Donor gives $380K to help Wapekeka
Private citizen steps in where Health Canada wouldn’t to help stem suicide crisis
A private donor, moved by the suicides of two 12-year-old girls in remote Wapekeka First Nation, will fund the $380,000 that Health Canada refused to give them for youth mental health workers.
Wapekeka Chief Brennan Sainnawap wrote Health Canada last July, begging for funding as they feared a youth suicide pact in the community but the federal department refused.
The donor, who contacted Wapekeka last week, is a private citizen who wishes to remain anonymous. The donor has already wired $30,000 to Wapekeka to help pay for emergency mental health crisis team needs and the rest of the money will follow later this week to reinstate the youth mental health program.
Since the deaths of Jolynn Winter on Jan. 8 and her friend Chantell Fox, who followed Winter two days later, another four girls were medevaced out of the community and are still receiving treatment. Another 26 students have been classified as “high risk” for suicide and are being watched.
Both Sainnawap and Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler, who has spearheaded the call for a national suicide strategy in the wake of the girls’ deaths, are overwhelmed and grateful to the anonymous donor.
“We are overwhelmed with this act of generosity and cannot express how grateful we are that this donor is stepping in to help our people. Our community is in crisis and there is an urgent need to get this program back in place as soon as possible,” said Sainnawap in a statement.
Chantell Fox was Sainnawap’s granddaughter. He wrote the letter to Health Canada in July 2016, asking for mental health supports for their youth. The community said they were told Health Canada couldn’t fund the request because it came at an awkward time in their budget cycle.
“Words cannot express how grateful we are that this donor has committed to helping our young people with their mental health struggles. We are extremely disappointed that despite the loss of two of our youth we have never received a commitment from Health Canada or the Government of Canada to get this program back in our community.”
Wapekeka is a community of nearly 400 people, 600 kilometres north of Thunder Bay. The First Nation has struggled with a suicide crisis before and with sexual abuse issues. Wapekeka was one of the remote indigenous communities targeted by convicted pedophile Ralph Rowe in the 1970s and 1980s. Rowe, a former Anglican Church minister, used to fly into First Nations and take boys camping. It is estimated his victims number in the hundreds.
The Anglican Church announced last Friday it would nationally apologize to Rowe’s victims.
Since the recent suicides, NAN, provincial and federal authorities have swooped in to try and respond to the crisis, but indigenous leaders maintain a national mental health strategy is urgently needed to stop the youth suicide epidemic in many First Nations. Fly-in squad response teams are not an answer to sustained, national funding, Fiddler said.
The anonymous donation does not replace the need for Ottawa and the province to do their part and properly fund indigenous mental health and health care, he said.
“We will still go after both the Feds and the province to support our communities,” Fiddler said and added that they fully “respect the donor’s wish to remain anonymous, but I would like to express our appreciation for this tremendous response to a community in crisis.”
The fact remains that two young children died because Ottawa cut funding to programs, said New Democratic Party MP Charlie Angus, whose riding, Timmins—James Bay, has faced a suicide crisis for decades.
“They were warned children could die. Last week (at an Ottawa press conference), they were warned more children could be at risk and they have done nothing. Is this how we celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday?” Angus asked.
“This is about political will. The prime minister could state this (a national suicide strategy) is a policy in our country and make sure the funds are there,” Angus added.
Instead, they are defending themselves against Cindy Blackstock and the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society in a decade-long human rights tribunal case about Canada’s failure to adequately fund services for indigenous kids. Thursday is the one-year anniversary of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling that found the Canadian government is discriminating against 163,000 First Nations kids by not providing equitable child welfare services that other Canadian children receive.
“This government is willing to spend half a million dollars on lawyers to fight Cindy Blackstock to deny services to children and they won’t give money to help a community to stop children from dying” Angus added.