Residential schools cast long shadow - A Toronto Star article
Be sure to read the comments about this article by Karihwakeron (Tim Thompson), Education Advisor, Chiefs of Ontario Officer, at the bottom.
Residential schools cast long shadow ... Where suicide lives ... A plague of teen deaths is stalking northern Ontario reserves ... Native leaders see fathers as the key to stopping the dying
LOUISE BROWN - EDUCATION REPORTER - Mar. 24, 2006
THUNDER BAY—There is a corner of Ontario where some 6-year-olds play a homemade game called Suicide.
"My turn to put the rope around my neck — this time, you yell Suicide!"
One child nearly strangled.
It's the same part of the province where teenaged boys on a rampage threatened to kill themselves if anyone tried to stop them, so no one did.
Ask Celina Oskineegish, 16, how many friends and family she has lost to suicide while growing up in Summer Beaver, a community near James Bay, and she holds up 10 fingers.
"It's actually 12, but I don't have that many fingers," she says softly.
"It's very hard for the people left behind. I lost my close friend when we were 13; he drowned after sniffing (gas)," says the Grade 11 student.
"When someone talks about committing suicide, you just stick with them and tell their parents, but that doesn't always work."
This is the land where suicide lives, high in the woods of northern Ontario.
But increasingly, native leaders see parents, especially fathers, as key to stopping the dying.
They say generations of native Canadians raised without parents at distant, harsh, sometimes sexually abusive residential schools have become distant, harsh, sometimes sexually abusive parents themselves — and they must heal their own wounds if they are to raise children who feel life is worth living.
In its dying days in office, the federal Liberal government pledged millions to help communities rebuild these family bonds — $125 million earmarked specifically for healing the emotional wounds of residential school survivors in a tentative compensation package hammered out with native groups, and $1.3 billion targeted for aboriginal health, including suicide prevention, in the Kelowna Accord signed last November with aboriginal leaders.
Oskineegish's community and others like it hope these pledges will deliver more grassroots parenting and social programs to curb the deadly despair.
Some 30,000 people live in dozens of scattered Indian reserves between Hudson Bay and Manitoba. Some of these communities work hard to carve out a place in the global economy — focusing on education, instilling pride in the past and hope for the future.
Yet nearly once every two weeks, someone north of 50 takes their life: usually a teenager, usually a male, usually by hanging.
Last year, 24 people died by their own hand across the region known as the Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) north of Thunder Bay, which covers two-thirds of the map of Ontario.
Over the past 20 years, 327 people in the NAN region have committed suicide. Five teenaged boys have hanged themselves since New Year's Day.
An intergovernmental committee was formed on aboriginal youth suicide in 2000. There have been inquests, awareness campaigns, teen self-esteem programs — Girl Power for girls, Wolf Spirit for boys — but as Canada's native population grows faster than any other in the country, native suicide rates remain alarmingly high.
And most fingers point to residential schools.
For more than a century, the Canadian government removed more than 100,000 native children from their families and placed them in church-run boarding schools where they were forbidden to speak their language or honour their culture. Often beaten and sexually abused, many suffered life-long shame and withdrawal, turning the same abuse on their own children.
"Suicide is a symptom of things that have gone seriously wrong in our community — dysfunctional families, poor parenting, sexual abuse, residential schools and poverty — and as native parents and fathers, we must take responsibility and confront the monsters in our closet," says NAN Grand Chief Stan Beardy.
"About 90 per cent of my people have been affected by residential schools, where nobody told you they loved you and you weren't allowed to express your feelings — so when you grow up, you don't know about normal family bonds," said Beardy, one of the few who avoided residential school.
"Even basic things the dominant culture takes for granted — like a family meal, family time — hasn't really taken hold in our culture because we never did that at residential school. We behave the way we were treated.
"So just the fact we're talking about these issues of healing and parenting now is progress itself. This has all been kept so quiet for too long."
It may sound familiar.
It's the same link between fatherless teens and violence being drawn by black leaders from Toronto to Philadelphia. It's the same call for men to become active mentors that we hear from black leaders like Boston minister Eugene Rivers on a recent visit to Toronto.
Former principal Goyce Kakegamic calls strong families and fathers "the first line of defence in the battle against suicide." As NAN deputy chief responsible for education, Kakegamic organized the recent faith-based Embrace Life forum on suicide prevention and called on native men — many of whom drift between multiple partners and have numerous children with whom they have little contact — to return to their family role.
He echoed Rivers in his challenge to men to step up to the plate.
