Housing in Nunavik affects all aspects of an individual's life

While "overcrowding" is both a cause and an effect, it is still possible to delineate the main causes of overcrowding in Nunavik. This has a ripple effect on all the members of the household, including the children: stress, incest, the inability of children to study because there is no privacy, beating of wives and children, quarreling and yelling.

All issues relate to housing

Overcrowding in homes is largely due to the large family size. Overcrowding in the homes and the close proximity of neighbors nullifies the possibility of any quiet time. This has a ripple effect on all the members of the household, including the children: stress, incest, the inability of children to study because there is no privacy, beating of wives and children, quarreling and yelling. Quarreling with neighbors is also common. In fact, as stated in 2008 Andy Moorhouse, former President of the Municipal Housing Office Kativik: "Housing is not the only issue, but all issues relate to housing. "

Housing affects all aspects of an individual's life

In other words, the housing unit is central: it affects all aspects of an individual's life, family work, physical and mental health, education, etc. to quote but a few significant examples. For example, among Inuit populations, tuberculosis haunts families, since they are living in overcrowded conditions. The suicide rate in some communities is 25 times higher than the Quebec average and suicide creates distress in families.

Most villages are similarly overcrowded

Recent decades have seen a disturbing increase in the rates of “social problems” in many indigenous societies. Social pathologies such as alcohol and drug abuse, child neglect, sexual abuse, violence, and suicide have reached crisis proportions in some places. Most villages being similarly overcrowded, the home environment needs improvement in terms of ventilation, the general physical layout, water delivery. According to some testimonies, conflicts sometimes erupt because the boys next door try to harass the neighbor’s daughters.

Overcrowding in many communities means that neighbors fight over simple things like trying to clean one’s home too early in the morning. In my universe, we bicker when someone starts the lawnmower too early on a Saturday morning.

Dr. Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux  of Lakehead University, Thunder Bay has described how “a traumatic past has profound effects on the present”, and how "understanding the continuing transmission of historical intergenerational trauma and unresolved grief primarily within the Aboriginal community should be critically important when designing measures to help families, communities and entire peoples heal the burden of the historical trauma they carry".

The main reason to examine these causes is to implement solutions and projects with long-term impact on the community. The project No Child Should Take the Long Way Home is a grassroots initiative to help children in need of loving care, of a protective and stable environment to meet their basic needs.

Signing a petition is a first serious step to empower the mothers and to reduce placements of the children.

Like all that matters, we have to make the connections with what we can all do to help. The petition is to be given to PM Justin Trudeau in the hopes of restoring dignity but also their rights to stable families and harmonious communities. Policies and practices that reflect longstanding and deeply embedded mother-blaming culture and father invisibility ideologies which shape child protection systems have to be updated by taking into consideration the Inuit way of raising their children.