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January/February 2009 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Nunavut Feature: Royal Ontario Museum Feature: Hero school The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations À la carte

An exuberant 10-year-old named Naiomie Nuyalia graced the cover of our Jan/Feb 1999 issue, which we devoted to the historic creation of Nunavut. Canada’s newest territory turns 10 this year, and Nuyalia turns 20. She’s the mother of a one-year-old boy, gave birth to a second boy in November and lives with her common-law husband, Daniel Komoartok, in the booming territorial capital of Iqaluit.

Nuyalia has four sisters and three brothers, all of whom still live in Iqaluit. Her father, two of her brothers and Komoartok are hunters. The caribou they kill keep them in country food, which is not only cheaper but more nourishing than most of the terrifically expensive groceries available in local stores.

Her story is, in many ways, the story of Nunavut. She’s a young mother from a family of eight children in a territory that has the youngest and second fastest-growing population in the country. (Only Alberta’s growth rate has been higher in recent years.) According to the Canada Year Book 2008, published by Statistics Canada, Nunavut’s birth rate per 1,000 people was 23.8 in 2006 while the national average was 10.7.

Although Nuyalia speaks English, Inuktitut is her first language, and she hopes to pass it on to her children. Inuktitut is one of the most widely spoken aboriginal languages in Canada: some 64 percent of Inuit claim it as their mother tongue. In order to maintain its vitality, the territory recently adopted legislation that makes Inuktitut, French and English its official languages. That means Inuit have the right to use their native tongue in the courts and the Legislative Assembly and to receive government services in Inuktitut.

Nuyalia and Komoartok, who builds houses, live in their own place. They are among the fortunate. Inuit endure some of the most crowded living conditions in Canada (defined as more than one person per room), and according to the Canada Year Book, more than 30 percent of the houses they do occupy are in need of major repairs.

Like most Inuit, Nuyalia remembers the events of 1999 with a great deal of pride. That feeling of shared achievement may be the single greatest legacy of the territory’s creation. It has inspired in residents a sense of hope. That’s the good news. But Nunavut’s first decade hasn’t been one of obvious accomplishments, as writer Lisa Gregoire reports in our cover story. The territory still has a disturbing number of suicides, alarming levels of alcoholism and violence, disappointing high school dropout rates and a perilous economic base. Yet Gregoire, who worked as a newspaper reporter in Iqaluit in the years leading up to 1999, says what she found during her recent travels across Nunavut was not despair but people who had fallen into the abyss, had climbed out and were remaking their lives. Change, she says, is taking place at the personal level. As for the government, that remains a frustrating work-in-progress.

To mark the 10th anniversary of Nunavut, The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, in partnership with Carleton University’s Arthur Kroeger College of Public Affairs and Library and Archives Canada, is holding a free afternoon and evening event on January 29 in Ottawa that will celebrate Inuit history and culture through film, photos, stories, maps, food, music and dance. The celebration concludes with a panel discussion on Nunavut’s first 10 years and the challenges that lie ahead. Details of the event appear on page 83 and on our website.

— Rick Boychuk

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