Carrying on in Jenny’s name: Inuit outreach line rolls out

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This article was published 01/12/2017 (2879 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Inuit came to Winnipeg to visit or start new lives in the south, they could always call on Jenny Tootoo.

One of the few Inuit from the North who had moved to south for good, in the 1980s and ’90s, Tootoo helped many migrants find apartments, navigate the labour market to land jobs, figure out social assistance, register for university or college and track down everything from local food banks to thrift stores.

Even now, although statistics are inconclusive, the Inuit population in Winnipeg is small, anywhere from 600 to 1,000 people, Tootoo’s granddaughter, Serena Hickes, said on Thursday by phone.

Hickes is determined to carry on her grandmother’s tradition.

She and a few others are rolling out a 24-hour hotline — 1-844-654 INUIT (6848) — through a social media post on Facebook.

Hickes is the daughter of Tootoo’s son, George Hickes, a former provincial politician who represented Point Douglas for the NDP for two decades before he retired as Speaker in 2011.

Later on, the hope is to pair the hotline with bricks and mortar, renting space for a private non-profit Inuit community centre in the city, Hickes said.

Anaanatsiaq — Jenny’s Place Inc. is scouting for a location.

In the meantime, the hotline is designed to help Inuit figure out life in Winnipeg, much as her grandmother did for earlier generations in person from her home, Hickes said.

There is a need for community outreach, Hickes said, who is working with fellow directors Steve and Jackie Massey (of residential care service provider Massey Homes) on the hotline and the proposed community centre.

The trio hope to offer a range of cultural teachings, including classes in the Inuktitut language, traditional sewing, throat singing, drum making and dancing, access to local food support and making the iconic crescent-shaped knives traditionally used by Inuit women.

Hickes said she’s guided by the example her grandmother set.

“It’s how we were raised. You just do it, because you’re part of a larger community so you always make yourself present,” she said.

Although Tootoo had little of her own, she would always share what she could, find out what she could for others and she always had extra food prepared for those in need, Hickes said. Some people were forced to relocate for catastrophic health reasons, adding to their stress, she said.

“With no formal support in place, there was one ‘anaanatsiaq’ (grandma) living in Winnipeg who made herself available at all hours of the day and night to help (point) Inuit in the right direction,” Hickes said in the online announcement.

“Jenny was my grandmother and she had a way of making each and every one of us feel special and feel loved. And she never made that feel like a competition. She always said we need to help each other. No one person is more important than the other and everyone works together as a community.”

Tootoo was born Jenny Quassa in 1918, and raised in Chesterfield Inlet, on the coast of Hudson Bay. The oldest Inuit community in Nunavut is now known by its Inuit name, Igluligaarjuk, a phrase that translates as a place with few houses.

Tootoo lived a traditional lifestyle, and over the course of her life she married twice (to Pierre Tootoo and Bob Hickes).

She raised 13 children and lived in both Winnipeg and Churchill. A noted seamstress and carver, Tootoo died in 2004 at age 86.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca