An Innu community reaches out to share its stories
The weather had already started to turn when Nadeige Guanish set out for the pines at the edge of town.
Cold gusts of wind came howling off the Gulf of St. Lawrence, carrying the smell of salt water into the foothills that overlook Uashat. Soon, a heavy snow would batter the coast and signal the beginning of another long, sub- Arctic winter in Innu territory.
Nadeige walked past the highway and into the woods, carrying her cellphone and a length of rope. She took a moment to send one last text message to a friend. There were no words, just the picture of a hand waving goodbye.
Only Nadeige knows why she chose to die in this lonely place. The 18- year- old had been assaulted in these woods on her way home from a party.
She may have sought the cover of the pines to ensure it would be a police officer, and not one of her nine siblings, who would discover her body.
Nadeige died on Oct. 31, 2015, next to the road that links Uashat and Maliotenam, sister communities near Sept- Îles.
Hers was the fifth suicide on the Innu territory in nine months.
Of those people who took their lives last year, Nadeige was the youngest. Her death was perhaps the most difficult for the community to accept.
She was, by all accounts, an affectionate and caring person. Nadeige plastered her Facebook page with images of her infant daughter, Ilyana, over captions like, “The best thing that ever happened to me.”
But friends and family say she seemed incapable of loving herself.
Since the Uashat suicides, at least two other indigenous communities in this country have struggled with similar crises — Kuujjuaq, in northern Quebec, and the Cross Lake First Nation in Manitoba.
Last year, police in Uashat ( pronounced “wah- shat”) and Maliotenam responded to 16 suicide attempts and 122 incidents in which people needed urgent psychological counselling.
The community, however, refuses to be defined by this crisis.
Despite great pain, residents invited three Montreal Gazette journalists to visit last December. They wanted to share their struggles, but also the reasons they’re hopeful for the future. These are some of their stories.