Are we safe?

Rumors abound in our community that the RCMP have ignored death threats given to our high school principal by a local teen. What isn't rumor is that our principal has had a tough year (as I'm sure many do), but is still fighting the good fight, and we commend him for his efforts. But his professional and personal hardships aside, what is a teeny bit more serious are these threats on his life...

We in the community have heard through the rumor mill that the local RCMP officers have dismissed these threats as "benign" after confronting the individual and giving him a stern warning and informing him of the "gravity of the situation". Personally, this is insulting. Why isn't he under arrest and in jail? He's broken the law! Twice now actually because the threats have continued. We shouldn't have to wait and see if he decides to act on those threats! By that time it's too late! According to a google search, here is the laymans legal definition for death threats:

Threaten death or bodily harm

Under the Criminal Code, it is an offence to knowingly utter or convey a threat to cause death or bodily harm to any person. It is also an offence to threaten to burn, destroy or damage property or threaten to kill, poison or injure an animal or bird that belongs to a person.

Penalties

The offence of utter death threat may be prosecuted by summary conviction or by indictment. If prosecuted by indictment, the accused person is entitled to elect trial by jury and upon conviction is liable to up to five years jail. In most cases, however, the offence is prosecuted by summary conviction, requiring a trial before a lower court justice. In this case, the maximum penalty is 18 months imprisonment.

It seems pretty obvious that this young man should be in custody and awaiting a trial. But that's not the point of this post. The question I'm asking is why? Why aren't the RCMP doing their job? Is it because they are young, inexperienced officers that are afraid to take on Inuit-White violence? Is it because they are understaffed and overworked and don't have the time and resources to deal with an apparently "minor" offense? Or is it because these things happen all the time in larger cities and they just go unnoticed? Personally I would be really scared if someone were threatening my life, and I would hope the RCMP would take these threats seriously. It certainly doesn't seem all that unreal of a possibility that these threats would be affirmed, given the drunkeness, and history of crime in these small communities.

I for one hope that our principal gets on a plane, gives Nunavut the finger as he's boarding his $1500 flight home (First thief of the north), and contacts every newspaper, blog, and RCMP head office he can to inform them about this.

Your thoughts?

-Anon

Welcome to Nunavut, now go home!

Awhile back, we got into some trouble over what we had written on our blog. In a meeting with our superior we were told that we are visitors here and that we should behave as such. After the adrenaline wore off from the meeting, it hit me. Visitors? Visitors!? I couldn’t believe what I had heard. Did he really say that? A glance at my notes confirmed it. I know that we live amongst people of another culture and that qallunaat are the minority in the north. But are we not still in Canada? I was born and raised in Canada. I am Canadian. Nunavut is in Canada, no?

What the dilly?

Almost 3 years ago I saw a job opening. I applied for the job. I got the job. I moved. I work, live, pay taxes, and vote in Nunavut. I left my life in the south to live here. To LIVE here. And it doesn’t matter how long I live here. One year, 5 years, 10 years – as long as I live here I am not a visitor. I know we won’t live here forever. This might be our last year, I don’t know. But that shouldn’t matter. If I moved to Alberta for 3 years would I be a visitor there? Would I have to watch what I say so as not to upset the Albertans? When Inuit move to Ottawa are they visitors? No way! So WHY am I a visitor here?

Since that meeting, other things have irritated me. One of them being when someone asks “Are you going home for Christmas?” I’m guilty of it too, don’t get me wrong, and I kick myself every time I make that error. The other thing that bugs me is when kids ask me where I live. I point to the house and they say “No, I mean where do you really live?” The fact that the kids also see us as transients hits me. I can, however, understand it coming from them. They have seen so many qallunaat come and go, after all. But from an adult? It didn’t hurt; it made me angry.

