Let's Move On: The Life Story of Paul Okalik

by Louis McComber, Paul Okalik

Overview

Paul Okalik was raised in a community that has survived starvation, epidemics, eradication of their spiritual heritage, relocation, schooling in a foreign language and confrontation with the Canadian justice system. He made the decision to improve the living conditions of his fellow Inuit. After ten years in Ottawa universities, he was called to the Northwest Territories Bar and then was elected the first Premier of Nunavut, the new Canadian territory, all in the year 1999. The new government was challenged on all fronts. Education and training was crucial if Inuit wanted to play a determining role in decision-making. While Paul Okalik was premier, Nunavut developed a civil service decentralized over ten distant communities, built much-needed infrastructures and provided more affordable housing. Though Inuit employment in the Government of Nunavut managed to exceed 50 percent, this did not yet reflect yet the proportion of Inuit in the population. The Inuit’s long-standing goal of self-government in Nunavut remains to be achieved. It is a work in progress. Let’s move on is an expression of determination inherited from generations of Inuit, victims of colonialism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771861366
Publisher:	Baraka Books
Publication date:	06/01/2018
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Louis McComber lived in Iqaluit, Nunavut, from 1993 to 2005 and quickly became captivated by the process of the creation of Nunavut, the third Canadian Arctic territory. He was a journalist for the French-language weekly l’Aquilon and the CBC North Boréal Hebdo radio show, and wrote a bi-monthly column of political and cultural commentary in Nunatsiaq News. Paul Okalik was born in Pangnirtung, on Baffin Island, Nunavut. Paul Okalik served as Premier of the Government of Nunavut from 1999 to 2008. Since then, he has held cabinet positions in charge of several ministries including Justice, Culture and Heritage, Qulliq Energy Corporation, Immigration, Labour, Languages, and the Liquor Licensing Board. Currently, he is the Member of the Legislative Assembly of Nunavut for the riding of Iqaluit-Sinaa.

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CHAPTER 1

I Was Young, Foolish, and Full of Energy!

A year or two before I was born, my family relocated from a camp called Idlungajung, which is southwest of Pangnirtung, in Cumberland Sound. That's where my late grandmother and grandfather, along with my great-grandfather Angmarlik, had established their camp. My only living grandparent at the time was my grandmother Qatsuk. She was my mother's mother. My mother was the oldest of the children in her family. My father was Auyaluk. He had been adopted, which is why there are no really strong stories from my father's side, unfortunately.

My primary storyteller was my mother. I was lucky — I learned a lot about my family from my mother's side, and my late grandmother, Qatsuk. My great-grandmother was alive when I was born, but I have no living memory of her. She was the matriarch of the family. Her name was Asivak. I am told she was very strong. Her husband was Angmarlik, who was the whaling captain in Kekerten. The women in the community were very strong. My late mother told me stories about what they had to do. My father had health issues. My mother had to work hard to provide support for the family. We had some challenging times, I must say. My mother was our primary caregiver, and she raised us well.

My first memories are of living with my family in a matchbox house, one of the first houses that were constructed in the North for Inuit families. They were one-room units. For the bathroom, there was a little 'honey bucket' near the porch. There was an oil-burning stove for heat. No running water; very basic. It was like living in a cabin today. There was no phone, no radio or TV. It was all family, all in Inuktitut. My closest sibling was my sister Looee. She was a couple of years older than me. I also remember my brothers Norman and Joelle. The other siblings had moved on. They got married; they were living their own lives, and having kids. Not long after, we moved to a bigger unit, one with two bedrooms. I was probably three or four, the youngest of the family.

Not long before I was born, my great-grandmother converted from Siina, the traditional shamanic religion — to the Anglican religion. I'm told that when she converted, she made a huge amauti of caribou skin, and put it in the ocean to apologize to Siina for converting to Christianity. I missed that era, but the stories were passed on to me. My own family, my mother and grandmother in particular, were quite religious. For myself, I was more or less regressing at times, because I was young, foolish, and full of energy! I thought there were other things to do besides religion. As young people, we were facing more traumatic times. We found ourselves at a turning point: trying to adjust to a community, while trying to follow some of the traditional practices. It was a challenging time. We were living in an era where our parents never attended school. We were living our own lives, separate from our parents. It was a completely different experience.

