‘Sunlight is our only vitamin’: Community members in Arviat, Nunavut worry for mental health as isolation period continues
MONTREAL – As COVID-19 cases continue to climb in the northern hamlet of Arviat, Nunavut, and as the days get shorter, community members worry about their mental health.
“The youth are impacted greatly because we are told not to socialize, and most of the places they can go to are shut down right now,” says Romeo Okatsiak, an Inuk youth pastor at the Glad Tidings Church in Arviat.
Nunavut saw its first case on Nov. 6, in Sanikiluaq. The territory now has 56 active cases. Arviat, population 3,000, has been hardest hit with all of the territory’s total active cases at the moment. At its last peak, the community had over a hundred active cases. As the rest of Nunavut lifts lockdown, Arviat will continue its isolation period for another two weeks.
“The health department did not want it [COVID-19] to spread, but it has spread significantly,” says Okatsiak.
Eighteen-year-old Natalie Baker, who is Inuk, was working at a local grocery store until a nurse told her that her pregnancy put her at higher risk of exposure to COVID-19. She’s been watching movies and drinking tea with her parents and her seven-year-old twin brothers since. Now she says she worries about her grandmother, who lives alone.
“Before this whole pandemic and lockdown situation, we always used to go to my grandmother’s house. We haven’t been able to go see her,” Baker says.
Arviat is located about 300 kilometres north of Churchill, Man. and is accessible only by plane and snowmobile. Baker says that right now, the sun sets at 4 p.m. and rises at 10 a.m. “It will just continue to get darker throughout the year,” she says.
“Sunlight is basically our only vitamin, and we can’t get it because of isolation and lockdown,” Baker adds.