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TUKTOYAKTUK - A group of Northern academics are asking youth to look into the future, and tell the world what they see.

The Our Future, Our North workshop spent three days in Tuktoyaktuk last weekend, asking 14 youth participants from the Beaufort Delta and Sahtu how they envision the future of the North.

Dustin Edwards takes a break to reflect on his vision for the North. Edwards participated in the Our Future, Our North workshop where youth participated in discovering what their vision for the future of the territory is. - photo courtesy of Julia Christensen Kereliuk

"Our youth are going to inherit the future we set out for them and right now there isn't enough youth participation in what the future is going to look like," said Oxford University Ph.D student Erin Freeland Ballantyne. "We're making all these policy decisions that are going to have all these major impacts but we're not including the people in it who will be most affected by the choices."

The group includes Freeland Ballantyne, fellow Ph. D student Julia Christensen Kereliuk, University of Victoria master's student Alana Kronstal and Jessica Simpson - all of whom were born in the North. They developed the workshop through Health Canada, The International Polar Year project and the Arctic Indigenous Youth Alliance.

Our Future, Our North produced writing, ideas and reams of photos and video, most of which will be folded into an online blog.

Called "Our North, Our Future," the four organizers believe the blog will be a seed of growth for bringing youth together to build for the future.

"It's a chance for the youth to take something tangible back to their communities to share," she said.

"It's a meeting place for those people to keep talking, as these ideas marinate, to keep talking about new ideas or ways to organize and gather youth in the future."

Through a writing exercise run by Simpson, youth were able to collaborate and come up with a declaration of what they want for the future.

"They want to maintain their tradition, culture, healthy living, sustainable communities in terms of having local decision and local food," Simpson said Christensen Kereliuk said leaders need to look more closely at the potential youth hold for the territory, and what they can offer for a more balanced, sustainable future.

"We're very quick to say the situation surrounding youth here is bleak and I think that's totally wrong. Youth tend to get marginalized and painted with one broad brush and I think that's tragic to push youth into the shadows and control them rather recognize what is there."

Kronstal said going into the weekend, she was unsure of what to expect. But the master's student, who studies mental health and addiction in the NWT, said she was blown away by what the youth had to offer.

"They were talented and interesting people," she said. "It was encouraging to see we have people like that scattered all over the region and territory. It makes me hopeful for the future of the NWT knowing there are leaders like this out there.

"There is great promise for each of our communities."