Qaumariaq Inuqtaqau called the newspaper office on the evening of April 17 with a simple request: He is fed up and needed someone who was willing to listen.
The solutions to the problems he outlined, however, are complex.
Despite being an activist since 2015 and despite having a petition with 5,224 signatures that urges companies operating in Nunavut to train and employ more Inuit people — and to make them eligible for subsidized staff housing — he feels little has changed.
“Since the creation in 1999 of Nunavut, part of our rights disappeared and we lost it all. That’s how we started going more into poverty, because of broken land claim agreements,” he said.
Nunavut’s 25th anniversary was marked on April 1.
According to Statistics Canada, in 2022, the national poverty rate was almost nine per cent, while in Nunavut, it was almost 30 per cent.
Inuit in Canada also suffer from one of the highest rates of suicide in the world, according to the National Library of Medicine.
Inuqtaqau, who’s from Iqaluit, said he’s become tired of seeing how Inuit are struggling. It made him become an activist.
“It’s just tiring, all these shack fires. I have friends, family living in these kinds of conditions,” he said.
Being outspoken has cost Inuqtaqau a great deal. He said he lost his job and has had to move away from home just to find somewhere to live.
“It’s just getting worse and harder in so many different ways and levels. Inuit are giving up. And the ones who are lucky, they’re moving down south because we cannot afford to live on our own land no more.”
The territory’s’ minimum wage is currently $19 an hour, the highest in Canada. If someone was working full time with that pay, they’d make around $3,300 per month, gross.
Rent could very easily eat up all of the after-tax income. In 2022, for example, the median rent in Iqaluit was $2,843, according to a Northern housing report.
For things to get better, Inuqtaqau said it comes down to fixing a broken land claim agreement.
“I don’t know how nobody can pay attention to broken land claim agreements,” he said. “This is the outcome of what’s going on over years.”
According the agreement itself, Inuit in Nunavut have title to 352,191 square kilometres of land. That’s almost 19 per cent of Nunavut.
From 2016, the difference in unemployment rate percentages between Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups were highest in Nunavut at about 25 per cent, as reported by the OECD library.
Inuqtaqau said he’s always making phone calls and sending emails to bring more attention to these issues. “I’m always brainstorming,” he said “but it feels like nobody really wants to talk about these issues.”
On his Twitter page, now known as X, he has more than 1,000 posts, many of which seem to highlight the poor living conditions people in Nunavut face.
“I’ve created a foundation for people to investigate,” he said.