His eyes, like ours, were watching how the northern community of Kangiqsualujjuaq was coping with the effects of a devastating avalanche that swept down on it’s school leaving nine dead.

I can’t begin to guess what was going through the mind of a man so keenly connected to the Inuit community, but like the Prime Minister, the experience of tragedy in the North has given me opportunity to look at what the Inuit will reach for when there is a need to heal.

Arctic wounds go far deeper than the trauma and loss of last week’s avalanche.  Suicide and sexual assaults are seven times the national average, the literacy rate is the lowest in Canada, unemployment is the highest.

But new statistics are emerging that have yet to make it into the official census, and these are the ones we need to watch to see if the Inuit have found something to begin the journey to healing.

It’s called Christianity and it’s birthing from a growing indigenous church of Inuit clergy that are finding faith has deep emotional impact on their people.  This past week a pile of video tapes arrived at my desk, bursting with northern stories that give some convincing evidence that God is making a mark in the North.

“Twenty years ago, there was hardly anything happening with Christianity here,” said Rev. Mosessie Idlout as he stood amid a gathering of almost 1000 who had come together for a northern Christian conference.   Fifteen years earlier, Idlout, an Anglican priest from Salluit in Northern Quebec would have found about 15 Inuit at the same conference.

Inuit territory covers over 2 million square kilometers and has only 20 kilometers of road.  To find 1000 of Canada’s 25,000 Inuit gathered anywhere at one time shows phenomenal effort at work, and it’s bound to ripple into communities.  Some Inuit now claim 90 % of entire villages have embraced Christianity.

Putulik Papigatuk is a father of seven and a former drug pusher who found Jesus at a Inuit crusade.  “I used to think, ‘what’s going to happen if I don’t take dope no more’, I’ve done drugs for 20 years and when I got saved, I dropped my habit just like that,” he said snapping his fingers.  “It’s a whole lot greater environment at home these days, it’s a good feeling.”

Billy Arnaquq was a housing administrator in Broughton Island, N.W.T.  Divorced, dealing drugs, he encountered Jesus and radically changed his lifestyle, even winning his estranged wife back into a happy marriage. The Inuit now pay Billy to work full time point to spread “the fire of God”  and Billy is one of the hottest preachers in the Arctic.

Harry Tulugak, the former mayor of Puvirnituq, said his small community wrestled through two years where they experienced one suicide every month, statistics he says stopped when the village encountered Jesus.

This peak in Christian interest comes at a time when elections have just begun on the creation of Canada’s newest northern territory, Nunavet.  85 percent of Canada’s Inuit live in that region, and not surprisingly, faith is finding a way to influence politics.

“If we do not respect God, we will not have the social, economic and political blessings we are looking for,” said Tagak Curley, a founding father of the new territory and the man who gave Nunavet it’s name.  A former MLA and Cabinet Minister in the Northwest Territories, Curley founded the first cultural and political organization for the Inuit.  A passionate follower of Christianity, he’s convinced Nunavet is part of the hope to heal his people, but believes Jesus plays a bigger part in the equation than will politics.

It’s history being made in the North, and as I wonder how the social ills of the Arctic will heal, time will tell if the voices of impassioned Inuit Christians have some answers.