I watched the kids as they walked to school when I was three or four. I remember getting bored during the day. I begged my mother Annie to bring me to school. I was the youngest, my mother's baby. I wanted to have other kids to play with. Finally, my mother couldn't take it any more, and she convinced the school teacher to take me in a year early. How could I know how bad it was at school? It wasn't long before she had to beg me to wake up in the morning to go to school. It was a traumatic time. They insisted that you only speak English in the school. Even to go to the washroom, you had to ask in English. If you didn't know how, then you couldn't go. There were some very unfortunate experiences for me. My mom suffered through most of it. We had no running water, and she had to wash my clothes. It was not a good time for me, and it was embarrassing.

I don't have a lot of memories from school. What I do remember most are the breaks, the summer months, when we would go camping as a family. We would go to our traditional camps, and learn about our history, from my mother. Those are the best memories I have, of growing up. I still live through those memories today. I caught my first fish — I must have been six. I caught my first seal and my first caribou when I was eight.

I remember going to our traditional caribou hunting grounds. It was quite a ways from Pangnirtung. You had to cross Cumberland Sound and go into Nettilling Fjord. Netsiliariaq; it's where you go towards Nettilling Lake. We went by boat and on foot. It was a lot of work: you had to carry the caribou on your back, and there were places where you had to portage. It was lots of work, but it gave me good memories. We worked as a family unit; we were hunting caribou to feed the family. We didn't have CBs or radios, and when it was really dangerous, because of the currents, for example, we went along with other families. I have some really good memories of catching my first caribou, learning how to skin a caribou, and then seal. It was exciting. The caribou were abundant then. That's where my ties are. I have cravings for caribou, even today! That's how I grew up, that was our primary diet, along with fish and maqtaaq, a layer of skin and fat of the beluga whale. When I was young there was a quota on beluga hunting. I never hunted it, but I really loved the maqtaaq. I still crave it and can't get enough of it. It's still my favourite food.

What I remember the most are stories that my mother passed on about how to respect and treat the environment. She would often scold me for being messy. She said we shouldn't leave anything behind in caribou country. She taught me to respect the land, to treat it properly, and to treat the remains properly. I once threw a caribou bone on the shoreline. My mother said, "Caribou does not belong in the ocean. It belongs on the land. You do not throw caribou remains in the ocean!" And vice-versa for the seal. These are things that I remember and respect to this day. That's how we should treat our environment, with respect and understanding for the species that we still depend on.

Fur prices were very good for seal. Another memory I have is my father working for a salary, but relying on the fur trade for additional income. He was a water truck driver in Pangnirtung. He used to arrange his vacation in the summer months so that we could vacation as a family. We didn't do a lot of hunting in the winter, because we were in school and my father was working. The odd time, we would go caribou or seal hunting in the winter.

I do remember listening to the Montreal Canadiens on the radio, when I first started paying attention to the outside world. I didn't care about anything else. The teacher tried to show us videos of the Toronto Maple Leafs! I didn't care about the Toronto Maple Leafs — I was interested in my Montreal Canadiens. Pete Mahovlich was my player. I didn't really care about the rest!

Where I grew up, there was no arena, no pond, and no lake. We didn't have any skates or equipment, either. We just had hockey sticks and the odd puck now and again. We played a lot of street hockey, every night in the winter, and floor hockey in the gym, later on, when I was a little older. If the creek was frozen properly, we could skate on it. But I didn't learn how to skate very well.

For the members of my extended family who didn't have jobs, their lives were focused on hunting seals and selling the skins. I shot my first seal when I was eight years old. The custom was to give your first skin to your arnaliaq, your godmother. But I didn't have one. My godmother was a nurse, who had moved on. She was the nurse who helped my mother, who delivered me. Aniasuutiqutah was her name: "Tall nurse." Since I didn't have anyone to give it to, I said, "I'll sell it to the Hudson's Bay Company." My mother wanted to keep it. But I said, "I don't have arnaliaq, so too bad." My father said, "Okay, go ahead!" So my first income was from a sealskin. That got me addicted and hooked. In the summer, I spent quite a bit of time seal hunting. I remember going out alone, at the age of sixteen, in July, in a boat by myself, hunting seals. If it was a harp seal, we wouldn't keep the meat, we'd dispose of it. The fur prices were better for harp seals. We would keep ring seal meat for the family.

