An amazing lady called Lori Idlout popped in to visit us a couple of weeks ago, courtesy of clever Suzie at ’see me’.
Lori works for the Embrace Life Council in Nunavet, the most northern and most recently established province in Canada. The community living in (huuuuge) Nunavut numbers some 32,000 people. The median age of this community is 22. They speak 4 languages, one of which is English. Historically, a nomadic community, they were settled at last some decade in this incredibly inhospitable landscape (dark for three solid months of the year, beating sunlight for three months of the year and something in between the rest of the time) and urged to apply themselves to adhering to the same governing principles as the rest of that fair country. As you might imagine, it was all a bit of a shock to the system.
The suicide rate in Nunavut is incredibly high. Whether due to the clash of cultures, the remote land, the uncompromising weather or, as Lori suggested, the sudden exposure to slivers of a Western culture that offered aspirations that could never be realised for many of the community members. The Embrace Life Council was set up to explore how this had come about - and how this attempted suicide rate could be slowed if not ceased.
So Lori has been working away on improving the mental health of the young people up there. Similar to what we’re doing with ’see me’ down here - kind of. She outlined their approach to tackling the situation, the work they’ve been doing with young people locally and showed us some of the materials they’ve produced as part of all of this.
We see a lot of people talking in this here job. I’ve still to write about Malcolm Gladwell (thanks to Hamish’s nagging) and John Grant. Both of which were fascinating. And it’s hard to describe why Lori was so remarkably unusual without sounding trite. But she was humble, hopeful and imaginative in her approach to a situation which would overwhelm many more people with the scale of the challenge.
She offered three pieces of advice in essence to her young people:
Learn about what you feel about your identity
Be willing to be prepared for whatever hardships may come
And respect your relationships
Wisdom that would not be out of place for people that aren’t 22 and living in Nunavut.
She finished with a lovely thought:
“When you’re going through such a hard hard time, you forget to see the things that are beautiful.”
Let’s not preach. But you could do worse.
At dinner that night, she was so kind as to present me (me!) with an Inuksuk, a stone figure that played a practical and spiritual role for the Inuit people. Jim took a rough looking photo of our lovely thing.
It occupies pride of place in the planning department. I’ll be happy to show and tell when next you’re passing.
