NUNAVUT
Even as Jean Kigutikakjuk, Leena Evic and Ceporah Kilabuk lit three qulliit to welcome 100 or so researchers, policy makers, and indigenous youth to the Circumpolar Mental Wellness Symposium in Iqaluit March 25, the people of Kugluktuk more than 2,000 km away mourned the sudden death by suicide of a female teen in their community.

That mental wellness is a critical matter for communities across the circumpolar world is why Canada insisted on this focus during its tenure as chairperson of the Arctic Council, Nunavut MP Leona Aglukkaq, minister responsible for the Arctic Council, noted in her welcome speech.

"When I undertook consultations across the North before Canada took over as chair, this is the clear message I received - the well-being and prosperity of people living in the North had to be at the top of the Arctic Council's priorities," said Aglukkaq.

"Over 30 per cent of the population of Nunavut is under 15 years old. These youth represent our future.

The importance of our youth is exactly why this symposium is focused on meaningfully engaging youth in the creation of solutions."

The symposium was the culmination of two years of work conducted under the guidance of the Sustainable Development Working Group. The project was called The Evidence Base for Promoting Mental Wellness and Resilience to Address Suicide in Circumpolar Communities, and was co-led by Canada, the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Norway, the Kingdom of Denmark, the United States, and the Russian Federation.

The goal was "to build on existing and established projects with communities and researchers in the field to identify and share best practices in promoting resilience and well-being as a means of preventing suicide, with a particular focus on children and youth," according to the symposium program.

The first speaker at the three-day gathering, Dr. Laurence Kirmayer, is a leader in the field of cultural psychiatry. His task was to provide an overview of mental wellness in the North to the more than 100 delegates attending from the circumpolar nations.

His work suggests that the very values of Inuit and other indigenous peoples, such as relationship with family, community and the land, are sources of strength and resiliency, but that colonialism, for example, has created a rift between individual identity and those sustaining and nourishing cultural values. Both the root of the problems and the solutions can be found here.

Gwen Healey, born and raised in Iqaluit, has a background in public health research. She founded and is executive and scientific director of Qaujigiartiit Health Research Centre in Nunavut's capital. She answered the joint call from the Arctic Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research looking for research teams examining suicide prevention in the circumpolar countries. She became part of one of the two teams

"Our centre (Qaujigiartiit) has worked for the past five years to develop an evidence-based youth camp program, Makimautiksat, and that's really what brought us to the team ... the innovative practices incorporated in our camp program, which reflect Inuit values and perspectives on health and wellness," said Healey, on a break from the symposium.

"And also that the camp was piloted and rigorously evaluated, so we have an evidence base to support the camp and demonstrate why and how it works."

Healey values the opportunity the Arctic Council facilitated, and her continued affiliation with other researchers from other countries.

"Our world view is in the Arctic and it benefits us to be looking at other Arctic countries who on the surface look quite different but really have a lot of similar structures, like remoteness, access to services, rural communities and very active indigenous populations working on self-determination, control over processes and protocols in their own communities."

Healey says self-determination has comes up in almost every presentation at the symposium, where youth and researchers have shared their projects and their successes.

"For our part, we work in our communities, we are from our communities ... Each community has a different history and a different context and a different way of accessing services, depending on what's available in the community. People in the communities know what works and it's really about ensuring those voices are heard."

Healey and her teammates, which includes researchers from Norway, Greenland and the Northwest Territories, looked at programs "that were not well known but doing innovative things.

"And if they don't show up in the research literature or in some other publicly accessible report, people don't often know about them. So, for our part, looking at these innovative programs and showcasing them in this bigger environment is really an opportunity to focus on innovation moving forward."

Along with self-determination, another repeated theme across circumpolar nations is the importance of ties to the land.

"Per Jonas Partapuoli (chairman of Sáminuorra, Saami Youth Association, Sweden), said, 'Reindeer herding is my home, is my love, is my heart.' It's just so much a part of his being, his identity. He talked about that for his family and his peers," Healey said.

"We see that here in Nunavut, as well. The land is so much a part of our lives, our experience and our identity. And what that means for people, we see land-based programs all the time in Nunavut, and we know it works intuitively, but it hasn't really been looked at scientifically.

"Not that everything has to be looked at scientifically, but we do want to better understand what it is about land-based programming that contributes to success. And hopefully that body of evidence will help those programs get more funding to do more great work for people in our communities."

Healey, as part of an international circumpolar team, has received further funding to continue this work - $3 million over three years from the Movember Foundation's Canadian Mental Health Initiative.

"The symposium, hopefully, is a stepping point to multiple initiatives moving forward," said Healey. "And so our team is sticking together and continuing the work with new funding and a broader reach of partners."

In Nunavut, four land-based projects will be part of the initiative, one in Arviat, one in Clyde River and two in Iqaluit.

Canada will hand off the chairmanship of the Arctic Council to the United States in Iqaluit April 24 and 25, when the ministers for the council's eight nations will meet. It is hoped that the work related to mental wellness will continue, even as Arctic development is at the forefront of leaders' minds.