My Work

Power on their terms: how Inukjuak built its own energy system against the odds

In 2024, Inukjuak did something few thought possible. In a fly-in Inuit village nearly 1,500 kilometres north of Montreal, where construction seasons are short, and every shipment must cross sea or sky, the community began producing its own electricity.

The hydroelectric facility it now operates was not imposed from outside — it was imagined, built and ultimately owned by the community itself. In a region where infrastructure often stalls under the weight of distance and cost, many describe its completion as a miracle.

Ullivik could get major expansion as leaders discuss capacity issues

With Ullivik medical boarding home regularly over capacity, Inuulitsivik Health Centre is forced to spend millions of dollars on hotels rooms each year to accommodate the overflow, says general director Sarah Beaulne.

In 2024, she said, the health centre spent $9 million on hotel rooms.

Beaulne discussed plans to alleviate the problem with Nunavik leaders Thursday in Montreal during the three-day Nunavik all-organizations meeting.

Nunavik Police Get a Pay Raise Amid Community Concerns – The Rover

Every police officer in Nunavik, from rookie to veteran, is getting an approximately $30,000 pay raise this year.

That means officers in the Nunavik Police Service (NPS) will go from being among the lowest-paid regional police in Quebec to among the highest.

With officers who patrol Quebec’s 14 Inuit villages about to see a massive increase in compensation, activists in Nunavik point to the waning trust between the communities and police. Four Inuit have been killed during police interventions since Nov. 2024, and people in the territory say more efforts should be made to mend that relationship.

The perfect storm of ‘catastrophic’ potholes | News

The first month of the year in Montreal was marked by unploughed streets, frozen sidewalks and potholes large enough to give the new mayor, Soraya Martinez Ferrada, two flat tires.

Meanwhile, Montreal's blue-collar workers went on strike on Feb. 4, and nearly a fourth of the specialized vehicles required for these services have broken down. The new administration is now pivoting to patch the holes.

Kinngait carver Koomuatuk Sapa Curley exhibits work in Montreal

Kinngait artist Koomuatuk Sapa Curley’s new body of work explores the Inuit understanding of animism — the belief that all natural things have a soul or spiritual essence — through lifelike carvings.

Curley arrived at the opening of his art exhibition Jan. 29 at La Guilde gallery in Montreal by pulling the final touches of his project — walrus tusks and a flying owl — out of his pockets.

Air Inuit’s Montreal-Kuujjuaq route plagued by continued delays

Since taking on the Montreal-Kuujjuaq route from Canadian North four months ago, Air Inuit has faced consistent delays the airline says are caused by “complex scheduling realities” and climate change.

Isabelle Gordon says she was going home to Kuujjuaq on Nov. 28 from a work trip in Montreal. She got to the airport at 7:45 a.m. for the 9:30 a.m. departure time for the daily Air Inuit flight that services the biggest community in Nunavik.

Becoming Ballers: How Nunavik’s Youth Built a Community Around Basketball – The Rover

Over 90 boys from Nunavik line up in front of the backboard at the Great Whale River Triple Gymnasium.

They’re in the middle of a free-throw competition. They have two attempts to make the throw; if not, they’re eliminated.

Seventeen-year-old Salluit athlete Nicolas Cameron steps up to the line. He is sporting his Ray-Ban glasses indoors, his white T-shirt draped over his shoulders like a cape, headphones in his ears, wired in, eyes focused on the rim. The gymnasium is loud with screams of encouragement, but also with those trying to psych out Cameron.

Nunavik’s ‘political dissidents’ remain opposed to JBNQA

Puvirnituq is Nunavik’s only community that has not signed the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement that some consider Canada’s first modern treaty. And the political group behind the dissidence lives on, remaining at the forefront of the village’s mindset, 50 years after the treaty.

Puvirnituq elder Harry Tulugak has been a consistent voice, advocating for the ideals promoted by Inuit Tungavingat Nunamini, the political group that refused to sign the JBNQA.

Looking back to see what comes next with Charlie Watt

In the early 1970s, Charlie Watt and Zebedee Nungak, two young Inuit, attended an Indian Quebec Association meeting. There, they were discussing how the Crees could take on the government of Quebec, which was building a hydroelectric dam on their land.

“We were not necessarily welcomed,” Watt said in an interview. When he and Nungak were participating in the meeting, the Indian Quebec Association lawyers were reacting to what they were saying. Eventually, Watt and Nungak were asked to leave.

North star

In the early 1990s, Charlie Arngak, the then mayor of Kangiqsujuaq, an Inuit community in Nunavik, Quebec, took a stance for his people by travelling to Toronto to meet the CEO of Falconbridge, a Canadian mining company that was looking into mining nickel in the region at the time. What came of that initiative was a groundbreaking agreement that, 30 years later, remains world-class at improving relationships between mining corporations and Indigenous communities.

‘Fear of heights is not a thing’ for Inukjuak climbers

Samwillie Tullaugak and Daniel Samisack found their passion for rock climbing during a class in Inukjuak. With fellow climber Audrey Haché, they convinced the municipality to provide funding to create a climbing cliff.

Within two years, in August 2022, Haché and her group created the Inukrock Climbers Club. Where Tullaugak and Samisack have become climbing animators, hosting climbing events in Inukjuak and at bigger hills down south.

Nunavik Police Service aims to reinvent itself with funding increase

The Nunavik Police Service hopes to reinvent the way it serves the region after receiving a five-fold increase in its funding through an agreement between Kativik Regional Government and the Quebec and federal governments.

The deal provides Nunavik police with $562 million to carry out its operations, spread over a five-year period from 2024 to 2029. That dwarfs the previous agreement, signed in 2018 and in effect until 2023, which totalled $115 million.
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