Excerpt from Northern Exposure: Peoples, Powers and Prospects in Canada's North
by Frances Abele, Thomas J. Courchene, F. Leslie Seidle and France St-Hilaire
Northerners and their communities: Winning the battle to lose the war?
Many communities in northern Canada are located in some of the most spectacular landscapes on the planet, with abundant fresh air and water and ready access to healthy foods from the land and sea, as well as quiet and solitude in good measure. They benefit from the neighbourliness and community solidarity that is characteristic of the North's indigenous societies, reinforced by the tendency of all people living in small places to get to know each other and to readily offer mutual aid.
If the North has many advantages as a healthy place to live, it also has major social challenges that must be addressed. As Jack Hicks shows in his chapter, the suicide rate in Nunavut is alarmingly high compared to all other jurisdictions in Canada, and young Inuit men are most in danger. While Nunavut has the highest suicide rate, it is a fact that all over northern Canada, Aboriginal young people, especially young men, are far more likely to kill themselves than are their non- Aboriginal peers. As Hicks argues, no simple generalizations should be made about why this long-term human disaster continues to unfold. It seems possible, though, that it is related to the stresses of the rapid changes that have visited northern societies in the last half century and, perhaps, to certain structural features of the new communities that have been created.
It is also clear that these high suicide rates are a manifestation of a number of interrelated social problems. Among these, rates of alcohol and drug abuse and associated violent crime are already high in some places and growing in others.
As in the rest of Canada, literacy, education and employment levels are lower for Aboriginal people than for non-Aboriginal people. While in many parts of the North Aboriginal languages, cultures and traditions remain strong, there are some worrying signs. Only three northern Aboriginal languages are considered endangered but for all of them, to varying degrees, there is reason to be concerned about their future vitality. There is also a pronounced disparity, almost everywhere in the North, between incomes and employment opportunities in the few regional centres (such as the capital cities) and those in the more than 100 small, predominantly Aboriginal communities. There is some early indication of a drain of young people from these communities to the regional centres and the south.
In short, a pattern of uneven development may be emerging.
Southern and northern Canadian society benefits from the existence of viable and healthy communities in all parts of the North. Canada's national purposes have long been served by the presence of the northern indigenous peoples, as their communities provide support to Canadian sovereignty claims, members for the resident militia who have monitored the northern boundary and, of course, destinations for tourists and bases for mineral explorers who wish to share in the North's bounty. More important, northern communities are home to various indigenous peoples whose members choose to remain close to the land and who keep their cultures, languages and practices alive through their harvesting, artistic and recreational uses of the land, ice and sea. Concerns about the future of this traditional culture and its importance are eloquently expressed by our contributors in the section "Voices of the New Generation."
A New Approach to Sustaining Healthy Northern Communities Clearly there is work to be done to create the conditions under which all northern individuals, families and communities will have an opportunity to live satisfying and balanced lives. While not all will choose to live in the smaller northern communities, or indeed to remain in the North at all, it is in Canada's interest that those who do are able to lead a satisfying life.
In the healthiest small communities, the connection to the land is still strong, and substantial numbers of people make their living in the mixed economy.
As Frances Abele explains in her chapter, the term mixed economy, as applied to northern communities, refers to the household-based organization of production and sharing based upon income from a variety of sources: wages, commodity sales (art, fur, crafts), harvesting from the land and transfer payments.
Where the mixed economy is able to thrive, it can foster overall community wellbeing in many ways: by providing people with meaningful work and an opportunity to hone and share skills and expertise; by satisfying norms of sharing and mutual aid, healthy food, recreation and spiritual satisfaction; and by offering a practical arena for the teaching and development of indigenous languages. In short, the existence of a mixed economy can be a rich store of social and human capital upon which to build the future.
