Youth take centre stage at Northern Games Summit

For the first time in over 25 years, a one-of-a-kind youth development camp was held in Tuktoyaktuk.

From July 19 to 24, the Northern Games Youth Summit helped youth aged 30 and under to improve their physical, social and cultural knowledge.

“It makes the soul feel good to see the kids are proud of their cultural heritage,” said Northern Games Society executive director Donald Kuptana. “It’s a really unique set of sports and we want to continue that. We’re seeing the change from the first day to the last day. Kids are just so happy, learning new skills and becoming more confident. They’re challenging themselves to become more involved in the games, so it’s great to see.

“It’s a really great feeling. We’re so happy the youth are taking such interest.”

Kuptana said approximately 80 youth from across Canada and beyond came out to improve their skills and reconnect with their culture, including from Tagish, Whitehorse and Taco River Yukon, Yellowknife, Edmonton, and a youth even made his way up from Dante, California for the event.

Aside from learning and developing skills in traditional Northern Games such as the one foot high kick, muskox push, airplane and many others, youth also practised traditional social games, joined storytelling circles with Elders and enjoyed nights of dancing.

Bringing youth together to develop friendships spanning the North was as much a goal as improving athletic prowess, noted Kuptana.

“We want the youth to build resiliency and go home to play the games for the rest of their lives,” he said. “We had a lot of good interactions with our Elders and our peak athletes. The youth were able to learn more about the history of the games from our story telling and to learn about being a good man or good woman from the skills that come from the land.

“Youth were able to hear lots of good stories from our Elders from all of our Beaufort Delta communities.”

With the first run at running a Northern Games Summit a resounding success, Kuptana said the society was eager to put on more. Planning is already underway for the Circumpolar Games in Inuvik as well as another Youth Summit.

Time is of the essence. Kuptana said it was important for Elders to share their knowledge with youth while they’re still able.

“This is our first annual youth games and we plan to continue this,” he said. “It’s our responsibility to pass on the history and proper technique to youth. Not all of us are going to be around forever and we want to make sure the traditions are passed on to the youth so they can start taking over.

“We can’t stop now. We’re building capacity and resiliency for our youth.”