For years, Inuit politicians talked about Nunavut as a promised land. Now, Inuit preachers are taking them literally.
After years of patient work, fundamentalist religious leaders across the eastern Arctic are about to join hands and their rapidly growing flocks to form a new church that combines speaking-in-tongues, cast-out-the-devil Christianity with Inuit cultural pride. "We are organizing," says James Arreak, the cherubic, 36-year-old former bank employee who is now pastor of the Iqaluit Christian Fellowship and one of the movement's shepherds.
"The creation of Nunavut is our opportunity to demonstrate the true calling of who God called us to be.
"The signs are indicating that we need to prepare ourselves for the Second Coming."
Pentecostal Christianity, brought in by southern evangelists, has been present in the North for at least two decades. But the advent of a new generation of Inuit preachers such as Arreak and Billy Arnaquq has made the difference, says Roger Armbruster of the Maranatha Good News Centre in Nivervillle, Man.
"Since it's come under these indigenous leaders, we've seen it grow exponentially," said Armbruster, who regularly preaches throughout Nunavut and northern Quebec.
"In one way or another, there is somebody in every community that we know or that we're connected with," says Arreak, who says his flock has grown from 20 to more than 50 in two years.
Armbruster says every one of Nunavut's 27 communities has a Pentecostal congregation. Some communities have claimed up to 50 per cent of their population is born again.
Last September, about 800 people gathered in the central Arctic community of Baker Lake for a Bible study conference - a significant figure in a territory with fewer than 30,000 inhabitants. Getting there alone cost them more than $300,000 in airplane charters, says Armbruster.
"There's been a fundamentalist Christian revival in Nunavut," says territorial Health Minister Ed Picco. "That's been very obvious for several years now."
Many of the new believers are influential, including Tagak Curley, who won a seat in the territory's legislature in the general election earlier this month and is seeking the premier's chair.
The 19 legislature members will select the new leader from among themselves March 5.
Arreak preaches that hard-core Christian values are not only congruent with traditional Inuit ways, they are what the Inuit were meant to live by all along. The creation of Nunavut was simply a step along that path.
"We are a unique people, unique in almost every way," he says. Again and again, he repeats that the creation of Nunavut is a call from God for the Inuit to transform themselves.
He effortlessly brings the old-time shamans who guided the Inuit before Christianity under his spiritual tent.
"There are oral traditional stories that shamans were sent into the spirit world to investigate the reality of (the Christian) God. They came back saying 'Wow!' "
One of those shamans might feel right at home in Arreak's church. He talks casually of speaking in tongues, faith-healing and exorcisms.
"We do lots of them. A couple months ago, I did one in Iqaluit."
Arreak condemns drugs, alcohol and promiscuity - a message many have credited with making real differences in communities crippled by substance and sexual abuses.
The next step, says Arreak, will be to complete the joining together of separate congregations across Nunavut and northern Quebec into a single church.
He promises the new church's name will be released by April, when another Bible conference is expected to bring 1,000 worshippers to Iqaluit.
By that time, fundraising will be well underway for a joint church and training centre for the new denomination. Iqaluit city council has already granted a building site.
"There's a tremendous need to develop leadership skills, both spiritually and otherwise," Arreak says.
"We're working together, which I think is historic. I think it's exciting, because that is definitely a sign that something is happening.
"And something is about to happen more."