The map above is titled “Sleeping on the Couch,” and that says it all.

It’s part of a recent report by the Conference Board of Canada on housing overcrowding in Canada’s North.

“Almost all social and health problems increase dramatically when combined with overcrowded housing,” Gilles Rhéaume, the conference board’s vice-president for public policy, tells Nunatsiaq News. “Crowded housing is an issue that clearly demonstrates a north-south divide in Canada.”

According to the report:

In Statistics Canada’s Keewatin census division, which covers the Kivalliq region in Nunavut, 25 per cent of homes have six or more people living in them— the highest percentage of overcrowding in Canada.

Close behind are regions in five provinces which also have census divisions showing that 10 per cent or more of the homes are overcrowded.

These census divisions are:

* Northern Manitoba (Division No. 23 Churchill) – 20 per cent
* Northern Saskatchewan (Division No. 18, including La Ronge) – 18 per cent
* Northern Newfoundland and Labrador (Division No. 11 Nunatsiavut area) – 14 per cent
* Northern Quebec (Nunavik) – 14 per cent
* Northwestern Alberta (Division No. 17) – 10 per cent

“Sleeping on the Couch” is the fifth map in a series from the Conference Board of Canada’s Centre for the North.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Canadian Arctic, Centre for the North, Conference Board of Canada, First Nations, Gilles Rhéaume, Inuit, Kivalliq, La Ronge, Native American news, Nunatsiavut, Nunavik, Sleeping on the Couch, Statistics Canada

Qisirtutauyaq (juniper), cloudberrry, crowberry and more – those are the flavors of herbal tea made in Nunavik that have earned a national culinary achievement award in Canada.

Sarah Rogers of Nunatsiaq News reports here that the honor to the Avataq cultural institute in Nunavik was among six Governor General’s awards given in Ottawa last month.

The ingredients used in the blends are harvested by people in Nunavik and shipped south. They sell under the name Northern Delights. As Rogers writes:

Harvesting ingredients for the tea in Nunavik (Avataq.qc.ca photo)

Avataq was recognized under the “stewardship and sustainability” category for helping support traditional Inuit activities as well as preserve ancestral knowledge of plants in the region.

“We’re all really happy,” said Taqralik Partridge, an Avataq spokesperson. “The teas have been really popular, but we needed an emphasis to take it to the next level.”

Avataq’s president, Charlie Arngak, attended a June 23 awards ceremony at Rideau Hall, where the teas have been served for many years.

There are five flavors – ground juniper (qisirtutauyaq), Labrador tea (mamaittuqutik), cloudberry (arpiqutik), Arctic blend (ukiurtatuq) and crowberry (paurngaqutik.)

Read more about them here, where you’ll learn, among other things, that qisirtutauyaq is believed to be good for colds.

Rogers reports that Avataq hopes to expand to the U.S. market. Fingers crossed!

Gwen Florio

Tags: arpiqutik, Avataq, buffalo post, Gwen Florio, herbal teas, Inuit, mamaittuqutik, Native American news, Northern Delights, Nunavik, paurngaqutik, qisirtutauyaq, Rideau Hall, ukiurtatuq

Turnover among non-Inuit teachers is as high as 75 percent at Puvirnituq’s Iguarsivik school in the Hudson Bay area of Nunavik, and teachers say they’re fed up.

Iguarsivik teacher Pierre-Luc Bélisle tells Jane George of the Nunatsiaq News, here, that two students punched him in the stomach last month, and were back in school two days later:

“I thought there would be some consequence. I didn’t invent a story about a student. I am there to protect them, for their security, it’s my job,” said Bélisle, who felt his credibility as a teacher was put in doubt. “I think that’s unacceptable.”

After learning nothing had been done, Bélisle, who had already filed a police report on the incident, went to a doctor who put him on a two-week leave.

Belisle, who arrived last year, plans to leave at school year’s end.

As George reports, 15 of the school’s 21 teachers are non-Inuit. The school has about 260 students from Grade 4 to Secondary 5. Turnover is about 75 percent among the non-Inuit teachers, at least five of whom have taken leave to deal with injuries and trauma, she writes. As George further reports:

In recent years, Nunavik has experienced growing violence in its schools and against its students and teachers.

