FENTANYL’S ORPHANS
A ruthless drug crisis, which only now appears to be slowing, has brought death and heartache to the families of the Blood reserve in southern Alberta. Dozens of children have been affected by their parents’ often fatal addiction to fentanyl.
Inside a white bungalow in a remote corner of southern Alberta, a grandmother sits on a makeshift bed in her living room, her hands cupped on her lap, a pair of glasses resting on her nose. Her two-bedroom home has become a refuge for generations of her family reeling from a drug crisis.
Hanging on the wall behind Tracy are photographs of five grandchildren, the last images their mother took before she overdosed and died. The youngest was just a year old, still breastfeeding, the eldest 13, when they were uprooted from their family home on the Blood reserve in late 2014. Two of them now live with their grandmother fulltime, though she hopes to bring them all under one roof.
“The baby, now she calls me mom,” Tracy says. “She’s never going to know her mom.”
The children are among the youngest victims of an epidemic that has spread across this rural community and this province. Melissa, their mother who had stayed at home to raise them, was 30 when she died from an overdose on fentanyl, a drug linked to more than 20 deaths on the reserve.
The five children were placed in the care of their family, who cannot be identified by their real names, to protect the identities of the children. A great aunt is caring for two, while a third, who was born to a different father, trades time between her dad’s and grandmother’s homes.
About 35 children on the Blood reserve have come to the attention of the band’s child protection agency since the fentanyl crisis began in the summer of 2014. It’s unclear how many of them were directly affected by the crisis; the files include parent custody agreements. What is clear is the fentanyl crisis has brought profound pain to a vulnerable group of victims, and the effects may be felt for many years to come.
For those who have lost parents to overdoses, there are fears the trauma they have experienced, if left untreated, will haunt them in adulthood. And those who witnessed drug abuse in their home may come to think the behaviour is normal, authorities worry.
There are calls among community leaders to make concerted efforts to help children and youths coping with trauma.
And there are efforts underway to steer young people away from lifestyles that lead to violence and tragedy.
It all stems from an unfolding fentanyl crisis that has claimed nearly 500 casualties across Alberta since 2012. Fentanyl, a highly addictive drug that can be lethal in small doses, has exploded in the province’s illicit drug trade.
The Blood Tribe was the first community in the province to publicly sound the alarm, and it was the first to respond. The band has managed to slow the pace of deaths after dispensing life-saving medicine that reverses the effects of overdoses, but abuse remains widespread.
Tracy’s small home is crowded now with 13 loved ones from three generations whose lives are forever changed by fentanyl, widely known on the reserve by its street name, Oxy80s. She says three of her four surviving children were addicted, though they are now receiving treatment.
“I’m scared they’ll relapse. And I’m scared to get another call that I lost another child,” Tracy says.
“I’m not going to lose another child. I’ll do whatever it takes to help them. “And it really hurts.” She buries her face in her hands as tears stream from her eyes. Her sister, who is sitting nearby, walks over and places a piece of sage in her hands and whispers “Ikaakiimaat,” a Blackfoot word that means to try hard.
The sage was taken from a crown worn at a Sundance ceremony and was infused with prayers, which Tracy is meant to draw strength from.
“I know I’ll never replace their mom and dad,” she says, “but at least (I’m) trying what she did for them; try to keep that going.”
From her office in the Blood Tribe police station, Chancy Black Water reviews data on prevalent crimes on the reserve and develops programs to divert youth away from them. Domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and even gangs have been sources of concern.
Black Water, a crime prevention officer, teaches elementary school students about healthy relationships. She works in a support group for girls to help them build self-esteem. And, among other programs, she helps run a pilot project with the YWCA to counsel youth who have witnessed domestic violence and other trauma at home.
A civilian member of the police service, Black Water says young people are too often saddled with overwhelming pressures and grief.
“From residential school, we already lost how to be parents and how to continue that parent role ... and to me, it seems this drug is just continuing that,” she says.
“They’re having to grow up and mature at like nine years old, hav- ing to watch their seven-year-old, six-year-old siblings. To me, that’s what’s so hard. Our children aren’t allowed to be children because they’re forced to grow up and they’re forced to be the adults.”
