LONG-TERM VIEW NEEDED
There’s a well-founded sense of horror when we hear that a child as young as age 10 was among the four children who sadly have killed themselves within days of each other in northern Saskatchewan.
As the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations declares that the communities of Deschambault Lake, Stanley Mission and La Ronge are facing “a state of crisis” with the shocking loss of these promising young lives, the federal and provincial governments have rushed to respond by sending in teams of mental health professionals and other supports.
Whether it’s in northern Saskatchewan, remote Manitoba or isolated communities such as Attawapiskat in Ontario, suicide among young aboriginal people is reaching epidemic levels, at rates several times higher than among other Canadian youth. The official response to this month’s tragedy in Saskatchewan is typical, with outsiders rushing in for a few weeks or even a few months to offer counselling and other supports to the traumatized communities.
While there’s little doubt that the immediate help is welcome and necessary to help children and adults alike cope with unspeakable grief, and to mitigate further harm, surely this cycle of revolving short-term solutions cannot and should not continue in Canada.
Cree Nation Chief Peter Beatty is absolutely right when he says, “In the long-term, we need to develop a strategy that incorporates an inclusive and holistic approach to addressing these terrible tragedies.”
As University of Saskatchewan psychiatry professor Caroline Tait noted after the horrific shootings in La Loche, “The last thing we want is for people to flood into this community and try to tell the community what they should do next.”
A co-leader of the First Peoples-First Person Indigenous Hub, a network that studies mental health issues in aboriginal communities, Prof. Tait stresses the need to work with First Nations and notes, “They have huge amounts of knowledge about supporting youth.”
Whether it’s the work done by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, which came out with recommendations two decades ago, or it’s the recent calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the need to address mental health needs of First Nations communities by putting in place long-term supports has got short shrift.
The work done by organizations such as the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, which was seeing results from its community-based healing initiatives, came to an end when federal funding was axed in 2010. As Prof. Tait notes, the four-year political cycle is ill-suited to assess the effectiveness of such long-term programs.
Until governments take the long view, all we can do is express horror and rush in with shortterm help when tragedy hits.