Five DFCHS student deaths while in Thunder Bay prompt call for inquest by NAN leaders
The need to recognize and understand the number of youth suicides in their communities after they get sent home from their failed high school experience along with the number of student deaths at Pelican Falls First Nations High School are additional issues that needs to be considered in any inquest.
NAN wants inquest into student deaths
Web Posted: 3/6/2008
The October 2007 death of a Poplar Hills First Nation teen, the latest in a string of deaths of Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School students since 2000, has Nishnawbe Aski Nation leaders asking for a coroner’s inquest to investigate the situation.
On Thursday NAN officials made the request through the media, saying the teens who arrive in communities like Thunder Bay aren’t prepared to make the adjustment to life in the city and don’t have the proper supports in place to do so.
Reggie Bushie is a prime example, said NAN Deputy Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler.
Bushie had never seen a city before leaving the isolated Poplar Hills First Nation in 2007 to attend DFCHS.
At 15, the quiet teenager had spent his entire life on the reserve. As he packed and readied to leave his family behind, Bushie’s parents, Berenson and Rhoda King, warned him to stay away from drugs and alcohol, and sent him on his way.
He would never return.
Several weeks after arriving in Thunder Bay, a city he told his mother over the telephone he both liked and disliked, Bushie went missing.
After an exhaustive search along the banks of the McIntyre River, his body was found in the murky water, making him the fifth student from the Native-only school to die since 2000.
It was then that Nishnawbe Aski Nation Deputy Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler realized they had a serious problem on their hands.
“I watched them when they were dragging the body out of the river. That is when it struck me that something was terribly wrong with our high school students here in Thunder Bay,” Fiddler said.
Fiddler said Bushie’s death is a sign of broader issues that need to be addressed when students from reservations are flown in to cities like Thunder Bay and expected to immediately adapt to their new surroundings.
Students are boarded locally, but the Deputy Grand Chief said more supervision and more activities are needed to keep the teens from squandering their time in malls and getting into trouble they might avoid -- or worse -- if a true parental figure was in place.
“We have to look at how we can build better support for our students, to build a safety net so we can minimize the risks for kids that come to school here,” Fiddler said. “To lose five students in such a short period of time should be alarming.”
The tragic set of circumstances leading to Thursday’s request began on Remembrance Day in 2000 with the death of Kasabonika Lake First Nation teen Jethro Anderson. Pikangikum’s Curran Strang died on Sept. 22, 2005. On Nov. 11, 2006 Paul Panacheese of Mishkeegogamang died and on Jan. 13, 2007 Robin Harper of Keewawywin First Nation passed away.
Pikangikum Chief David Owen was on hand for the announcement, and said he backs it 100 per cent.
“As a chief I still have questions, questions that have never really been answered,” Owen said, seated alongside Berenson and Rhoda King at a table set up in a conference room at a local hotel. “I feel that the family sitting here this morning has the same questions that I have.”
David Eden, regional supervising coroner for Northwestern Ontario, on Thursday said he had yet to receive an official request for an inquest into the deaths, but he acknowledged something needs to be done. What that something is, however, remains to be seen.
“It’s not a question of whether we should do something,” Eden said. “No matter what we do, we have to do something about the issue of high school students.”
To conduct an inquest, Eden said there has to be the likelihood of recommendations being made that can change the situation for the better, and if those solutions are already being bandied about, an inquest might not be the best solution.
“But if there’s a need for an inquest, we’ll get the inquest done,” Eden said.
That would suit Berenson King, a quiet man clad in a Boston Bruins hat and Adidas sweater, just fine.
“I’m trying to help the young people here,” he said.