'You can do it,' says this Sanirajak, Nunavut, man to others who live with a disability

Tyrone Apak is proud to call himself a deaf person — but it's taken him many years to come to terms with his disability. 

The 25-year-old resident of Sanirajak, Nunavut, started to lose his hearing when he was just a toddler, though he only realized he was deaf when he started school.

His words are interpreted by his American sign language (ASL) teacher, Dinah Pikuyak. 

"I used to use implants at school at first. I was struggling a little," he said.

Pikuyak first started working with Apak in Grade 5. 

"When I first started working with him, he didn't want to communicate with anybody and he was not able to look at anybody," she said. 

"I had another student who was hard of hearing … so I had them challenge each other [to practice] ASL."

Apak, who's been working at the local Northern store for the last five years, eventually learned to embrace his disability and connect with others. In 2023, he became the first deaf person in his community to get a driver's licence.

"I was crying a little bit … I felt proud and happy, all the mixed emotions," he said. 

"I can say, try your best. Even if you're deaf, you can do it."

Teacher's mission for youth to accept their disability

According to research published in the International Journal of Audiology in 2021, an estimated one in five school-aged children in the Canadian Arctic have hearing loss significant enough to affect their learning and development. 

Pikuyak, who teaches at the local school in Sanirajak, said one in four children there have some form of hearing loss.

"I know some of them get panic attacks [about it]," she said. 

She also understands how isolating that can feel. She began to lose her own hearing when she was a child. But she said she realized she had to accept that part of her. 

"I started using my hearing aid at age 11. It was kind of hard for me to cope with everything at first. I was picking up every little sound," she said.

"I started to understand that I'm missing a lot, so I had to accept my hearing aid." 

Nowadays, she wears a bright blue hearing aid, which she chose so that it would stand out to others. It's her way of normalizing life with a disability. 

"They start to manage … [when they realize] they're not alone and accepting who they are," she said. 

Pikuyak believes there are simple steps for others to be allies to those with hearing loss – whether it be learning some sign language, or treating everybody with the same kindness. 

 "I always tell them they're not different from anybody."

Working together to be more inclusive

Noah Papatsie is a board member of the Nunavummi Disabilities Makinnasuaqtiit Society (NDMS). He lost his eyesight in 1999 while doing lighting work in Cambridge Bay. 

He had multiple surgeries in the years that followed, but eventually, doctors told him they couldn't do much else to save his eyesight. 

Instead of letting that get him down, Papatsie said it spurred him to "grab the bull by the horn" with adjusting to his new reality. 

"It opened a new doorway for me to try and get better. Nobody's going to do it for me. I have to do it for myself because I have a growing family. I'm also a grandfather," he said. 

According to 2019 data from Statistics Canada, one in five Inuit live with some form of disability — though NDMS believes that figure could be several times higher due to the limited data available in Nunavut. 

Papatsie stresses that people with disabilities shouldn't be the only ones advocating for themselves. 

It's about working together to ensure services are accessible to everyone, he said. After all, that is the spirit of the Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit principles – the system of beliefs which guide respectful relationships, management practices, and governance.

"I think it's important that the able society understand the word better, what 'inclusion' is. I think there's so much we can achieve together," he said.