Inuvik's first pride parade draws more than 100 people

Inuvik's first pride parade, organized by East Three Secondary School's Aurora GSA club, drew more than 100 people to celebrate queer and trans identities.

Aurora GSA club member Kendall Allen said the support shown from the community at the parade was "mind blowing."

"For me, as a person who is gay, you don't see representation growing up, and we feel that's not okay," said Allen. "So when we came together today and saw all this support, it made me feel so happy."

Chelsea Thacker, executive director of the Rainbow Coalition of Yellowknife, attended the parade and helped the GSA organize final details.

Thacker said it is "revitalizing" when communities can come together and show support for marginalized groups.

"It's not just the queer people getting together. It's the families, it's allies," said Thacker. "It is huge for this community. We have a table full of Indigenous elders here, too, which is unheard of."

She added that it is important to hold pride events like this because they foster inclusive environments for current and younger generations.

"For a long time, people felt like the only thing that the community could do was force people to stay quiet and exist in quiet and not be seen or heard," said Thacker. "Whereas a pride parade and this celebration allows people to be seen and heard and allows people to be who they are, and to have the community show that they accept them."

Thacker said she hopes events like this will start to slowly decolonize people's views about queer and trans communities.

"When colonialists came over, they brought those Christian and Catholic views and they forced people to be homophobic, and transphobic, and wiped out the identity of two-spirited people," said Thacker. "That systemic trauma from residential schools and colonization prevents people from being able to talk about the things they know in their culture, like being two-spirited, because all they have learned is hate."

Thacker said the difficulty with homophobia and transphobia is that there is rarely a record of it.

"People in small towns like this, you're going to see discrimination in the subtle lessons that they teach their children and the way they think, and their disdain for LGBTQ2S people," said Thacker. "It's subtle, and that's the worst part of it. If it were overt, there would be an obvious way to combat it. A lot of the time, homophobia in small towns looks like something else and is covered up."

Jill Nugent, supervising teacher of the Aurora GSA, said the pride parade was important to hold in order to show that there is community acceptance and support for them.

"A a lot of youth that I talk to kind of feel like they've been ignored, or scared," said Nugent. "Even hanging up posters for the parade, they were afraid to do it because they didn't know what kind of support they would get, or what people would say to them."

She said despite these fears, the community support the group received in organizing the parade was "unreal" and they didn't receive any negative response to the event.

"It's important for the youth to know growing up that whoever they are is okay," she said. "The whole event just went off without a hitch. It was great."

The pride parade was sponsored by the Aurora GSA, the Students on Ice Foundation, the Inuvik Physicians, the Town of Inuvik, East Three Secondary School and Inuvik Victims Services.