ABSTRACT
This chapter is about a process aimed at preventing suicide in Canada’s north. The government of the Northwest Territories, recognizing that suicide has become a major problem, recently invested money and time in a series of community consultations focused on prevention. In the wake of the Rankin Inlet success, the government decides to hold smaller consultations using a similar approach in each of the regions of the Northwest Territories. The chartered plane that was to bring them in was used instead for a medical emergency, flying an ill person south to hospital. The simultaneous interpretation equipment doesn’t arrive and this is a problem given that about half the people are unilingual in Inuktitut. The problems related to suicide in the Northwest Territories are many and deep. Some of the most fundamental difficulties are tied to national and global trends in economics, politics, and social values, and thus are not easily addressed through individual and community action.
