‘Why was she left in a room for so long?’
Grieving parents demand inquiry after deaths of indigenous teens who were taken from community and placed in far-off group homes
Indigenous leaders are demanding an inquiry into the deaths of all indigenous children in care after the recent deaths of two northern Ontario teenage girls in provincial group homes last month.
Poplar Hill First Nation’s Amy Owen,13, took her own life on April 17 after she was taken out of her community near the Manitoba border and flown to live at a Prescott group home in eastern Ontario.
“I don’t know why the parents have to go through this. I always thought they would bury me first. I always prayed for her, hoped she wouldn’t do anything like this,” said her father Jeffrey Owen, 36.
“She would secretly call us. At the agency she was at, they forbade her to talk to us and they always delayed and delayed visits,” he said.
Fort Albany First Nation’s Courtney Scott, 16, died in a house fire at her group home on April 21in Orleans, Ont. She was also living away from home, removed at a young age along with her sisters and brothers.
“To me, I haven’t seen my granddaughter for so many years, she was so small the last time I saw her. She was maybe 12. She was happy when she saw her mom,” said her grandmother, Madeline Koostachin. The family has many unanswered questions about the fire and what happened to Courtney.
Another Poplar Hill girl, Kanina Sue Turtle,15, was taken into care and she died Oct. 29, 2016. Her family is still waiting for details on whether she committed suicide, said her father, Clarence Suggashie.
“The kids should be in the community here. They should keep them here so they don’t lose their culture, their language and we can see them,” Suggashie said.
Owen, Scott and Turtle are members of one of Nishnawbe Aski Nation’s 49 northern Ontario First Nation communities, and NAN has inherent jurisdiction over their wellbeing regardless of where they live, said NAN deputy grand chief Anna Betty Achneepineskum.
But provincial legislation and how services are delivered do not coincide with NAN’s jurisdiction over their kids, said Achneepineskum.
“It is very obvious the services, the resources and the policies governing those resources need to be fixed. Why should a child have to travel so far away to get basic services?” she asked. “We want an inquiry.” Achneepineskum added they have no official records that confirm the number of youth the NAN communities have lost while in care, but “the loss of two young lives in a matter of weeks must be examined.”
The province is trying hard to bring mental health services to kids in remote communities and they are working with their indigenous partners, including the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, on improving outcomes, said Rob McMahon, a ministry of children and youth spokesperson.
“Where needed, and often as a last resort, there are times when a young person travels outside of their home community to receive care. Children’s aid societies and indigenous child well-being societies supervise, monitor and track the placement of children in their care, including the children they place in residential resources outside their jurisdictions. However, there is no formal reporting by societies of these numbers at this time,” McMahon said.
Mental health services are difficult to access for NAN kids and First Nations-led child agencies struggle with both a severe lack of services and high suicide rates among the youth. It is difficult to access diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation services and delays makes treatment even more elusive.
Owen and Scott’s deaths follow the tragic suicides of two girls from Wa- pekeka First Nation, Jolynn Winter, 12, and her friend, Chantell Fox, 12, who took their lives last January after a plea for emergency mental health funding was refused for the remote community more than 500 kilometres north of Thunder Bay. Another four girls were flown out of Wapekeka for urgent mental health care. An anonymous private donor stepped in to pay $380,000 for the emergency care Health Canada had initially refused to provide.
Amy had no means of getting any mental health help closer to home so she had to be flown to Ottawa, completely cut off from her Anishinaabe culture, language and from everything she knew, said Achneepineksum. To visit, her parents would have to take a flight to Sioux Lookout, then to Thunder Bay and then to Ottawa, which is expensive.
“How can they expect a child to deal with their mental health issues when they are so disconnected with their families? Phone calls will not do,” she asked.
Owen said his daughter Amy tried to commit suicide when she was taken away from her family and placed in a Pickle Lake home. “It broke her spirit,” he said. “I wish I could have done something to prevent this. I wish I could drive there and just go pick her up. There were just so many things I wish I could have done.”
Amy was receiving one-on-one supervision, he said, because she was high risk for suicide. “I don’t know how she could have done this when she was supposed to have all this support. Why was she left in a room for so long? By the time they checked on her it was too late,” he said.
“If they were closer to home, we could visit. Amy wasn’t into hurting herself when she was with us. She was smart, outgoing, she liked to have fun. She loved her family, especially her little sister. She even looks like her,” Owen said. Amy had seven brothers and sisters ranging in age from 18 to 5.
When Irwin Elman, Ontario’s Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth, found out about Owen and Scott’s deaths, he insisted there be immediate changes concerning con- ditions in group homes and how far First Nations kids are taken outside of their communities for care. “Frankly, children should survive our attempts to protect them. That is a pretty low bar in terms of outcome but . . . we need to do something now,” Elman said.
Elman has asked the ministry better analyze the 19,000 serious occurrence reports they see every year and they should be used daily to identify homes at risk and visit them immediately to speak to the kids and assess the available supports.
“Immediately they should create a roster of clinicians, in my opinion, mental health professionals and trained child and youth workers who can be quickly deployed to homes in crisis to support young people and stabilize the homes,” he said.
“And then the ministry should determine the numbers and situations of First Nations children living in group homes in southern Ontario. And then they should immediate reach out to those kids through culturally appropriate means to see how they are,” he said.