Countless episodes of vandalism, harassment and bullying in school classrooms and playgrounds have gone largely unreported.

The most horrific episodes include the shooting of a female teacher in Salluit in 2005 and the severe beating of a school principal in Kangiqsujuaq that same year. …

Over the years, Iguarsivik has faced other waves of violence. In 1993 the school and community were wracked by a series of violent incidents, which saw one teacher assaulted and several teachers’ homes vandalized.

Then, in 2006, student vandals ransacked the school, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.

The school now has video surveillance, security entrance cards for staff, and hall monitors.

“The people who are losing out are the students,” says one teacher. “If we can’t help them, if there’s no follow-up by the administration, no program in the school against violence, how can we help educate the future citizens of Puvirnituq?”

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Education, Gwen Florio, Iguarsivik school, Inuit, Native American news, Northern Quebec Teaching Association, Nunavik, Puvirnituq, School violence

Inuk singer Elisapie Isaac – whose singing has been described as Polar Pop and Arctic Electric New Cool – was in Nunavut recently and, if her bio is any indication, tours of Montreal and Paris haven’t turned her head.

Isaac was raised in Salluit, Nunavik, in northern Quebec Province. This video link features an interview with Isaac, in which she talks of her deep affection for the North.

As her Web site says:

For Elisapie, the North is not at the top of the world, it’s at the center of her world. “My grandfather used to say that to avoid getting lost,” Isaac says, “you always have to look where you’ve come from.”

Isaac also performed last week at the 7th Annual National Aboriginal Achievement Awards in Regina, and at the Soirée des Jutra, the Quebec film awards.

Watch Isaac in performance in the video above.

Gwen Florio

Tags: aboriginal, buffalo post, Elasapie Isaac, Gwen Florio, Inuit, Inuk, Native American news, Nunavik, Quebec Province, Salluit

Rescuers save many stranded by early thaw in Manitoba’s First Nations
Spring might be good news elsewhere in North America, but not when it comes early in Manitoba as it did this past week, turning hard-frozen roads to muck and trapping travelers trying to get to remote First Nations communities. Some people were stuck in their vehicles for as long as five days, emergency workers tell the Montreal Gazette. Helicopters and truck convoys were used to rescue them.

Project WIN – With Indian Nations – finds Indian teachers for Indian schools
“All Navajo children leave the reservation, but they always come back,” Shannon Begaye tells the Arizona Republic. “This is home.” The thing that enabled Begaye, who originally planned on being a lawyer, to come home was a project that helps Native people become teachers in schools on their own reservations, something that benefits both teacher and student.

Apache tribe fights copper mine, even as it moves toward approval
A bill now in the Senate would give around 2,400 acres of public land in southeastern Arizona for copper mining to Resolution Copper Co. – a subsidary of the giant Rio Tinto mining company – in exchange for around 5,000 acres around the state. But the mine would go on land sacred to the San Carolos Apache tribe. The Sierra Club and others have joined the tribe in fighting the move. Indian Country Today has the story and a slideshow, here.

Native identity? Or fraud? Penning Tennessee recognition stirs debate
The state of Tennessee is looking at recognizing six tribes, a move the members of those groups say is long overdue. But some long-recognized tribes object. “The idea of state-level recognition for what are essentially social clubs — people who may have Indian ancestry but are not Indians — is offensive to me,” Melba Checote Eads, a citizen of the Oklahoma-based Muscogee Creek Nation, tells the Tennesseean.

School dedicates hoops championship to girls killed by drunk driver
Deshauna and Del Lynn Peshlakai were killed earlier this month by a drunken driver in Santa Fe – just as the Lady Braves of the Santa Fe Indian School were going into the state basketball tournament. The Lady Braves quickly designed T-shirts – Athletes Against Drunk Driving – and went on to win the school’s the school’s first Class 3A state championship. Head coach Cindy Roybal tells the Navajo Times it helped her team focus on their Peshalkais family’s grief, rather than their own concerns

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, First Nations, Gwen Florio, Kativik School Board, Muscogee Creek Nation, Native American news, Navajo, Nunavik, Project WIN, Resolution Copper Co., Rio Tinto, San Carlos Apache, Santa Fe Indian School, Sierra Club, Tribal recognition, With Indian Nations