Selena Ross // Branded: How Inuit women in Montreal end up on the street — or dead | National Observer

6.12.17

Branded: How Inuit women in Montreal end up on the street — or dead | National Observer: For decades, Inuit have been coming to Montreal from Nunavik. Sometimes they come for an education, sometimes they come for health care. They may return home unscathed. But sometimes they merely come for a visit — and end up staying for years, even decades, living in conditions they seem unable to escape.

When Montrealers first began to see Inuit panhandling on city streets in the 1980s, journalists and researchers explored their plight. Many Inuit in that generation had lived through ordeals common to other Indigenous people, including being sent away for school.

Less attention has been paid to a more recent generation of arrivals — young Inuit like Tullaugak, in their teens and twenties, who often end up in dire circumstances within just a few months of arriving in the city.