Another State of Emergency in a First Nation Community

The Attawapiskat First Nation on remote James Bay has declared a state of emergency because they are overwhelmed by the number of suicides and attempted suicides that have occurred during the past year. On this past Saturday evening alone, there were 11 attempts. In the month of March there were a total of 28 attempts. All of this in a community of approximately 2,000 people (CBC). What few health services there are - were long ago over-whelmed. Clearly the community is struggling just to stay alive. To date there has been no clear answer as to what to do.

The causes of such breakdown in the community are well documented. The Canadian government's inability/unwillingness to deal with some basic land rights, its refusal to fund schools at the same level as schools in the south and the ever present long term effects of residential schools and other tools of cultural genocide have all had an impact of the mental health of many residents of First Nation communities. It is far past the time that we need to accept the historical consequences of our collective action or inaction, accept that we have a moral if not legal responsibility to address those issues and to start to look for solutions.

The demand from the Attawapiskat First Nation is that they need more mental health workers immediately. The federal and Ontario health ministries have responded by sending skilled mental health practitioners. However one has to wonder who is being sent in and why were they not there already? I would think that at the very least, a minimum requirement of such workers would be verbal fluency in the variation of Cree used by the members of this community. I suspect that there are relatively few individuals outside of this general area who can claim such skills. A second requirement would be a degree of understanding of the culture of the community or at least of communities such as this one. A well intentioned, Cree speaking individual from southern Ontario may lack some of the basic awareness needed to provide the necessary level of support and understanding. A final qualification would have to be experience and education. In spite of my over 30 years of experience in social services, my community college diploma that ideally prepared me to work with troubled youth, two university degrees and countless workshop hours on a range of topics including suicide prevention - I would be profoundly unqualified to offer any assistance to the people of the  Attawapiskat First Nation.  I taught hundreds of students at a community college - all of who took a mandatory half-semester length course on issues related to aboriginal peoples. I can't think of one of those students who would have the above set of skills needed to work effectively in communities such as Attawapiskat . Our inability/unwillingness to train people to work in their home communities must surely be one of our greatest sins.

It is tempting to just assume that the problem is money - that all that we have to do is to throw more money at the community and their problems will go away. Clearly, while money is needed for better education, better health care and better housing, money will not "fix" the problems. The level of despair is so high that one could easily become so over-whelmed by the depth of the problem and the apparent complexities, that one would just give up. In fact that is the conclusion that some of those who have attempted suicide have made.

But within some of the First Nation communities across Canada, there are solutions. In a 189 page report titled Suicide Among Aboriginal People in Canada prepared for The Aboriginal Healing Foundation in 2007(report) , the authors discuss that " some Aboriginal communities or bands have suicide rates comparable to or even lower than the general population (e.g. the Cree in Quebec)" (p18). The authors go on to note however,  that in most geographical areas of the country aboriginal suicide rates are generally higher than non-aboriginal rates. None-the-less it is clear that some First Nation communities, in some areas of the country, some of who speak the same language and have a very similar history of interactions with the Canadian government do not have the same horrendous pattern of suicide and self destruction. I have argued before that it is time that we invest some money in understanding what those communities are doing. Are there lessons that we all can be taught? Can those efforts be duplicated in communities that are struggling?

It is somehow more "sexy" to talk about the failure of the Canadian government and the resultant chaos and despair in our First Nation communities than it is to talk about what appears to be working. It is so much easier to blame our parents, the politicians or anyone else for the disaster that is our public policy on supporting First Nation communities than to get down to business and to facilitate the growth of communities that work. It is so much easier just to say it is a failure of funding and then move on to the next cause. Clearly in the very short term money and other resources need to be poured into communities such as Attawapiskat. But we cannot keep on making the same mistake again and again and again of assuming that the experts have the one answer. We need to learn from the communities that are successful.

I don't understand why we don't.