So I genuinely want to know. Can someone explain this to me, please? Is it because we live in a territory protected by a land claim agreement and since I’m not a beneficiary of that agreement, that makes me a visitor? I guess I could sort of see that explanation. But if I am called a visitor just to protect the sensitivities of NLCA beneficiaries so they don’t think this land is anything less than theirs… is there any question?

- J.M.

Are we guests or inmates?

There's a time-honoured tradition in Nunavut that I'm ready to see the last of. That tradition is the doubling-up of strangers in hotel rooms and B&B's.

I had the misfortune of being booked into a B&B for a few days in one of the communities last fall. It was either that or the hotel, so I asked the travel agent to make sure that I would NOT be sharing a room, and to choose for me accordingly. I was also quite willing to not travel if I would not be guaranteed a private room for the duration of my stay.

The agent checked and said the B&B would guarantee me a private room. So, optimistically, but still doubtful since I'm not new to travel in the north, I had them make the booking.

Well, I can hear the squeals of laughter of the Arctic Agent readers from here. You guessed it. As soon as I arrived, I was told that the person previously in the room had decided to extend their stay, so I'd be sharing.

So, here I am put on the spot, as we are all put on the spot. "It's the way of the north". "It's winter in the Arctic, what do you do?".

Well, I've had enough of it, so I made the difficult decision to be a bitch. I knew there were other rooms available in town (more expensive), and I had the earlier booking, so I refused to share. It was so hard! The pressure should not have been on me. The person I was kicking out was not happy, although they did not blame me (I don't think!). If I had been the displaced person, I would have forced the B&B owner to make up the difference of having to switch to a different room after having changed my travel plans on the condition that I could extend my stay, but that was not my decision to make.

This is just so wrong. It's bad enough expecting strangers to share rooms, but to do it to someone after they had gotten a guarantee of a private room is just unethical.

I took an informal poll in the days following, and I was shocked at how many endorse the sharing of rooms. Everyone has been convinced that there is no other way to do it, that you can't throw people out in the cold.

Well, I am here today to call bullshit on that notion.

Let's face it. There are no unplanned arrivals to the communities in Nunavut. You book in advance (unless you're stupid, but face it, the travelers in the north are either well-heeled tourists or transient workers. We're not stupid, we make plans, we can't drive into town on a whim). If your plane arrives, the weather is OK, so the person scheduled to vacate your room is generally not stranded, unable to leave the community (Arctic Bay is an exception due to wierd flight schedules, and I should mention that the B&B there is wonderful, I've stayed there too and it wasn't that one!).

The reason people are doubled up are because we put up with it. We're nice. We don't want to be labeled as snobby or demanding southerners, or "culturally insensitive" at these "misunderstandings" (definitely not a misunderstanding in my case, although that card was played), so we suck up the "tradition" of sharing, due to the "shortage" of rooms.

Guess what causes the shortage of rooms? Well, I run a small business, and it's a no brainer. If you can sell the same product twice, at double the profit, and the customer bears the inconvenience and not the business, it starts looking pretty darn lucrative, doesn't it? Further, not only do the inconvenienced customers not complain, everyone just says it's the way of the north. Heck, the hotel operator is practically a hero for offering this unique cultural experience, and the pushovers- oops, I mean guests- are left to dine out on the tales of roughing it in the north. Hardly a big incentive to expand rooms when you can double the profits on the ones you've got.

I'm not a tourist looking for a unique experience though. It's not 1957 any more, and I've had enough.

I also have the solution. If rooms have to be shared due to lack of space due to "emergencies", pass a law that the guests are each charged half rate in that situation. That way at least they get a financial break for having had to sleep with (or worse, not sleep at all) the snoring stranger with the questionable hygiene who might be out on parole for all they know. The hotel operator loses nothing, their room is still rented. And you know what? If the hotel or B&B operator is denied the double income, I think the number of rooms will suddenly increase.

After all, room rates in the north cost are higher than the south, for far fewer of the amenities. Sure, it's expensive to build in the north, but the room prices reflect that, and they don't need to put in the conference rooms, the pools, or the parking lots to attract guests, so it does work out. The demand is there, otherwise, what is that stranger doing in my room?!?

