Film: A Place to Run To (Canada)

Places
Causes

Transcript

SOUND UP; [MUSIC PLAYS]; MAP OF U.S., CANADA, NUNAVUT, IQALUIT; [MUSIC PLAYS]
00:00:48: CHARLIE [NARRATING]: I’m Charlie Annenberg Weingarten. I’m in the Arctic with my Explore team, to learn and to gather information about people and organizations making a positive difference throughout this region. The Arctic communities face many unique challenges. But even those issues we are familiar with are often magnified in this part of the world. Some of what I discovered was hard to hear.
00:01:12: CHARLIE: What’s the most difficult aspect to living up here in the Arctic?; MARY ELLEN: For me personally, it’s the heartbreak of the social conditions. Of seeing children who don’t graduate, of women who are being abused, people with huge addiction problems. That’s the hard thing.; [MUSIC PLAYS]
00:02:21: CHARLIE: Hi. Nice to meet you.; WOMAN: Nice to meet you, too.; NAPATCHIE: We home at least three to four hundred women a year. This is the only shelter in Nunavut that operates 365 days a year, seven days a week, 24 hours.; CHARLIE: What is the name of the organization?; NAPATCHIE: Qimaavik. It's a Inuktitut name, and it’s called, “a place to run to.” It's to home the woman and children that are fleeing violence. Either from their partners or from their family members.
00:02:57: CHARLIE [NARRATING]: In Iqaluit, the capital of the recently established Nunavut territory, I met with scholars and scientists who spoke to the issues facing this area. Issues that can manifest in domestic abuse.; MARY ELLEN:: Urbanization occurs everywhere in the world. Though it’s only six thousand five hundred people, it’s still an Arctic urban environment. Iqaluit is where the government is, Iqaluit where there is some private industry, Iqaluit is where things are happening, so the best and brightest, the most educated, come from some of those communities to take jobs here in our community. So you have those folks who don’t have an education here, who aren’t getting the jobs, so you have that kind of conflict going on. And so it’s like everywhere, where there’s urbanization.
00:03:50: RICK: It's difficult for people to get housing here. There’s a limited amount of public housing here, and there are long lists of people trying to get into this public housing, so, where do they go? They move in with relatives and, and before long there are problems resulting from too many people living in a house. That’s probably one of the areas that really, really needs attention here.
00:04:11: ELISAPEE: There’s a huge impact when it comes to overcrowding. Social problems, usually families are overcrowded, sometimes two to three generations live in a home.; ELISAPEE: For me, the biggest challenge is bringing the spirit up. I see there was a high expectation when we became a territory. The common folk thought they were going to really benefit and they haven’t. Trying to build up their self-esteem, and confidence. And it’s, and the Iqaluit, for instance, a lot of them are feeling kinda left out, because they don’t have the education.
00:04:53: CHARLIE: What is the relationship of drugs and alcohol with domestic violence?; NAPATCHIE: Seventy per cent of abuse is related to alcohol, and drugs. Thirty per cent will be like due to lack of employment being available, and the other one would be the abuser was either abused when they were growing up, or they have seen the abuse. It is a cycle. This is where we want to be able to help the children to break that link, to break that cycle.
00:05:38: McRAE: Some of these women that come here don’t have self esteem anymore. They don’t know where to begin anymore. It's not just physical anymore, it’s emotional.; CHARLIE: What does the center do to help people heal?; McRAE: We have two peer counselors who see clients at least twice a week.; CHARLIE: Do you counsel the abusers?; McRAE: That’s the problem with the shelters, is that that’s not part of our mandate, to be talking with the abuser. For several reasons—one of our issues here is that we don’t have a male counselor here, we don’t have the funding to help the abuser to heal at the same time. I think if they make the healing a mandatory thing, I think the men would seek more help.; [MUSIC PLAYS]
00:06:39: McRAE: The biggest challenge running this shelter is dealing with children who have witnessed the violence. For one thing, we don’t have a child psychologist here, or a person to work with children only, because of the funding.; CHARLIE: How does this center receive its funding?; McRAE: We get our contribution from the government of Nunavut, from the Department of Health and Social Services. But it’s a very limited contribution we get from them, and a lot of stuff that we need to purchase, we have to do some fund raising or depend on donations we receive. A lot the stuff that we have in here is donated. My dream for this center to help all these women to get their self-esteem back and to able to seek employment, to be able to talk their partners to seek help for themselves too.; [MUSIC PLAYS]
00:08:30: NAPATCHIE: I’ve seen several women move ahead with their life. Some have gotten jobs as social workers, they get their education. Some have gone through nursing programs, and some have said, Okay, I’m a strong person, I’m going to go and live by myself, and find myself a job. Us woman suffer the same things, regardless of who we are.; [MUSIC PLAYS]
00:11:03: END OF FILM

A Place to Run To

When we think of the Arctic, we often think of global warming. But a deeper, darker issue plagues the region. In the northern Canadian town of Iqaluit, women are eight times more likely to be victims of domestic violence. See how brave Arctic women are supporting each other at Qimaavaik (Inuktitut for "A Place to Run To") — a safe haven for abused women and children. Through peer support and counseling, they are building self-esteem and healing wounded spirits.