I don't have a lot of memories about school in Pangnirtung. I remember only some of the teachers. Some were mean. They would hit us. One teacher broke her ruler on me. Those things happened. I guess I was pretty young and foolish. That was their way of punishing us. Other ones were very good. But I don't remember a lot. I have more memories about grade seven and grade eight. But I didn't focus too hard on my education. I didn't understand what good it would do me. Looking at my environment, there weren't a lot of opportunities at the time. My goal was to become a hockey player for the Montreal Canadiens, but we had no arena and I couldn't skate! I was pretty good at floor hockey, though. I didn't see the point in what we were learning. I had never seen an Inuk attending university or college. We didn't care too much about schooling; that was just how it was. We were just trying to adjust to a new environment. We had other distractions. Our parents had never lived through our experience, so they couldn't relate to us or assist us in our schoolwork. My late mother said, "Just focus on school, and get an education. I won't be around forever, and I want you to have the best job possible, and a secure future." She was wise that way, she always looked ahead. She was looking after our well-being. At the time, I never really listened.

I had another experience that wasn't very good for me. I was quite young, just becoming a teenager. My late brother Norman, who I looked up to very much, really was a good brother. He was quiet, and he really looked after me. He was in the cadets, doing his thing, travelling to jamborees now and again. I guess he had been exposed to drugs, to marijuana. He apparently had broken into the hamlet office and took some money, but nobody caught him. A number of months later, he felt bad, and he turned himself in to the police, explaining what he did. He wasn't treated very well. He was sentenced to jail and fined. He did his time, but when it came time to pay his fine he didn't have the money. He couldn't take it. He didn't want to go back to jail. I could see it. He wasn't all there, he had a heavy burden. He stayed in bed most days. It was hard to watch. I was young; I didn't know what to do. I was coming home from school one day, and my family was all home. My mother came to me and said, "You won't see your brother again." I said, "What?" "Your brother Norman. He shot himself this morning." That was my turning point. It was very traumatic. I became very angry and distraught. How could they treat him like that, after he tried to cooperate? I was very bitter and angry. I didn't care any more. I was thirteen, and Norman was eighteen. It was a challenging time for our family. There hadn't been very many suicides in Pangnirtung.

My late father had mental issues. This ate him up, and he had to be shipped out for treatment. My mother pretty much carried the family, during that time. I was angry and twisted. It was really difficult. Whenever things came up, like arguments with other kids, they would say things like, "You're crazy like your father, who had to be shipped out!" That kind of stuff hurts. It made me even angrier. It was hard for my family. It made me very bitter towards the law. I had no respect for the police and authority at that time. Our teachers asked, "What do you want to do?" I replied, "I want to become a lawyer." I had never seen an Inuk lawyer, let alone an Inuk working in the court system. It was foreign to us. But I was dreaming up opportunities to try and help out.

I got into trouble. I became dysfunctional, questioning authority. I didn't really care for anything, at that point. I had gone to cadet camps a few times outside the territory. But I didn't really care for school too much. We just had cadets, school, then after-school floor hockey.

I had one good teacher who focused me a bit towards school. His name was Mike Medwig. He was the one who helped me focus on my learning. I had struggled with reading quite a bit. He was very helpful. There was only one teacher, Mike Gardener, who spoke Inuktitut. The rest were all focused on teaching us English. I had one good year in grade eight. But I struggled in math in grade nine, then totally lost interest and dropped out, despite my mother's pleadings to stay in school. I left school, and I spent a year making trouble, just being a teenager.