Last year, police hired a school resource officer to mentor middle and high school students, and to steer them away from crime. Chief Lee Boyd felt compelled to fill the vacant position to provide youth with alternatives to gang and drug lifestyles while crafting a positive image of police.
“Our goal (to achieve this) is through direct engagement with the youth and through friendship ... without condemning the other people in their lives that maybe aren’t positive role models,” Boyd says. “We don’t want to alienate them from family and friends. We want to add on to their relation- ships, rather than detract from them.”
At Kainai High School, Const. Brice Iron Shirt walks the halls with visiting patrol officers in tow. Dressed in formal police uniform, he cuts a towering figure and speaks in a deep, baritone voice. Building trust with students who aren’t used to having police around has been difficult, he says, but his efforts have been paying off.
“Say they’re (wanted) on a warrant or say they’re not sure what’s going on with something that they’re dealing with in court; they learned to come to me to work it out with them,” Iron Shirt says.
A day earlier, a student had been wanted by police for missing a court date; instead of forcing the student into the negative experience of arresting him, Iron Shirt arranged a new court appearance.
Online bullying is another big part of the job. He mediates between students, usually after conflicts on Facebook, and brings in school counsellors and parents when necessary.
Marijuana use is a problem among high school students, though Iron Shirt has not come across students taking fentanyl. Twice since he started the job in October he has been alerted that fentanyl was being used inside a student’s home, and the student hadn’t been showing up for school. He notified child protection authorities. “I can’t just let that go.”
Three years ago, Kainai High School made headlines when it reversed declining attendance rates and dramatically improved academic performance. Annette BruisedHead, the school principal who directed the changes, says teachers and staff have attempted to maintain these successes while providing a sanctuary from hardships in the outside world.
“It may sound that I’m using rose-coloured glasses but we really don’t see the fentanyl crisis just coming here, because our students understand this is a place of safety and it’s a place of just being adolescents,” BruisedHead says.
“They don’t have to be the adults here. They can come here and be themselves. They don’t have to take care of family. They don’t have to worry about fighting. They don’t even have to worry about food. Some of those basic necessities are being provided here.”
At the centre of the school is a classroom with a teepee fashioned from steel and canvas surrounding amphitheatre-style seating. On glass walls overlooking a hallway, Grade 9 students post sticky notes with thoughts scribbled on them. Many of them acknowledge the importance of education. Several say they need to improve their grades. Other messages are typical teenage musings, though some signal inner turmoil.
One message reads: “My goal for the week is to stay sober.”
The Blood Tribe’s fentanyl crisis emerged in the late summer of 2014, when doctors noticed a big spike in overdoses, sometimes two or three in a shift. As the crisis took hold, paramedics responded to the scene of six to 10 overdoses a month, according to Oscar Cotton, director of emergency services on the reserve.
After the Blood Tribe began providing users with the life-saving antidote naloxone in March 2015, the number of overdoses began to decline. A fentanyl overdose cuts off oxygen to the brain and heart, killing the user in minutes. Naloxone reverses these effects long enough for users to seek medical help.
Paramedics responded to four confirmed overdoses in May, according to Cotton, whose estimates do not always provide a full snapshot of cases because some overdoses were coded cardiac arrest. Still, he says the downward trend continued into the summer months. There was a spike over the Christmas season, however, with 10 or 11 overdoses reported in each of December and January, with a drop to four in February.
I’m scared they’ll relapse. And I’m scared to get another call that I’ve lost another child. I’ll do whatever it takes to help them. Tracy, whose daughter died of a fentanyl overdose
Health, police and tribal government authorities have been meeting regularly to plot their response to the epidemic. They set up a crisis line and organized rides for people seeking treatment in Calgary.
Two doctors now prescribe suboxone, a replacement drug similar to methadone that satisfies cravings but does not produce euphoria, allowing users to return to a normal life instead of chasing their next fix.
About 200 band members are taking suboxone; roughly 170 of them are on it consistently, says Dr. Esther Tailfeathers, who has been heavily involved in the crisis response.
Police assigned three officers to deal directly with drug and organized crime investigations. In one recent case, 29-year-old Kyle Mitchell Saddleback was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to trafficking fentanyl and cocaine.
In another high-profile case, Bobby Weasel Head, a 41-year-old Blood Tribe member, will stand trial for a rare manslaughter charge in connection with the overdose deaths of Roxanne Blood and Timothy Eagle Speaker.
