When acclaimed Inuit performer Sylvia Cloutier was young and lived away from Nunavut for the first time, she wrote a song about being proud to be an Inuk, of coming from a beautiful place with strong people. Swaying to the rhythm of a traditional drum, she sang the song at the stunning Inuit art showroom gallery of Dorset Fine Arts in Toronto, during a special event co-hosted by the gallery and SeeChange in October 2024. The ‘Night for the Inuit Nunangat’ brought together Torontonians and Inuit guests who shared their personal stories and insights into the pressing issues young people in Nunavut are facing today, and kicked off SeeChange’s fundraising campaign in support of Inuit youth.
Sylvia dedicated her song to Inuit youth, saying she wanted to remind them that they are special and come from the strongest survivors in the world. “And yet, we have the highest suicide rate in the country and even in most parts of the world,” she told the audience.
“We have to use this time to remind each other that we come from strong people and that they run in our blood. They are inside of us,” Sylvia reminded Inuit youth.
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Inuit Youth are Facing a Mental Health Crisis
21-year-old Iola Oshweegok joined the event virtually from Kinngait, a remote community in Eastern Nunavut, home to the West Baffin Eskimo Co-Operative, whose artists Dorset Fine Arts represents.
"The suicide rate is so high. I have lost friends and relatives. It’s really hard," he said. "We need more resources and activities for youth.”
Iola spoke of his dream to create opportunities for young people in his community, against a backdrop of the many struggles they face, including exorbitant food prices, boredom, and family issues.
Nunavut has the highest suicide rate in Canada, nine times the country’s average. One of the contributing factors to the mental health crisis in Canada’s North is the lingering impact of harmful colonial policies that have been passed down through generations. One of those traumatic experiences was the forceful removal of Inuit with tuberculosis to TB sanatoriums in southern Canada.
At our event, SeeChange’s intercultural health lead Naomi Tatty wept as she talked about her mother’s experience being taken without consent for tuberculosis treatment from Nunavut to Southern Canada in the 1960s and how that trauma has been passed down to her children and grandchildren.
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Guiding Inuit Youth To Thrive
Committed to the well-being of the next generations of Inuit, SeeChange launched a crowdfunding campaign for our new initiative at the event: Guiding Youth to Thrive (ᒪᑯᒃᑐᓂᒃ ᒪᑭᒋᐊᖅᑎᑎᓂᖅ). The program is being co-developed with, and facilitated by, Inuit organizations and leaders and includes holistic well-being activities such as intergenerational and peer knowledge exchange, arts- and land-based activities.
William Huffman, the executive director of Dorset Fine Arts/West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative, first met members of the SeeChange team during a visit earlier this year to Kenojuak Cultural Centre in Kinngait and saw parallels to the Guiding Youth To Thrive initiative. “Our work with artists in Kinngait is all about community well-being, community building, capacity building, and this is what this initiative is all about.”
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The Journey That Led Us Here
At the Toronto event, I spoke about the story of SeeChange and the journey from the Government of Nunavut’s invitation to support a community-led approach to tuberculosis in Nunavut, a fatal disease affecting Inuit over 600 times the rate of non-Indigenous people born in Canada, to our direct work with communities, especially Elders and youth.
Driven by the injustice meted out to these original peoples who have been living on the land for millennia, our small close-knit organization has worked in five communities in Eastern and Central Nunavut since 2018.
I shared that the sheer, breathtaking beauty of the Arctic, the clarity of the air, and purity of the waters and resilience of the people have challenged everything I ever thought I knew about tackling health emergencies and health crises.
What is clear to me is that communities must lead their own health responses, and that we, Canadians and citizens of any country, must know and speak of the truth of colonial harms, and consider our way of showing solidarity and taking steps to reconciliation.
Our work with Inuit partners led us to this programming for and with Inuit youth.
Inuit Youth Storytelling at ArcticNet Arctic Change Conference in December
We are excited to support youth from across the Inuit Nunangat in an interactive event in partnership with CINUK. The Inuit Youth Town Hall session “Guliaqtuag / Told a story (in Inuvialuktun) - Unikkaangualaurtaa / Let’s tell a Story (in Inuktitut)” will take place at the ArcticNet Arctic Change conference on December 9-12th in Ottawa. Inuit youth will tell stories about the challenges they experience – including climate change - and share tools on how they take care of their well-being and thrive, including through music, sport, and filmmaking.
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