Members of the NunatuKavut community council met with the provincial health minister on Wednesday to address what locals are describing as a health crisis in Black Tickle.
Council president Todd Russell, along with other representatives, met with Health and Community Services Minister John Haggie in Happy Valley-Goose Bay on Wednesday.
The isolated Aboriginal community of 140 people, which has no running water, recently learned it will no longer have fuel delivered during the winter months, and will be losing the area’s sole nurse-practitioner as of Oct. 1.
Todd Russell, president of the NunatuKavut community council. (Jacob Barker/CBC)
After Wednesday’s meeting, Todd Russell says he was forthright in telling the minister that Black Tickle residents they feel they are being driven out.
“We explained that Black Tickle has seen a steady erosion of many supports and services over the past number of years, which is nothing more than forced relocation of an Indigenous community,” he wrote in a statement.
“It is an infringement on their basic human right of having timely and appropriate access to health care. This is unacceptable.”
Black Tickle is a Southern Inuit island community off the coast of Labrador. (Google Maps)
Russell also went on to write that the recent provincial budget has had a “devastating” impact on the southern Inuit of NunatuKavut, which is directly tied to the situation in Black Tickle.
“We know that it is directly related to the escalating cost of the Muskrat Falls project, which has violated the rights of Indigenous peoples in Labrador and continues to threaten our food security and way of life,” he wrote.
According to the statement, Haggie has agreed to quickly facilitate a meeting between the council and officials from Labrador-Grenfell health.