For the curious.

Selection of vegetables bought yesterday at Northern. Bigland had a good selection too but of late I find the Northern shipments just a little fresher, plus the 'shopping experience' is a tad more pleasant.
Being winter the tomatoes are wanting, then they usually are in the north.

So it's Greek salad tonight [had some feta cheese come in with friend], along with souvlaki and caribou meat cakes.

Ian from hopedale sent up a piece of fresh deer meat, had traditional deer meat fried in pork fat last evening, thought Fran was never going to stop eating.

Nice warm spell [up to -6 yesterday] but still no snow, only 22 cm on the ground and non of that is on the roads for sure.

More on the former NG minister of health and social development: A more in depth interview with Mr. Russell is here on CKOK.

Russell sure does polarize the Coastal and Lake Melville membership of NG, in this interview he portrays himself as some sort of Mahatma Gandhi something he is not even close to being.

I do not like Russell as a person, never have, but he is willing to [or was before and after being in the NG cabinet] to speak to issues and challenge policy and set ways of doing things.

Many of the issues he raised in this interview are long standing problems that plague NG and need addressing; unfortunately people who do challenge are promptly shuffled aside or ignored. Since the formation of NG a large middle class has formed within the NG civil service, many know the on going problems and issues but won’t bring them into a public forum for various reasons.

While this middle class is being feted there is another class of people outside the employ of NG who are for all intents and purposes being ignored. Russell mentions some of these in the interview.

Language [Inuttut] is also being almost pushed aside, Torngnasok Cultural Center does not have a regular director and there are no plans to hire one.

But Russell shots himself in the foot big time with other claims of being the sole force behind almost every program that his department is involved in. There is lots of evidence that Russell did not respond to many e mails and phone calls directed to him [he is not alone there] and many folk say that he was not in his office as often as he should have been [not alone there either].

So there may have been due cause to move Russell out of the cabinet, at the same time there is a reasonable amount of evidence to say it was political.

The president of NG does not/has not done a reasonable job to date in explaining the reasons satisfactorily. The publicly unspoken animosity between coastal Nunatsiavutmut and NG beneficiaries within Lake Melville is being used by a clique within NG administration to maintain their grip on power IMO and Russell looks to be using that animosity to pursue his agenda, whatever that is..

The overriding problem with NG is that a small clique of civil servants and advisers make most of the decisions [Russell is correct on this point]. Many top positions of late have been filled by Appointment after [allegedly] no suitable applications were received to ads for these positions. The appointees may be qualified for the positions but the way they received these appointments should raise red flags. No Inuit have been appointed to any of these positions which has lead to a lot of discontent and resentment towards management of NG.

NG has been formed for five years; that five years along with the previous ten to fifteen years could have been used to train and ready Inuit for top positions that require special skill sets and education.

This was not done and only now is there some talk of training people to do these jobs. Suggestions of parallel roles working with experienced people in say the Director of Torngnasok position, plus other positions.

It is only talk, and I fear there will be some opposition from some within NG.

Sadly there are well educated and well trained Inuit who have the skills needed but they are either not willing to return to Nunatsiavut or are not sought out because they speak truth to power.

What is needed is strong leadership with support of several other members to take on these challenges. Until that happens then things will role along in chaos and disorder. NG has to get over this fear of openness and be willing to take some constructive criticisms and answer these criticisms in an adult and open manner.

Some may ask why am I doing this shit? Answer is no one else is doing it publicly and I wish someone would. .