The couple left behind four children.
During a meeting of health, police and tribal government officials, Tailfeathers says in her medical practice she has treated children coping with the trauma of witnessing overdoses or losing their parents.
She has also found that fentanyl users are increasingly young, with reports of teenagers attempting suicide because they feel hopeless in their addiction.
“Let’s focus on the trauma that youth have had, and children,” Tailfeathers tells the group, calling for a renewed strategy on youth.
“Let’s focus on figuring out in school or out of school or where they’re at, how they can be helped and how we can reach out to them. Most of the reaching out we have done is to adults.”
In the living room of her family home, a 17-year-old girl sits nervously on a coach while slipping a cigarette between her fingers before lighting it. Almost a year ago, she was panhandling and stealing. Shunned by her family, she was hooked on fentanyl, desperate for her next fix to soothe excruciating withdrawal symptoms.
She overdosed twice before she got out of that life. She lost everything. She hit rock bottom. Throughout her recovery, she realized that while the hell of withdrawal kept her addicted, she was drawn to drugs because of something far more profound.
“Addiction is passed down to our people. It’s not something that we just wake up and say, ‘ We’re going to do drugs, we’re going to be addicted to this,’” says the girl, who declined to have her name published.
“It’s more like it’s put upon us. We see our parents do it. If you see someone you love doing this you’re obviously going to try it and get into it...
“I was born into it. That’s all I knew and that’s all that was around me. And it’s everywhere.”
The girl’s dad was among the last generation of students who attended residential school on the reserve. His mother was taken from home when she was six and didn’t know a word of English before she was raised by nuns and priests. His father has a similar story.
“My parents didn’t know how to raise kids,” the girl’s dad says. “That’s the abuse we went through.”
The dad enjoyed early success in life. He rose to prominence on the reserve as a boxer and professional saddle bronc rider, but his career came to a grinding halt after he was injured in rodeos and car accidents. He started taking painkillers for the injuries, but his use escalated to addiction, which lasted for about 12 years.
“I suffered a lot of injuries and beyond that the mental stresses of life out here; I think that’s where I think I failed my kids,” he says. “And then when I found out she was using, I was like literally scared to get a phone call. It’s almost like I couldn’t blame her.”
The father and daughter are both in recovery now. He takes suboxone; her treatment lasted three months after she quit fentanyl in October. But the 17-year-old continues to see problems on the reserve: at least 10 people she knows are still addicted.
Inspired by her experiences of being lost in the throes of addiction, she plans to upgrade her credits at high school and enrol in university to become an addictions counsellor.
“Why keep carrying on what your grandparents, what your parents, brought down to you? Why not change?” she says.
“Why not want to be the generation that’s going to say, ‘Screw this drug; we’re going to be 10 times better than what we’re made out to be.’”
At her two-bedroom bungalow, Tracy says she sometimes becomes overcome with anger at her daughter for leaving behind five children. “I’ll stand there looking at her picture and get so mad because of what the kids are going through,” she says.
“She’s gone, and I have to keep trying.”
Working long hours to pay the bills, she receives help from family to take the children shopping. Her sisters recently bought her sevenyear-old granddaughter a fancy dress for dancing at powwows.
Tracy says her daughter was a “scaredy cat” growing up because she was so petite, while her brothers and sisters were much bigger. She got married when she was 16, and she raised her kids well, Tracy says.
“She got them everything they needed. The kids were going to school; everything was good,” Tracy says, remembering Christmas celebrations, birthday parties and Easter egg hunts at her house.
“Everything just fell when they got into the pills, the fentanyl, or whatever you call it. Everything fell apart.”
People had told Tracy her daughter was using drugs months before she died, but Tracy believed Melissa when she denied it.
Even after the 30-year-old’s body was discovered in a nearby home, her mother refused to believe she had overdosed.
“The pain’s never going to go away, but (I’m) just going to have to keep trying,” she says.
“I had a bad day yesterday and I’m going to have a bad day today because of this, when I talk about it, but it’s helped because I never did talk about it...
“It’s really hard living like this. It’s the kids that really suffer. Once a happy house, a family, they did everything together, and then it’s just gone.
They’re wondering, what’s going on?
“There’s a lot that are going through that.”