Stop trading my sleep and privacy for your profits! The innkeepers of the north are not going to do anything unless we stop being such good sports about being treated so deplorably.

-- F.St

Racism at it's finest

Oh so you like taking pictures? A lot of us northern bloggers do, and some of us are quite good at it. But are you good enough for NTI's photo contest? Well, the first question you have to ask is what color is your skin?

How do you define a "beneficiary"? I'm not sure, but the simple answer is "an inuk". But what about the other people who live in Nunavut? Like the southerners who came to Nunavut decades ago and have lived here ever since, or the southern children who were born and raised in Nunavut? To call them anything but Nunavummiut would be wrong. So how do they differ from the Inuk 3 doors down? The answer: their skin color.

Seeing blatant racism like this is a remider just how backwards it can be up here. How is this not illegal? How can NTI get away with this? If any corporation down south refused a service to someone based solely on their skin color, there would be outrage, lawsuits, firings, etc. So why is Nunavut different? I'm asking these questions because I don't know the answer. Is it just a matter of time before the minorities rise up and file a class action lawsuit against NTI and Nunavut for this kind of stuff?

The Sad State of Education

There's no real secret that Nunavut's education system
lags way behind other jurisdictions in Canada. While
75% of students in the rest of Canada graduate, in
Nunavut this number is closer to 25%. YES 25%!

Now you would think that one of the ways the GN would
address this would be to ensure that all classrooms in
Nunavut are staffed with qualified teachers. However,
this is definitely not the case here. The GN puts
Inuit teachers into classes in the interest of raising
the number of Inuit in the education system. Sadly,
it does this at the expense of ensuring they have a
B.Ed. I've even taught in one school where the
Kindergarten teacher only had a grade 8 education! Is
this any way to raise academic levels or improve upon
our sorry graduation rate?!

Reading and writing skills are actually worse now then
they were 20-30 years ago under the residential school
system. Yes, for the first time we have a generation
of students that are more poorly educated than their
parents' generation.

The Department of Education likes to trumpet that any
teacher in Nunavut is qualified to teach any grade
from K to 12. This is nonsense. I have 3
undergraduate degrees from an Ontario university but I
am most definitely not qualified to teach say high
school math or science because I do not have a math or
science degree. However, according to the powers that
be, I or any teacher is qualified to teach these
courses.

As I understand it, the new Education Act sets a
deadline by which time teachers lacking a B.Ed. must
finish course work so that they will be fully
qualified. This is all well and good I suppose for
future students but I fail to see how this helps
students that are currently in the system. Would you
or anyone go visit a doctor, lawyer, surgeon etc. that
is not fully qualified? Obviously not, but Nunavut's
Dept. of Ed. apparently has no problem with kids being
taught by unqualified teachers.

In a majority of schools, K-6 classes are taught by
local teachers while upper grades (with the exception
of Inuktitut for the most part) have southern
teachers. The system simply is not producing enough
qualified Inuk teachers to take on the higher grades.
The Education Minister may say that any graduate of
the NTEP Program (Northern Teacher Education Program)
is qualified to teach up to high school, but the
reality is that the few teachers this program turn out
teacher only at the primary level.

The easiest way for the GN to fix the problem with
qualified teachers would be to ensure all teachers
have a B.Ed. NOW, not within 4,5 or 10 years from now.
However, this is not going to happen. It must
instead follow a Land Claim Agreement that ensures
people are given employment no matter how unqualified
they may be. Given that it's taken 9 years and we
still do not have an Education Act, one can only guess
at how long it will take to address this nightmare.

The GN points out that language of instruction is a
big issue and rightly so. Students must become
proficient in both Inuktitut and English in order to
succeed in the future. However, if classes do not
have qualified professionals than it matter little
what language students are being taught in. It could
be French, Chinese, Russian or Swahili. It matters
not. When you put teachers in your classrooms that
are themselves uneducated, you are only inviting
failure.