"The love and caring of a parent, family and friends are more powerful in healing a broken spirit than money and programs can ever be," he said to an all-ages audience from across Ontario's north. "I challenge each of you, and especially men, to think about what you can do to ensure your children learn values to live by."
Ryan Morrison, a 24-year-old native youth volunteer, has been on his own for nine years; he barely knows his father and rarely sees his mother. He lost three friends to suicide in five years, and came to the brink himself. "I think young people kill themselves because they can't find love. You keep looking for the spotlight, looking for attention. You keep looking, then you get on edge, then you start drinking and suddenly you're standing on a cliff over a lake and thinking about just jumping off."
For Morrison, the answer came through religion. For others, the government offers funds for counselling.
Winnipeg lawyer Ken Young is the Assembly of First Nations' special adviser on residential schools. He knows the impact the schools have on a man's ability to be a good father.
Young spent 10 years at residential school in Manitoba, where he says students were flogged if they tried to escape. He became so introverted, he says, he went through law school without asking a question and lost his first case because he wouldn't examine the witness.
"Our people have a tremendous problem with parenting; it's one of the legacies of residential schools, where we were never encouraged, never nurtured," he told the Embrace Life forum.
"I was not a good parent. I never hugged my daughter; I never told her I loved her — I didn't know that's what parents did. Only now, as a grandfather, am I able to hug my daughter and grandchild. The legacy of suicide we now face is largely a result of lack of nurturance in our communities."
Young admits Indian communities face severe economic issues, "poverty, the dependency syndrome created by three generations of welfare and the lack of recreational facilities taken for granted in urban centres. But for our communities to finally begin to heal, our leaders need to heal, and then they will make decisions in the best interests of their communities."
Suicide expert Al Evans, professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo, says the role of a father or male mentors is crucial during the mid-teens, especially for boys, to provide emotional support and moral guidance.
"Where there is family disruption and the father is not available, this can be one of the contributing causes of suicide — and often aboriginal fathers are struggling with despair and alcohol problems themselves," said Evans, who has just published a biography of native artist Benjamin Chee-Chee, who killed himself in 1977 at the age of 32.
Ricky Asta, 19, of Davis Inlet in Labrador has graduated from a solvent abuse treatment centre in Thunder Bay. He says many Innu teens commit suicide, and he thinks he knows why.
"They don't know who they are."
But there is hope, says Abe Kakepetum, an esteemed Ojibwa artist whose work has been featured on Toronto designer Linda Lundstrom's popular "La Parka" winter coats. Kakepetum is a residential school survivor who, like others of his generation, is only now, as a grandfather, beginning to overcome the emotional scars.
"I lost the ability to hug when I was away from my mother at school. When I became a parent I had no idea how to hug. I still have a problem with hugging, but I make an effort with my grandchildren," said Kakepetum, who ran workshops for fellow elders at the Embrace Life forum on suicide prevention.
"All my life, we've never really dealt with the residential school problem. A lot of the ones who were abused, or sexually abused, became abusers and we need to stop that cycle. That's what happened in my family, that's what most of us are going through."
He believes talking about the issues will help both men and women overcome the shame and repression they have lived with for so long and ultimately become nurturing members of their families and community.
"I may be over 60 now, but I still cry when I think of the things I went through, but thank God we're opening the door to discussing them now," he said. "This is how we can build bridges with our young people. We were strong people once and we're going to get that strength back."
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Comments about this article From: Karihwakeron okwari@indig-ii-net.com
Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2006 2:18 PM
Subject: Chandler Report on cultural loss and suicide
Sekon:
The March 25 edition of the Toronto Star included an article on the issue of suicide in northern Ontario. While there was reference to the multi-generational impact of residential schools, there was no discussion of the impact of the loss of cultural continuity.
Michael Chandler, a professor from the University of British Columbia, made a presentation to a national policy forum hosted by the Assembly of First Nations in April, 2005 on the issue of First Nations youth and suicide. Mr. Chandler noted a strong correlation between cultural continuity and suicide prevention.
In fact, in the presentation Mr. Chandler notes that First Nations communities with strong cultural continuity have lower suicide rates than Canadians. Conversely, Mr. Chandler noted that where there has been a break in cultural continuity, there is the strong potential for greater incidence of suicide.
In view of Mr. Chandler's research, it seems that any discussion of suicide prevention must include an examination of culture in all its aspects including rituals, relationships, life cycle responsibilities, and the impact of cultural change.
Mr. Chandler has also noted that First Nations communities which have a sense of empowerment in key aspects of self-government/self-determination, also demonstrate a reduced level of suicide.
Clearly the Toronto Star article was deficient on this important matter which affects all of our people.