My name is Shirley Takalik and I'm a consultant working in Arviat-Nidavut.
I'm a retired educator and I work now in the areas of health and education.
All indigenous peoples view life in a very holistic way.
So it's a natural integration of things.
For me, our Inuit elders described Inusik, the way they live, as being about people living
together in relationship, relationship being the most important thing in life.
And they speak about relations with each other, but also relations with nature and the environment.
Because everything that Inuit relied on, all of their natural resources, all of the materials,
everything that sustained life for them came from the environment.
So there has to be natural connections between people and the environment.
And then the third aspect is how they use the resources from their environment to create
technologies that improve their life and enable them to be more successful.
So for example, building an igloo or training dogs or making a harpoon head, all of the
materials required for those things came directly from their environment.
So if you're going to have technologies that help you be more successful in life, you have
to make sure that you're conserving, preserving, and being a good steward of your environment.
So it's holistically interconnected.
Elders have identified four core laws.
And so the purpose in life is to live a good life.
And again, most indigenous communities identify some phrase like that as the key purpose
in life.
So living a good life requires that you follow these four big laws.
So continually planning and preparing for the future, looking ahead, not just to the
next generation, but multiple generations ahead, making sure that whatever you're doing,
the footprint that you're making is one that will be a good footprint for others to follow.
So that's one of the big laws.
Another one is working for the common good.
So the idea that it's the responsibility of each person to become as capable and skilled
as you can possibly be, to become a master in a certain area so that you can take the
skills that you have and contribute those to improving the lives of others around you.
So that's the big purpose in life.
And when we talk about inamuinak, making a capable human being, a big part of that is
to ensure that every child becomes skilled and capable to mastery level so that they
can contribute those skills back to improve the lives of people around them.
And another law is living in harmony and balance.
When you have a balanced existence, you're taking that holistic perspective and keeping
everything in close connection, not overdoing in any area.
When you have that kind of balance in your life, then inamuit feel you can achieve harmony
and live in peace with both your natural world and with other people.
The final law is being respectful of all living things.
And that goes back to, again, the close connectedness between oneself and one's environment, between
oneself and the people around you.
Everyone is interconnected.
We're reliant on everything else around us to sustain us in life.
And so being respectful of those things is a requirement.
Inamuinak, it translates as making a capable human being or making an able person is how
they describe it.
That isn't just left a chance.
In order for people to be able to live a good life according to those four big laws, there
is a specific process very strictly laid out by Inuit for how to train children in that
way.
So it's like the Inuit socialization process.
So becoming a capable human being involves becoming skilled in a number of different
areas, but really internalizing the values and beliefs that Inuit hold to be important
so that you can become a strong contributing member to the community.
Because there is an integration of all the thinking, I think there's a great strength
there.
So every area informs another area, everything is connected, and everything has a significant
relationship to everything else.
I think when you begin to view the world in that way, you're not looking for small
band-aid solutions to much bigger issues.
So in terms of determinants of health, you're looking for creating solutions, seeking solutions
that will be holistic in nature, that will be impacting every area of a person's life
and well-being.
And that's bound to be much more effective than targeting anti-poverty or improving
education or looking at determinants individually.
I think that the solutions that may be available to address social determinants of health from
an indigenous perspective will have a lot of resonance with how we could be dealing
with social determinants of health for everybody.
I mean, it's just a good way to live.
