Good health for Inuit women means addressing poverty and financial insecurity

This is not meant to challenge anyone. It is important that you hear that the Inuit are hurting and I ask you politely to hear me out.

Perhaps, the people of the North haven’t always been listened to like they should because they do not talk like us or think like us and they do not act like us when pushed against a wall, and so, they have not been heard. They are so far away and there is little information trickling south about them.

The plight of the Northern people is easy to dismiss because we don’t see them and like someone pointed out, the information is skewed.

Risk factors require that they be recognized and dealt with

A few months ago, I heard a First Nations woman say how happy she was that she had had a child, a beautiful healthy girl. But her next sentence literally froze me to the bone. She said: “I started fearing for my girl because she was a girl”.

Increased awareness regarding the safety and support of women and children

Although there is increased awareness regarding the safety and support of women and children affected by domestic violence, resource constraints create a challenging context for the delivery of effective services and real justice to women and children. In a previous work experience, the department assuring support to the community had one full-time person and one occasional additional person for just so many months a year. The community workers were there to translate and negotiate which made for an inordinate amount of work distributed amongst the agents. It was impossible to ever get it all done.