Worries though, its all good. A fully bilingual
curriculum will eventually be in place in Nunavut
by......2019.....YES 2019!! (Just in time for my
retirement - provided I haven't left here sooner out
of sheer frustration.)

signed
disgruntled teacher

Rise of the Nazis?

Thanks to L.W. for this one.  

This post is in response to this Nunatsiaq news letter to the editor.

 

Every once in a while we see a very telling Letter to the Editor in Nunatsiaq News. A good example of this is a letter written by Lootie Apak Kooneeliusie and published in that paper just yesterday.


Apparently, someone shit in Lootie's Corn Flakes and he suspects it was one of us "white Nazis".

I’m glad that Nunatsiaq News chooses to publish these racist rants whenever one of them comes across the editor’s desk, which I suspect happens quite frequently. It’s a good reminder to all of us that racism is not the exclusive domain of any one group.

It’s interesting to speculate on the background of this idiot. Does he work for the GN? That wouldn’t surprise me! If he does work for the GN, will his supervisor come down hard on him the way some of us "visitors" have been kicked around. I doubt it!

I’d like to think an imbecile like this would never be hired by any responsible employer.  I wonder what type of man Lootie really is?  Considering that he likes to run his mouth, yet probably would never consider living off the generousity of the Canadian tax-payer that he so reviles.

Keep it up Lootie - you’re giving us all a good laugh!

LW

A landfill as our landscape

Thanks to J.M. for this one.  Keep them coming.  

I'm looking for a little help in writing or staging a bit of a protest regarding some of Nunavut's municipal dumps, their solid waste management plans (specifically the lack of following these plans), the lack of fencing around many dump sites and the ensuing mess of garbage that ends up on the land and ice - and consequently, in the ocean.

My concern is with the blowing garbage that is polluting our landscape. It seems like such a simple problem with such a simple solution - enclose the dump with a tall fence, just as many solid waste facilities do in other parts of the world. It's not going to keep all of the garbage in but it will keep 99% of what would've ended up on the land or ocean in the dump, where it should be. Many communities already have fence enclosures, but many do not. I'm not exactly sure why - but lack of caring, enthusiasm and motivation at senior levels in the hamlets would be my first guess. Their first rebut would be lack of money... but that's horse shit. In my home community the hamlet actually pays volunteers - yup that's what I said - pays volunteers to clean up garbage in and around the community. The paid volunteer thing, an absolute epidemic, is another topic for another day.

(I'm starting to flush with calm anger)

I have a friend in Pond Inlet who has approached the hamlet in regards to their waste management practices. According to my friend the hamlet has a fairly comprehensive plan, but does not follow it. Not even close. Instead the hamlet, like many others, burns their garbage. Much of the time the smoke blows right through town creating a human safety issue (see a September 21, 2007 letter to Nunatsiaq News titled 'Health survey should measure toxins'). The burning of garbage, this time, is not my beef.

A similarity that occurs across the entirety of Nunavut is that community members can quickly get up in arms about an issue when they feel threatened by a 'southern' entity or action. However, the same issue right here at home is ignored. This territorial government (and some residents) seems to have an affinity for pointing fingers to the demons of the south (or southerners in the north) - the apparent cause of all things negative in the north. See http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2007/10/25/nu-navy.html. Our ex-Environment Minister scolds the federal government for wanting to adopt an open sea waste dumping policy and called on Hon. John Baird, federal Minister of Environment, to take a stronger stance on preventing pollution in northern waters. Yet here at home in many Nunavut hamlets we can't even get fences to curtail our own ocean dumping. It's all lip service.

I want to find a way to get fencing around our community dump, but I'm not a protester. I hate conflict. I'm a follower, not a leader. But this shit drives me to punches - and I'm feeling punchy today.