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Aboriginal youth suicides cascading, study finds

THUNDER BAY -- Suicide among Aboriginal youth in Northern Ontario is three times higher than it was 20 years ago.
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Neskantaga First Nation Chief Wayne Moonias' community is still stabilizing from a 2013 State of Emergency due to youth suicide. A newly published paper suggests Aboriginal youth suicide is concentrating, and may be contagious. (File Photo, tbnewswatch.com)

THUNDER BAY -- Suicide among Aboriginal youth in Northern Ontario is three times higher than it was 20 years ago.

Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health postdoctoral fellow, Gerald McKinley is publishing new a paper in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, reporting 31 Aboriginal people committed suicide in Ontario in 2013, compared to 11 in 1991.  

Youth under 25 years of age represent nearly half of the 468 suicides in Ontario's Aboriginal population over that time.

Pikangikum First Nation accounts for 23.5 per cent of suicides among Ontarios Aboriginal people. In the aftermath of 16 youth suicides in the community between 2006 and 2008, a Chief Coroner's report called for a national suicide prevention strategy in 2011.

Six Pikangikum youth took their lives over that summer and the First Nation declared a State of Emergency prior to the report's release.

No national strategy has emerged.

McKinley's research points out Health Canada cites the Aboriginal youth suicide rate as up to seven times higher than that of non-Aboriginal youth. Ontario, however, is among the few provinces that keep Aboriginal-specific rates per 100,000 people.

McKinley identifies that lack of recordkeeping as a barrier to creating a national strategy.  

Most poignantly, McKinley suggests suicide may be contagious. Over the last decade, 42 per cent of Ontario's Aboriginal youth suicides have occurred in just seven communities.      

"We talk about things like historical trauma as if it's events that have happened in the past," he says in the journal.

"But the number of suicide completions (is) increasing steadily, decade over decade over decade. What's happening (now) is new communities are joining in." 

NESKANTAGA FIRST NATION 

Neskantaga Chief Wayne Moonias was a councillor in April of 2013 when his First Nation declared a State of Emergency over youth suicide. Seven of the Far North community's 300 members had taken their lives in only a year. 

"We had just buried one youth and shortly after, when we were still at the graveyard site, another committed suicide in Thunder Bay," he says. 

"We're such a tight-knit community that when a tragedy like that happens, it impacts everyone in our community."

Even the program workers providing support were impacted personally. Some were counselling their extended family.

Under the State of Emergency, Neskantaga was able to develop a suboxone treatment centre and attract resources from external agencies.

"Now today, you see people on those programs and they've become positive, contributing members of our community," Moonias explains.

"That's some of the success stories we've seen. On the other side of the coin, there's struggles to deal with in our community." 

Neskantaga has been under a boil-water advisory for 20 years. Its half-constructed shell of an arena stands incomplete.  Moonias says poor basic infrastructure, including housing and mold issues, add to the struggle his members face to remain positive. 

"We're an isolated community and it's important that our people can use the lands and resources to cope with these issues they're dealing with, personally or the grieving -- the land seems to provide that connection, that healing." 

"It has to be a balanced approach. There has to be resources to be able to do those things and the community has to come together to deal with those issues, head-on."

OJIBWAYS OF ONIGAMING FIRST NATION 

When the Idle No More movement was at its peak in December of 2012, Onigaming First Nation youth were among the most engaged in the Treaty 3 territory.

Two years later, three young adults took their own lives outside of the community, followed by two on-reserve youth suicides. Local service workers became overwhelmed as suicide attempts cascaded to between two and five each day.

The community declared a State of Emergency in October of 2014.

"The accumulated grief really pushed coping skills to the max in terms of how people were dealing with grief and loss," recalls Chief Kathy Kishiqueb.

"It was also impacting our services at the community level because those service providers were actually directly involved in their own grief and loss."

The pace of the crisis sustained itself until December.

The leadership reached out to Turtle Concepts, a First Nations motivational group that targets youth. It held Christmas and cultural events. Two staff were hired to develop plans on youth engagement, as well as increasing recreation and craft activities.   

"Our focus really was to keep our youth and our members busy or to bring them opportunities and events," Kishiqueb says. 

"The difficulty was getting them to come out and participate because some people were trying to cope in their own way, by isolating themselves. But we were trying to bring opportunities to the people to reach that level of hope within the community."

Kishiqueb believes Onigaming is taking steps toward stabilization but any loss seems to trigger and re-open wounds that have yet to heal.

Red Cross workers intend to visit the community in mid-July to identify gaps between the First Nation's current infrastructure and the community's vision for its future. Kishiqueb feels the government needs to commit to a broader strategy.       

"There are more communities now working through crises and trying to declare States of Emergency and I think the government needs to really recognize that and work together with First Nations to make plans in terms of how they're going to address this in a meaningful and sustainable way, not just band-aid solutions."  

 

 





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