Inuit youth win ban on alcohol

Kugluktuk has seen too many suicides. Rev. Christopher Davis buried nine young people--all suicide victims---in a twelve-month period; almost all the deaths were alcohol-related. That’s one every six weeks. And there are only 1,300 people in the hamlet, ninety percent of them Inuit, and most of them Anglican. Everybody is related to everybody so the pain is enormous. 

“One curse that entered the Central Arctic in the late 1920’s when it opened up to the outside world was alcohol, which is truly a destroyer,” Davis said. “There are drugs in the North too, but alcohol is worse because it is legal and more accessible.”

And there is a vested interest in keeping the liquor flowing. The airlines make a profit from shipping it in as does the government-owned liquor store in Yellowknife where it originates.

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