Qualitative Researchers at risk to emotional harm

This research on at-risk researchers resonated with my own experience providing me with a body of literature, a lexicon and and lens through which something that left me speechless might someday be spoken.

Screen Teens for Most Extreme Consequence of Psychiatric Illness: Suicide

“[T] most extreme consequence of psychiatric illness: suicide. In the United States, suicide is the third-leading cause of death among persons 15 to 19 years of age. In 2005 alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 16.9% of U.S. high school students seriously considered suicide, and 8.4% had attempted suicide at least once during the preceding year (Friedman 2006-12-28).”

Prevent PTSD: End War

“It is baffling, if not astonishing, that these military psychiatrists, supposed experts in combat-related stress, have so normalized war that it is overlooked as the source of the disease they have been sent to diagnose, that its horror can be thus discounted and its psychic effects rendered invisible (Shay 2006:2).”

Just Before Returning to Iqaluit, NU

This photo of Dennis Forcese and Patricia Reynolds [1] was taken in the hallway outside Centre for Initiatives in Education offices, Dunton Tower, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON was taken in April 1, 2002 just before I returned to Iqaluit, NU to complete the “winter term [2]” at Nunavut Arctic College.
Professor Forcese [3] was the [...]

Vicarious trauma among researchers working with at-risk populations

A substantial body of literature on epidemiological studies estimate that between 36 and 81 percent of the general population experience a traumatic event at some time in their lives which is far more often than previously believed (Cusack et al. 2004).

Flynn-Burhoe. 2003. A Fliction: Dawn among the Hummocks, Iqaluit, NU
A US study a team of researchers led [...]

Tourists and old timers

There are two kinds of people who come north from the south. There are the tourists who stay for one or two years. Then there are those like … who have been here for decades. Those like … recognise that the longer they are here, the less they know about the north. They realise there [...]

Working for the Government in the North

[They] began to compare employee benefits between the Nunavut government and the federal government.
Y works for Customs and Immigration as a Custom’s officer. Y inquired about working for a summer term here. (Y’s father worked here last year.) Y was offered a two year contract. The federal government was not interested in hiring anyone for [...]

Aflicktion: The Wreck of Hope

Aflicktion: The Wreck of Hope
Originally uploaded by ocean.flynn.

Aflicktion: The Wreck of Hope
Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2007. “Nanuq of the North II: Animal Rights vs Human Rights.” Speechless. Uploaded January 3, 2007.
The Bush administration took advantage of the way in which all eyes turn towards Santa’s North Pole, where big-eyed talking polar bears, reindeer and seals live in [...]

Christmas Char on First Air

Youth and suicide
We both arrived early at the airport. I had only met P briefly before. She and her husband were well-known and liked. When I ate my meals at the Frobisher Inn they would often be there. He would come over to greet people including myself.
So there we were in the hustle and bustle [...]

Anti-poverty meeting at the NAC

Thoughts after an anti poverty meeting at NAC
“I have not been here for a long time. It seems like what I have seen is more like a blink than an observation. In this room we have people who have more knowledge than I have about poverty in Nunavut. But there are images I cannot shake. [...]