My Cree friend didn’t know then what she knows now, that this sadness I speak of, this hurting, isn’t only isolated in Kash. This hurting has spread across the northern reserves and heavily Indian communities of Canada. It spreads more easily than H1N1, and it’s been infecting northern communities for many years. It’s deadlier than any epidemic since the smallpox and tuberculosis eras.
The oldest son of one of my dearest friends in the world, he’s made something of himself. He’s a young Moose Cree man with a brand-new wife and a brand-new career as an OPP officer. On my last visit to Moosonee, he told me something that continues to devastate me, that sounds unbelievable it is so brutal. Over a six-month period recently, there were at least 100 suicide attempts among teens in Moosonee, and many others in the neighbouring reserve of Moose Factory. At last count, eight youths in Moosonee have been “successful.” They’ve hanged themselves in closets, sometimes in trees behind the high school. It appears a death cult is taking root. More than 100 attempts. Eight suicides. In a community of 2,500. Yes, it appears to be a death cult.
If this statistic darkened non-Indian towns across, say, British Columbia or Manitoba or Prince Edward Island, if this epidemic struck one of our communities, it would be national news, the media frenzy so saturated that Canadians would suffer empathy burnout within months. My quick Google search—suicide rates on Canadian reserves—pulls 36,000 results in 0.28 seconds. Within minutes, I can learn that since at least the year 2000, many experts have declared that the northern reserves of our country are the suicide capitals of the world. Statistics on these pages, I think, quickly stun then numb us. And the reasons why our Aboriginal youth are strangling themselves in closets, are shooting themselves in the head, are drowning themselves in icy rivers? A few more minutes of keyboard tapping on Google and it becomes so obvious: miserable socio-economic conditions, psycho-biological tendencies, the post-traumatic stress of a culture’s destruction.
And what can even begin to stem the tide of brutal loss? The one and only family services centre in Moosonee, Payukotayno, which serves all of the 14,000 Cree of the Ontario side of James Bay, almost had to close its doors in December 2009, not long after my good friend’s children’s suicides. That was due to a severe lack of government funding. It’s expensive to try and furnish these services in such remote areas. The experts agree, though, that it’s vital. I’ve been told of 14 youth suicides on the west coast of James Bay in 2009. One in 1,000 committed suicide last year. The Canadian average, I’m told, is one in 100,000. Suicide rates on the west coast of James Bay are 100 times higher than the Canadian average in 2009. And the only family services facility for the west coast of James Bay came within inches of closing its doors last year for a lack of funding.
Before I paint such a painfully bleak picture, let me be clear that for each story of loss there is a story of accomplishment, of perseverance. Here’s one: while wandering around the Forks last week, I ran into a young man, Patrick Etherington Jr. from Moosonee, a young man I’ve known since he was a boy. In fact, for much of one year I home-schooled him. After a brief catching-up, he told me something startling. Over a month ago, he and his father, Patrick Sr., along with a few friends, took a train from Moosonee to Cochrane and then began walking. They walked over 1,600 km in just over 30 days in order to get here for this first annual gathering.
Along the way they talked to strangers, explaining that they were walking for the people, that this was their own little way of helping to begin shutting that door that was opened when the first doors of the residential schools in Canada began opening 150 years ago.
Patrick Sr. is a man I’ve held in great regard for 15 years. When I lived in Moosonee so long ago and became close with the Etherington family, Patrick Sr. shared with me some very tough and yes, shocking stories of his years at St. Anne’s in Fort Albany, one of Ontario’s most infamous residential schools. And now, here he is walking with four young people across a substantial part of Canada because he understands that the epidemic I speak of is contagious, and one way to protect your children is to engage with them in as direct a way as you can. What better way than to spend more than a month walking and talking and laughing and sharing the joys and pain of such an adventure?
Six more Truth and Reconciliation events are planned across Canada over the next five years, six more chances for people to come together and share stories and discuss remedies and keep straining to push that door shut.
What I’m convinced of is this: the simple act of taking that first step on the highway with your father and best friends beside you, the tension of the fast-moving river through your paddle, the radiant heat in the moose’s rib cage as you reach your arm to cut out its heart, the sound of Canada geese honking as they stretch their necks for the south, the tug of the pickerel as it takes your hook, the sickening grind of the outboard’s prop as it touches submerged river rock—it’s these simple experiences that contain medicine strong enough to start some healing, to start closing that door.
Sometimes I catch myself dreaming about my Cree friend’s two dead children. In my dream they’re still alive, and they’re out in the bush, paddling the Moose River together, sun on their shoulders and good power in their stroke. They’re paddling north, I think, home to Moosonee. And although I can’t see her, I know that their mother stands on the shore by town, waiting patiently for them to come into sight.
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