Nunavit: in 2014 most Canadians, individually, are strongly resistant to tuberculosis. Yet, on May 8, 2013, Night’s Lantern noted the tuberculosis rate for Inuit people as 186 times the rate for non-Aboriginal people. After James Anaya’s visit in early October, 2013, the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous rights found the Aboriginal peoples “in crisis.”
The causative problem remains: successive Canadian governments serve the interests of resource extraction corporations rather than the people of the land.
In a territory where the suicide rate of Inuit is thirteen times the national average, 45 or more people committed suicide in 2013. Young men commit suicide at 40 times the rate of those in southern Canada. This happens when a culture is being destroyed. Ongoing genocide warning. Refusing to successfully remedy a long standing emergency which has become a condition of Canadian society, the current government is in violation of the Convention on Genocide, Article II, c,: Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
Partial sources online:
“Aboriginal suicide a growing epidemic,” Michael Lee, Jan. 13, 2014, the Manitoban; “Canada accused of hiding child abuse evidence,” Kristina Jovanovski, Jan. 6, 2014, Al-Jazeera; “Suicide numbers in Nunavut in 2013 a record high,” Jan. 10, 2014, CBC News; Night’s Lantern “Genocide Warnings” [access:<http://nightslantern.ca/02.htm >].
