Feds pledge $2.5M to fight First Nations’ suicide crisis
Indigenous leaders say money to help youths ‘good start’ but is not enough
SASKATOON The federal government will invest $2.5 million toward preventing youth suicides on Saskatchewan First Nations, but chiefs say more dedicated funding is needed to address the long-standing public health struggles with suicide in their communities.
Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller announced the funding Thursday in the wake of a wave of suicides in communities across the province, including the death of a 10-year old girl on Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation last month.
Ochapowace First Nation Chief Margaret Bear said her community has lost four men to suicide since Sept. 14, prompting it to declare a suicide crisis.
“They need to be burying us, not the other way around,” Bear said in an emotional statement. “They are going too soon.”
The $2.5 million will support the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations’ suicide prevention strategy over the next two years, funding evidence-based and culturally sensitive strategies to prevent suicide in the province’s 74 First Nations.
It comes in addition to the $32 million spent by Indigenous Services Canada on mental health services and supports for First Nations children and youth in Saskatchewan this year.
The new funding “isn’t enough,” Miller acknowledged. “We know that we need a suicide prevention strategy and mental health and healing strategies that go beyond what is currently in place.”
First Nations men aged 15 to 24 living on reserves in Canada are more than six times more likely to die by suicide than their non-indigenous counterparts, according to a Statistics Canada study done between 2011 and 2016.
Gathered chiefs agreed the new funding was a “good start,” but said it’s not enough to address the roots of intergenerational trauma.
“There should be no dollar figure on the human life,” Fond du Lac Denesuline First Nation Chief Louie Mercredi said. “We are tired of Band-aid solutions for our people. We need long-term solutions.”
Mercredi and FSIN Chief Bobby Cameron are calling for a 20-year capital investment plan to prevent suicides.
“That’s going to be a big amount, because our children are the fastest-growing demographic (in the country),” Cameron said.
Mercredi said the provincial government should start by matching the federal government’s investment.
Minister for Rural and Remote Health Warren Kaeding said health services on reserves are a federal responsibility and highlighted provincial investment in projects like Roots of Hope, a suicide prevention project.
According to a recent auditor’s report, suicide rates in Saskatchewan’s northwest were 50 per cent higher than the provincial average in 2018 and more than three times the national average. The same report found health care workers in the region did not have adequate suicide training. The Opposition NDP has called for a provincial suicide strategy, which mental health and addictions critic Danielle Chartier said would help co-ordinate intergovernmental efforts and improve data collection about populations at risk.
“A suicide prevention strategy ties everybody together. It identifies the gaps,” Chartier said.
The province’s 10 Year Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan, which was unveiled five years ago, identified provincial partnerships with First Nations and Métis organizations as one of its system goals.
Kaeding acknowledged the province “had to do better” on suicide prevention but argued the solution is not “throwing money at the problem,” though he said he would welcome additional federal funding. He said preventing suicide is ultimately a matter of community capacity.
“Governments come and go. They will leave, but it’s the community that has to deal with this,” Kaeding said.
Cameron said communities are also concerned by an upcoming change in federal child welfare services, which would transfer jurisdiction of services to Indigenous communities in just two weeks — a transition that is currently unfunded.
“There’s a lot of unanswered questions and it’s raising a lot of red flags,” Cameron said.