Nunavik family wants state of emergency declared

Amid mourning and tragedy, an aunt makes a plea to the prime minister

Mary Simon doesn’t remember much about the phone call. It was a Friday in early October and the news hurt so bad it made her knees buckle. Her niece, 22-year-old Natalie, had taken her own life. “It’s the call that makes you scream — ‘It can’t be true,’ ” said Simon. She felt helpless at first and went back home to Kuujjuaq to spend a few days with her brother Bobby May. They shed tears, held each other and said goodbye to Natalie. But they weren’t alone. Across Quebec’s northern Nunavik region, parents are losing their children to suicide. Natalie is one of at least 15 people who died this year in what locals are calling an epidemic. Last week, Simon and May got tired of feeling helpless and decided to take action. They launched an online petition for the federal government to declare a state of emergency in Nunavik. “We won’t stop until it’s on the prime minister’s desk,” said Simon. “I know it’s not going to be easy but what choice do we have?” So far, 11,000 people have signed the document — which calls for the appointment of a co-ordinator to oversee treatment and counselling programs in the 14 villages that dot the Nunavik region. Simon knows how hard it is to access mental care in the north. When Natalie was 15, she lost her cousin to suicide. The grief sent her into a tailspin. “They were more like sisters than cousins,” said Simon. “Being a 15-year-old girl is hard enough, but imagine losing your sister … Natalie wanted to follow her cousin. It was terrifying.” Faced with the prospect of losing their teenage daughter, Natalie’s parents sent her to live with Mary in Ottawa. Down south, she could get the care she desperately needed. “(Natalie) resisted it at first, she didn’t want to speak to a therapist, she didn’t want to leave home, she was having none of it,” said Mary. “But after awhile, she opened up, started going to therapy twice a week. She became herself again.” After a year down south, Natalie went back home and finished high school. She developed a passion for the outdoors, hunting, fishing and spending days roughing it across the fjords that snake their way up Ungava Bay. “That was where she was at peace,” said Mary. Since that rough patch, there have been at least two waves of suicides that swept across Nunavik. In 2016, 12 people in the region took their lives in the first five months of the year. Suicide rates in the region are 10 times higher than in the rest of Quebec but even with such alarming statistics, 2016 was an aberration. This latest crisis has forced the provincial and federal governments into action as public pressure mounts. Representatives from the Quebec government will meet with the Nunavik Regional Board of Health on Nov. 16 to discuss increases in funding for mental health services. Meanwhile, Ottawa has authorized the health board to redirect $500,000 in federal funding to suicide-prevention initiatives. Indigenous Services Canada has agreed to invest $6 million into the construction of an addiction-treatment centre in Kuujjuaq. Representatives from the provincial and federal government could not respond to the Montreal Gazette’s interview requests by publication time. On the ground, people like Simon and her brother are increasingly taking charge of the situation through advocacy or education. Some 300 of the 12,000 residents in Nunavik have been certified in Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training. Study after study suggests people in Nunavik are exposed to a great number of risk factors that lead to high suicide rates. Many are the descendants of residential-school survivors. Just a few generations back, the federal government forced Inuit across the region to abandon the nomadic way of life that had helped them thrive in the icy tundra for thousands of years. The effects of this forced transition are still being felt today. An October report by the Quebec ombudsman found that one in three children in Nunavik live in overcrowded housing. Some struggle to get more than a few hours sleep each night, trading shifts on a bed with their siblings or cousins, according to the document. One of the other major factors that increases the risk of suicide is when a person’s loved one takes their own life. That’s one of the reasons Mary is pushing so hard. “I think about the next generation, and I have a fight in me,” said Mary, who grew up in Kuujjuaq. “I’m not sure where it’s gonna go, I’m not sure what effect it’s going to have, and I’m not sure how people are going to react to it. “But we owe it to Natalie to keep fighting.”

We won’t stop until it’s on the prime minister’s desk. I know it’s not going to be easy but what choice do we have?