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Aani Uqaitu hasn’t been capable of see her 89-year-old mom for six months since she was despatched to a long-term care house 1,200 kilometres away from Sanikiluaq, Nunavut.
Uqaitu’s mom, who has dementia, is one in all many Nunavut elders who’re flown to Southern Canada yearly for care.
The territory doesn’t have the capability to look after elders with complicated wants. Nunavut’s Well being Division says there are 43 elders at present dwelling at Embassy West Senior Residing in Ottawa.
A petition to construct an elder care house in every of Nunavut’s 25 communities hopes to alter that. The petition has obtained over 19,000 signatures within the final month.
“It has been actually laborious,” Uqaitu informed The Canadian Press.
In October, a gaggle of elders in Baker Lake, Nunavut, protested exterior the group’s elders centre, which closed in 2018. They held indicators that known as for it to be reopened.
There are elders centres in Cambridge Bay, Gjoa Haven and Igloolik. There are additionally assisted-living services in Arviat and Iqaluit. A protracted-term care centre is to open in Rankin Inlet in 2023.
Manitok Thompson, a former Nunavut member of the legislature who now lives in Ottawa, began the petition along with her associates after seeing an increasing number of elders despatched to the south over time.
Thompson mentioned she spends a lot of her time visiting them at Embassy West and crying with households who’ve to go away their family members behind.
“I used to be shocked. I bought very emotional,” she mentioned. “It is simply not proper.”
Thompson, who speaks Inuktitut, mentioned she frequently will get requests from Nunavut residents to go to their members of the family in Ottawa.
“I’ve heard so many tales of ‘she died alone’ or ‘he died alone,”‘ Thompson mentioned. “The spirit dies. It is too completely different. The language is just not there.”
Typically she’ll carry the elders acquainted nation meals like cooked seal meat. Her associates carry it down for her once they come to Ottawa. Generally she brings containers of it again when she visits Nunavut.
Uqaitu, who lives in Sanikiluaq along with her household, has been via this earlier than. Her father died at Embassy West final yr, however she could not see him due to pandemic restrictions.
“I am all the time afraid that it would occur once more with my mother,” she mentioned. “She all the time says she desires to go house.”
Lately, a physician informed Uqaitu her mom had stopped consuming. He requested that the elder be given a meal substitute components.
“She all the time lived on nation meals. She does not need to eat white folks’s meals,” Uqaitu mentioned.
She and her husband have full-time jobs and, like many individuals in the neighborhood, weren’t capable of preserve their dad and mom at house.
“There are elders right here who do not need to be despatched out to Embassy West. They’re afraid they will not come again.”
Thompson hopes Nunavut’s newly elected members of the legislative meeting will desk the petition when the meeting sits later this month. She additionally desires the meeting to create a particular committee to take a look at bringing elder care house to the territory.
“This petition is a cry for assist. The elders usually are not going to complain,” Thompson mentioned.
“Leaving someone may be very, very tough. However what selection have they got?”
This story was produced with the monetary help of the Fb and Canadian Press Information Fellowship
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