The viability of the North's 20 or so larger communities, cities and towns, on the other hand, depends on wage employment and small businesses. Many of the larger centres - the territorial capitals Yellowknife and Whitehorse, for example - have origins in mining, to which has now been added a very substantial public sector. Others, such as Iqaluit, the newest territorial capital, owe their present form and size almost entirely to their role as government and administrative centres. In the wage centres, home to the majority of the northern population in almost every region, economic vitality thus depends upon resource development and public expenditures. Larger communities tend to have a higher proportion of non-Aboriginal people (and transients), as well as higher labour force participation and lower unemployment rates.
It seems clear that Aboriginal, provincial, territorial and federal governments must be able to develop economic development strategies that create the conditions under which both the small, mixed-economy communities and the larger wage centres can develop in a balanced way. This means taking into account the greater vulnerability of more remote communities to climate-related changes and, more broadly, the potentially disruptive social and environmental effects of resource development. It also means having the social infrastructure in place to ensure the resident population is educated, healthy and capable of taking advantage of the economic opportunities that may emerge. All the governments involved need to coordinate their efforts so that decisions to promote more balanced economic development are based on knowledge about which policies are most helpful to community development.
The key element, however, is that northerners and their governments be in a position to make these fundamental decisions for themselves and to take ownership of their futures.
Some Immediate Steps What are the immediate obstacles to balanced development? Some have to do with physical infrastructure. Although the severity of the problem varies from place to place, in many parts of the North housing is inadequate. Too many people live in overcrowded conditions that increase the spread of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis. Moreover, overcrowding affects young people's performance at school and the ability of all members of the household to live their lives in a balanced way. Women and children who live in violent domestic situations are particularly vulnerable, as they may literally have nowhere to escape to.
Overcrowding at home is not the only infrastructure problem that leads to lower educational attainment among Aboriginal children. The education system itself contributes to the problem. One problem is that in many small communities there is a very high turnover rate for teachers. This also relates to capacity issues overall as territorial governments - facing a lack of human resources - often recruit potential teachers for public service positions (see Greg Poelzer's chapter in this volume). In addition, curricula and school materials are still not adapted to the localities where they are used. Although the severity of the problem varies a good deal across the North, all regions could benefit from having more northern-trained educators. There are signs these problems are being more fully recognized. In April 2009 the Inuit Education Accord, developed by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and a number of other parties, was signed - something Mary Simon called "a milestone in Inuit education (Bell 2009).12 In the area of health care, problems of hard infrastructure are compounded by problems of human and social capital. There is a shortage of health care professionals at all levels, and there are very high costs involved in serving people in numerous and remote small centres. Quite often, primary medical care is still being provided by visiting practitioners from the south, with all the costs and discontinuities of care this can involve. The innovative community-based health care and North-specific illness prevention programs that have been developed in some locations are urgently needed across the North.
From the perspective of communities, all these factors converge and reinforce each other. Investment in one area, without attention to the others, is unlikely to be sufficient. Decisions about economic development, social services expenditures, health care arrangements, educational opportunities and recreational facilities have a cumulative effect in small centres. These communities are remarkably vulnerable to small changes in personnel or opportunity: an effective teacher leaves because of inadequate housing or lack of suitable health care for one of her children, and in the transition, while a new teacher is found, many children in the community fall behind; a federally funded program that supports a group of older teens to organize a music program for younger children leads to a decrease in overall drug use and fewer losses to theft in the retail co-op. These are the endemic vulnerabilities of all small places and also, of course, their strength. We believe that individual program interventions must take place within the context of a holistic approach to the health of the community, understood in the broadest sense.
If there are gathering signs of worsening social and economic conditions in northern communities, there are also reasons for optimism. The North has many assets. The permanent population is young and increasingly well educated. In general, northern residents have high expectations of their governments and there are high levels of political participation, especially when one takes into account the geographical obstacles to communication and organization. They live in small centres where community solidarity and neighbourly support are strong and where relatively modest, sustained interventions can make a large difference.
Excerpt courtesy of Institute for Research and Public Policy, 2009