Suicide prevention: a fundamental human right
"Seven years later, Canada is still the only G-7 country without a national suicide prevention strategy."
Geraldine Red Sky paced the kitchen of her mother's home on the Slate Falls First Nation, north of Sioux Lookout, ON. She picked up a length of orange twine curled on top of a cupboard.
“That's what Elvira used,” she said abruptly. The room full of Ojibway elders and youths fell silent.
It was the May long weekend in 2006. A year earlier, Roundhead's daughter Elvira had hanged herself in a house in Cat Lake, a nearby reserve. She was 19 years old.
The day before, Elvira’s older sister, Rachel, had died in Thunder Bay under suspicious circumstances.
On the day she died, Elvira missed the plane that would have taken her to be with her grieving family in Slate Falls.
Alone, she returned to her house and took her life.
On this grim anniversary of Elvira and Rachel's death, their extended family had gathered to remember them – as Indigenous families marked by suicide across Canada do every day.
I wrote that description of Rachel and Elvira’s deaths seven years ago, as part of a proposal to the Michener Foundation to research and report on successful suicide prevention practices in Indigenous communities across Canada.
Rachel and Elvira were my daughter Miranda’s half-sisters.
Their deaths were intimately linked to the toxic constellation that is driving suicide: Childhood abuse. Trauma. Mental illness. Poverty. Substance abuse. Racism.
I hoped the articles I wrote would help stimulate a discussion on the need for a national suicide prevention strategy.
Seven years later, Canada is still the only G-7 country without a national suicide prevention strategy.
Why?
We know suicide prevention strategies – properly resourced and implemented – work.
Quebec is the prime example.
Within 10 years of implementing a suicide prevention strategy in 1998, Quebec cut suicide rates among youth aged 15–19 years in half. Overall, suicide rates dropped by a third.
Unfortunately, the strategy did not reduce the rates among Quebec’s Indigenous populations, which had largely opted out of the strategy.
Suicide does not only affect Indigenous people. But it affects First Nations, Inuit and Métis people disproportionately.
Officially, we lose close to 4000 people to suicide every year in Canada. Researchers believe that number is vastly under-reported.
First Nations people are three times more likely to take their own lives than non-Indigenous people. Métis are twice as likely. Inuit are nine times more likely to kill themselves.
In Nunatsiavut, northern Labrador, suicide rates are 25 times the national average.
Among young Inuit men in Nunavut, rates rise to as high as 40 times those of their non-Inuit counterparts.
In Saskatchewan, First Nations’ girls between 10 and 19 are taking their lives at 30 times the rate of non-Indigenous girls in the same age range.
"Suicide is preventable. We need a coordinated, well-funded, culturally appropriate strategy and implementation plan."
Seven years later, Indigenous families are still mourning:
For six girls aged 10 to 14 who killed themselves in 2016 in La Ronge, Stanley Mission, Deschambault Lake and Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation in Saskatchewan;
For Jenera Roundsky, Jolynn Winter, and Chantell Fox, three 12-year-old girls who died by suicide in 2017 in Wapekeka, a remote First Nation north of Thunder Bay;
For 11 young people who took their lives in 2018 in Puvirnituq, a community of just 1800 people in the northern Quebec region of Nunavik.
Imagine a 10-year-old child so desperate to escape her pain that she sees no other way to end it.
Indigenous families are still mourning.
For missing and murdered sisters, daughters, mothers – and for fathers and brothers.
For parents and siblings gripped in addictions fuelled by trauma.
For children removed from their families and communities and stuck in limbo in the child welfare system.
Seven years later, we have heard the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
We have witnessed the anguish of those testifying at the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Many Canadians have awoken to the history of colonialism, residential schools, forced relocations, trauma, high rates of childhood sexual abuse, poverty and systemic racism that is the legacy First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples bear.
Our policies, our laws, and our everyday relationships have not yet caught up to this growing awareness.
We have not implemented all the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations.
We have not ratified the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. NDP MP Romeo Saganash’s private member’s bill to harmonize federal laws with the Declaration died on the order paper in June after the Conservatives opposed it in the Senate.
We have not abolished or significantly amended the Indian Act.
We remain paralyzed by the perceived enormity of the problems, instead of working as a country to solve them.
On suicide, we are, perhaps, a little closer to acting – but our response is still reactive and fragmented.
Nunavut has created a suicide prevention strategy and a $35-million action plan, which includes $16 million for community wellness programs.
The national Inuit political organization, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), released a suicide prevention strategy in 2016. The strategy covers all four Inuit regions in Canada (Nunavik in Quebec, Nunavut, Nunatsiavut in Labrador, and Inuvialuit in the Northwest Territories.)
Saskatchewan First Nations released their own suicide prevention strategy last year, through the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations.
In February, the House of Commons passed a motion calling on the federal government to establish a national suicide prevention action plan, including culturally appropriate, community-based suicide prevention programs for Inuit, First Nations, and Métis peoples, and a national public health monitoring program for suicide prevention.
All parties supported the motion. As yet, no comprehensive strategy or action plan.
After an initial $9-million investment, the federal government has committed $5 million per year to the ITK strategy, beginning this year for the next 10 years. A significant gesture, but one that falls short of the gaping need.
Neither the federal nor provincial government has invested in the Saskatchewan plan.
Suicide is preventable. We need a coordinated, well-funded, culturally appropriate strategy and implementation plan.
It’s a matter of fundamental human rights.
Before more families – Indigenous and non-Indigenous – have to mourn.
LAURA EGGERTSON is a freelance journalist in Wolfville, NS. She received a Michener-Deacon fellowship in public policy journalism to investigate suicide by Indigenous youth. She is the mother and grandmother of First Nations’ women and girls.
For suicide prevention and support, please call 1-833-456-4566