Setting the Inuit record straight on cultural prejudice and the seal hunt

Alethea and I talk about her new film Angry Inuk, the "People of the Seal," cultural prejudice, setting the Inuit record straight, song battles and a new model for animal activism.

Watch the trailer here.

Synopsis

Anti-seal hunting campaigns have attracted high profile supporters, and with them, hefty financial contributions. From Pamela Anderson to Paul McCartney, celebrities have voiced their outrage about an issue they seem keenly unqualified to discuss. Meanwhile, seal hunters are unjustly targeted for traditional practices that have supported them for centuries.

With a way of life on the cusp of extinction, who's really at fault? How does a culture that exercises understated anger and finds peaceful ways to resolve conflict compete with animal activist groups that rely on anti-sealing sentiment they aggressively cultivate to underwrite their other causes?

Conditions in First Nations, Metis and Inuit Communities are Canada's National Shame

Canada is among the world's wealthiest nations, but our wealth is not equitably distributed. Many communities, particularly northern and Aboriginal, suffer from poor access to healthy and affordable food, clean water, proper housing and other necessary infrastructure. An ironic example of this disparity is at Shoal Lake, about two hours east of Winnipeg. There, two First Nations, Shoal Lake 39 and 40, are next to the City of Winnipeg's main drinking-water supply, but Shoal Lake 40 has been on a boil-water advisory for decades.

Controversial Innu Company Had Political Connections

Federal Newfoundland and Labrador cabinet minister Peter Penashue has connections with a controverisal Innu development company.

Penashue took out a $25,000 loan from the Innu Development Limited Partnership to finance his federal election campaign in Labrador in 2011.

On Wednesday, CBC reported that Paul Rich, the former CEO of the IDLP, took home more than $1 million in salary over two years, and other Innu leaders were paid $30,000 each to sit on the board of the company.

New Inuit leader seeks to guard development of resources

The new leader of the organization that is the voice of Canada’s 53,000 Inuit grew up in Resolute Bay at a time when the tiny Inuit hamlet had the busiest airport north of the Arctic Circle.

Planes supporting the burgeoning oil and gas industries were constantly landing and taking off again for Edmonton, Winnipeg and Montreal. But the people of Resolute Bay, who had been transplanted to the barren stretch of gravel as part of a plan by Canada to assert its sovereignty in the High Arctic, did not share in the wealth from the resources that were being extracted, Terry Audla says.

The Arctic is Calling – But Not for More C-18s

How international relations can help us understand Canada’s most pressing problem.

---

Visit the new CIC website at OpenCanada.Org. Canada's hub for international affairs.

---

Dropout rates and youth-suicide rates among aboriginal Canadians are six times those of non-aboriginals, and incarceration rates are more than seven times higher among aboriginal Canadians. The discrimination that leads to these discrepancies is perhaps the gravest moral issue facing Canadians today.

Canadians may care, but they do not act. With the exception of a feather-headed slur and an ignominious misstatement by a Bloc Québécois candidate, aboriginal issues rarely made headlines during the most recent federal election. Last week, former prime minister Paul Martin raised this issue at an event hosted by the C.D. Howe Institute. His message was clear: For Canadians to do something, we need to reframe the problem. Fortunately, the language exists.

On World Suicide Prevention Day, Inuit leaders talk about the lack of support

Inuit and non-Inuit alike marked World Suicide Prevention Day on Parliament Hill on Sept. 9 with an urgent message to government to take action against the crisis facing Inuit communities, where the suicide rate is 11 times higher than that in the rest of Canada.

The major message was that a lack of support services in the north is leading to a huge number of Inuit, especially youth, taking their own lives. This marks the 5th year in a row that this day has been marked on the Hill by Inuit looking to draw attention to the decimation taking place in their communities.

Mary Simon, the president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), one of the six national Inuit or Aboriginal organizations putting on the event, talked of her personal experience with her niece's suicide in March this year, and how these suicides affect everyone due to the small size and close-knit nature of Inuit communities.

She also focused on the need to implement mental health support in their communities: "It's a day where we recognize suicide prevention. So typically I would come here ... and encourage people to get more involved, sort of the pro-forma type of speech. But today, I wanted to speak about how I felt about it, as an individual and as a leader that's been dealing with mental health issues since I became president of ITK and trying to increase the support that people need in the north to address their issues."

Canadian Inuit going hungry

MONTREAL — Six out of 10 Inuit in Canada’s Far North don’t get enough to eat or are eating the wrong things, says a comprehensive study by a team of McGill University researchers.

They warn preventive measures are desperately needed to help ward off diabetes, heart disease and other ailments which already plague other Aboriginal Peoples in Canada and the U.S.

Increasingly, Inuit are shifting away from the traditional foods hunters brought home. But researchers found people living in remote villages often cannot find or afford the fruits, vegetables, grains and dairy products that make up the best part of a healthy southern diet.

“Poverty and associated food insecurity coupled with a transition away from local nutrient-rich food resources represents a dual nutritional burden on indigenous peoples globally,” cautions McGill epidemiologist Grace Egeland in the study published in the latest issue of Journal of Nutrition. “A nutrition transition is occurring in Arctic communities with consequences for increased obesity and diet-sensitive chronic diseases.”