I drank, and I experimented with drugs. But drinking was my drug of choice. Even though it was a dry community, we made home brew and other things that were mind-altering. I was being a rebel, and hanging out with my cousins. I would go hunting the odd time in the summer. But I never really learned how to hunt in the winter. I went on the odd fishing trip in the spring.

I went back to adult education in Pangnirtung to try being in school again. Mary Ellen Thomas was the adult educator then. The following year, in 1981-82, I was finally accepted here in Iqaluit for grade ten. I was admitted in the fall, and stayed at the Ukivik residence. I was more focused on drinking and partying at the time. I didn't last six months. I did okay at school, but I was kicked out of the residence by February of 1982. I'm not proud of it, but that's how it was at the time. I was going through some challenges in my personal life. From there, I got more heavily into drinking and partying; I partied and got into trouble. I ended up in jail, in April of that year. There was no Young Offenders Act at the time, so I did adult time, for breaking and entering.

I was pretty lost in those days. I didn't know what to do with my life. I was doing okay at school, but my problem was after school. I was active at the Iqaluit bar, 'The Zoo.' My oldest brother Joelle was working there. He was seven years older than me. He was feeling a lot of remorse about the death of our late brother. He was very protective of me; he spoiled me. He even gave me his I.D. to get in the bar.

After a while, I decided that the jail thing wasn't working out so well. I did some more upgrading and got myself accepted into college at Fort Smith in the fall of 1982, for an introduction to welding program. It was something to do! My mother was very supportive. I stayed in Fort Smith until the spring. After that, I managed to get a job up in Nanisivik Mine, as a welding apprentice. I lived and worked there until February of 1985.

CHAPTER 2

I Was Thinking About Tomorrow

My late brother Norman had worked at the Nanisivik mine as well, so I was following in his footsteps. My mother was happy; at least I was working, putting some of my education to use. She was very proud of me. But I was still partying heavily. My job was a way of supporting my drinking habit, but it kept me out of trouble.

I was an apprentice welder at the time. I found it rather mundane, because I had an active mind. I switched over and started working as an apprentice mechanic there. I got into repairing things, and did that for maybe half a year. They would let me drive big equipment now and again, to help out around the garage, even though I had no driving permit. It was fun. It was a good experience, but very dirty. Lots of oil and mud. You had to crawl under heavy equipment to fix them. I worked in Nanisivik for almost two years, until January or February of 1985. The winters were very hard; it was so dark, 24/7, for two months. Where I grew up, there was at least some daylight. My body couldn't take the darkness. During the winter months, I had to take a break and travel south. Even there, I was a bit of a troublemaker.

In the winter, I was on night shift at the garage. Once, I was five minutes early for the bus to take me to my shift, but it never came. So I just went home for the night. The following day, my supervisor came and asked me why I missed my shift. I told him that I couldn't get to work, because there was no bus. So he explained that to the superintendent, and the superintendent asked me to sign a document saying I was AWOL. I said, "No, I'm not gonna sign. I was not provided with the required transportation and I couldn't get to work." It wasn't my fault. And that's how we left it. I knew my rights. We didn't have a union.

(Continues…)

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by .
Copyright © 2018 Paul Okalik and Louis McComber.
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 9

Acronyms 11

Inuit First 15

Chapter 1 I Was Young, Foolish, and Full: of Energy! 19

Chapter 2 I Was Thinking About Tomorrow 31

Chapter 3 My Studies Made Me a Proud Inuk 39

Chapter 4 We Had to Make the Government Work 47

Chapter 5 My Role Was to Lead and Make Things Work 59

Chapter 6 You Have to Be Decisive, and Act Quickly 65

Chapter 7 It's Still Taking Us Too Long to Catch Up 73

Chapter 8 I Don't Just Sit There and Smile and Clap My Hands 81

Chapter 9 Southern Canada Did Not Get Developed Without National Support 87

Chapter 10 We Used to Deal with Problems Right Away, and Move On 97

Chapter 11 Still Frozen in Time! 103

Chapter 12 Doing My Part to Contribute to Nunavut 111

I'm out! 115

Nunavut: The Long Road Before - Historical Context Louis McComber 125

Conclusion 167

Timeline 169

Notes 171

Bibliography 189

Index 193