks about growing up in the residential school system, and her move into health and wellness as a front-line worker.

NNSL photo

Ester Leck: "I'm very passionate about what I do, and there's a reason." - Kathleen Lippa/NNSL photo


News/North: What is your background? Tell me about yourself. Ester Leck: My father is from Alaska. My mother is from Pangnirtung. They met when dad was working at the DEW Line station.

I have been this nomad my whole life. I was born and brought up in the Mackenzie Delta, and went to school in Ontario when I was 15. My parents settled in the Eastern Arctic. I came back to visit them and I stayed.

My elder sister lives in Yellowknife. My younger sister lives in Kimmirut. My parents live in Qikiqtarjuaq. We feel very accepted here in Pond Inlet. (She has two kids, Foster, 14 and Robert, 5). I lived, breathed daycare when I started Naurainnuk daycare (in 1999. It is now closed due to a lack of staff).

N/N: Wow. I didn't know about your daycare involvement when I met you at the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome conference (she has been a community wellness worker since January 2003). How did you come to be interested in taking the FAS workshop?

EL: In March 2003 I attended a conference held by the GN (Government of Nunavut) and RCMP about drugs, about what happens if you are pregnant and you ingest drugs like speed, crack, cocaine...

N/N: Are those drugs we have to worry about in the North?

EL: Not so much in the smaller communities, but I know in my community we do have the blight of marijuana, hashish, alcohol abuse, and people addicted to cigarettes.

N/N: You're part of the Saluqat committee, a health and wellness committee in Pond Inlet. Tell me about that and who is on the committee with you.

EL: Three hamlet councillors and five community members.

We're going to launch a document next month and send it out to Nunavut at large, especially Health and Social Services, to suggest that it goes along with a document called Addictions and Mental Health in Nunavut they published in 2002. That one talks about the terrible dry stats -- what is facing our communities, the pressures on health, medical travel, low birth weight babies, how much it costs to medevac one child out of a community. It happens on a daily basis up here.

My background is business management. When I left Iqaluit with my business diploma I went and worked at the Northern Store. Three years later I was relief managing the store in Kimmirut. Then I took maternity leave, and I had a lot of time to think.

I have that hard edge of business and retail, but I also recognized the social lawlessness that was out there. I had a lot of time to think. How very lucky I am today to have a job I love (wellness co-ordinator in Pond Inlet). It's money coming in, it pays my bills, but it gives me something else.

N/N: What does it give you?

EL: Empowerment. You know I am a child of the 1960s and the 1970s in the Northwest Territories. I was born and raised in Inuvik. I remember the Thomas Berger inquiry. I remember Imperial Oil in full boom. It was a happening place back then, but we had problems of alcohol abuse, child neglect. I'd been a child of the state, I went to two residential schools. I started at Stringer Hall, an Anglican residential school. When they closed that we moved to the Grollier Hall, which was administered by the priests and the nuns.

N/N: Did you have a good experience?

EL: No, but I had other good experiences. It opened the door to sports and recreation for me, and I've been an avid athlete all my life, and I really believe that is what saved me. I am a residential school survivor. That's not a bad thing. It's my reality. I can't change anything. Same with my parents. There was nothing they felt they could do or say to stop that process. I was only nine-years-old.

N/N: Did you go through really bad abuse?

EL: Well, I was really small for my age.

N/N: Did people make fun of you because you were small?

EL: Yes. One supervisor in particular loved to pick on me. We had to line up before meal times, we had uniforms and such, and right beside me was the door frame. I used to make sure this one nail was pushed in because (the supervisor) would ram my head into the wall. I still have the scars.

N/N: Why would somebody do that to you?

EL: Because she could. I don't remember. She locked us in a locker. She did that to me. I was only nine. And those ping pong bats? Those paddles? She used to spank me with those paddles. She would make me go get it out of the sports room, and she would just wail away on me.

N/N: Do you think having gone through that experience makes you good at being a wellness co-ordinator?

EL: Yes. I feel like I'm in the job I'm meant to have because I survived and there is a reason why. There is a reason why I am here. I have been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. Things have got to change. We have issues and problems because of the residential school system.

We are survivors of the residential school system, but we're also living the legacies, and we're passing on the legacies of the residential school system to our kids (she starts to cry, but keeps talking through her tears) and it has to stop.

I'm very passionate about what I do, and there's a reason. What happened to our people was wrong. And you know what? In the community of Pond Inlet, in some instances, we haven't had reconciliation. We need that.

N/N: You're there. You can make a difference.

EL: Part of our big problem here is the lack of parenting skills. My mom told me stories about when she was my age and how they did it. It wasn't in a classroom type of way. She was shown parenting skills. She was shown the process when she became pregnant, and the whole outpost camp came together and supported each other.

We followed the weather patterns, the migration of the animals and the berry season. We were in tune with the land and we were in tune with our own physical selves. Remember there was no smoking, no convenient food. So her parenting skills she got from her mom and the bigger extended family. The residential school system came along and it was severance, it severed that.

N/N: The number one issue facing your community is drug abuse, according to the document titled Pond Inlet Health and Wellness Strategy 2001.

EL: Yes. We just got the translations completed. We're going to launch it next month in this community.

Then we're going to use it as part of the history of the Saluqat Health and Wellness Committee. It outlines the issues. It talks about what doesn't work anymore, like old adoption practices.

It talks about lack of parenting skills, high drop-out rates at our high school, no pre-natal care.

Sad, sad, terrible stuff. But there is a chapter in there that talks about the strength of our people, the fact we have been around this land for thousands of years, the fact that our everyday language has been Inuktitut, we've been able to retain that to some measure.

It talks about how we do have the wherewithal to address the issues that are facing our community.