Five more suicide attempts reported in Canada First Nations community

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian

Five more suicide attempts reported in Canada First Nations community

Chief tweets: ‘Busy night at the hospital ... pray for Attawapiskat’

First Nations suicide emergency: a symptom of systemic neglect

Ontario community in grip of crisis over repeated suicide attempts

Reuters in Toronto
Saturday 16 April 2016 19.37 EDT

Five children tried to take their own lives on Friday evening in a Canadian aboriginal community of 2,000 that has declared a state of emergency over repeated suicide attempts, its chief said.

Chief Bruce Shisheesh of the Attawapiskat First Nation in the province of Ontario confirmed the news in a brief telephone conversation on Saturday. It was not immediately clear how old the children are.

The remote northern community declared a state of emergency last Saturday after 11 of its members attempted suicide in one weekend and 28 tried to do so in March.

About a dozen teenagers in the community attempted suicide on Monday, after the declaration.




Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/16/canada-first-nations-suicide-crisis-attawapiskat

[csziggy]

1. .

[AxionExcel]

2. Holding Good Mind for the human beings in the North

From Wikipedia:
Attawapiskat (Āhtawāpiskatowi ininiwak: ᐊᑕᐗᐱᐢᑲᑐᐎ ᐃᓂᓂᐧᐊᐠ means "People of the parting of the rocks" (Cree).

N.B. - The humongous corporate industrial James Bay Hydroelectric projects have had a staggering impact on the culture of the peoples who inhabit that region. One has to wonder whether the influence of those industrial intrusions on the natural and human environment are underlying factors in this plague of suicides.

Jimmy Mianscum, Ouje-Bougoumou: Today the people have problems because the white man is working all over the place, destroying the land and the people. It's really hard to hunt and live off the land...All the trees have been cut on my land. The only trees you see are on the side of the roads; past that, it's all cut. There is no place for the animals to shelter, it is all destroyed.

http://www.gcc.ca/archive/article.php?id=38

[Judi Lynn]

5. Thank you for this post. It's tremendous. n/t

[turbinetree]

3. This book should be required reading for every student in the class room......on this continent...

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States............Author: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Because there is a relationship of what happened in this country to what is happening to the brother and sisters up North and down South, beyond these infamous borders...............and the genocide which was applied..................

I look at the government in Canada and the United States as absolute liars------------------what have they really done to sovereign nations of the Indigenous People ----------------------------nothing, and I mean nothing................platitudes of hypocrisy....................genocide is alive and well, now they have another name for it , it's now called it suicide...................................

http://news.nationalpost.com/toronto/idle-no-more-protesters-occupy-federal-office-building-in-toronto-to-demand-action-for-attawapiskat

[Judi Lynn]

6. Another outstanding poster here recommented this superior book, as well, which I'm reading now.

It is absolutely irreplaceable. It would be excellent to keep a copy on hand to lend to intelligent, caring friends.

It's so well-researched, so enlightening, it will improve anyone's understanding of what the #### has happened.

Thank you for your great post, turbinetree.

[turbinetree]

8. Your welcome.............................

It does not gloss over anything, she says this is the facts



One of my next two books are below, and she also has one called

R o o t s of R e s i s t a n ce:
A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico

If this book is any indications of what I think it means, then what we are seeing in the right wing legislatures such as Utah, the Bundy crowd, it should really give a perspective of how this is being played out in a context of the Indigenous people, I am going to definitely find out

O u t l a w W o m a n:

A Memoir of the War Years, 1960-1975 by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
340pp
2002
ISBN: 0-87286-390-5
Format: Trade paperback original
Price: $17.95

[Stryst]

4. Communities in Alaska are experiencing suicide rate spikes

as well, with native communities being hit the hardest.

In 2007, Alaska's rate was 21.8 suicides per 100,000 people. The rate of suicide among Alaska Native peoples was 35.1 per 100,000 people in 2007. ⌘ Alaska had 1,369 suicides between 2000 and 2009, an average of 136 deaths by suicide per year.

Some interesting statistics and figures here (http://www.suicidology.org/resources/facts-statistics) indicate that across all demographics suicide rates are up, but in a few demographics they are WAY up. Native, military, and chronically unemployed people are all now the highest risk groups.

While some of this may be due to changes over the last few years in the way deaths are reported (for example, in 1995 my best friend's suicide was determined to be an accident) something needs to be looked at.

[Judi Lynn]

7. It's a sorrowful history, and there is no justification for what happened, and how it happened.

So sorry to have heard about your best friend, and the suffering which lead to that decision. Best wishes.

Thank you for your post.

[Stryst]

9. Thank you. It was a long time ago, but I just wanted to point out

that as near as the mid 90's, death certificates would often list "accident" instead of shaming the family by saying suicide. Sometimes even the family wouldn't know that the accident was self inflicted.

There are some serious health issues that seem to come from living in high northern latitudes. For example, most new MS cases in America come from northern states. We don't know why. We don't know why people in the North are hurting themselves, but dammit we need to find out why.

[EllieBC]

10. Ottawa needs to act.

Health care services, especially mental health services, outside of major metropolitan areas is often not great. For mental health it's downright abysmal. You should NOT have to live in a major city to have access to good quality services.

This is why the only level III NICUs are in Vancouver. The entire province must come here if they heaven forbid have a baby born extremely early.

Mental health services outside of Vancouver are often limited to social workers and counsellors. Need intensive mental health help? Sorry, you need the city then.

People should not be punished for living in rural areas or smaller cities.

As I said on a thread in the Canada group, we need to stop swooning over our "gorgeous PM" and instead demand he do something meaningful for far flung communities, especially First Nations communities.

[Judi Lynn]

11. They Came for the Children: Truth Commission Sheds Light on Canada’s Genocide Against Indigenous Peo

They Came for the Children: Truth Commission Sheds Light on Canada’s Genocide Against Indigenous Peoples
Written by Alexis Lathem Published: 23 March 2016

Imagine a village with all its children gone. For aboriginal peoples all across Canada, this was their lived reality, not the stuff of imagination. The story of what happened to the children – who were forcibly removed from their families and sent to military-style camps that were euphemistically called “schools” – has at last been told, compiled in the monumental six-volume Truth and Reconciliation Report on residential schools for aboriginal children released in 2015. The accounts of cruelty against generations of children will strain credulity of the moral imagination, but this extraordinary report is about much more than that.

In the testimony given by hundreds of former residents and staff over the six-year long truth-telling process, documented in thousands of pages, survivors tell of being shackled to their beds at night and raped, of being forced to eat their own vomit, of being beaten with rods or whips for having cast a glance or a wave over a crowded mess hall at a sister or brother with whom they were forbidden contact, of having needles pierced through their tongues for speaking their own language.

The story of systemic child abuse and neglect – horrific as it is, is not all there is to tell. To cast a light into what may be the darkest and most shameful part of Canada’s history, is to look into the policies of forced assimilation of aboriginal peoples that were integral to the making of Canada itself. The intent to rupture families in order to prevent the transmission of a culture, in order to end those practices that allow the continued existence of a group as a group, is both the legal definition of cultural genocide and the stated objective of these institutions. Canada’s admission of cultural genocide in these pages is historic not only for Canada: it represents the first official admission of genocide by any nation anywhere in the Americas.[1]

And it does so in a detailed accounting not only of the horrors of the residential schools, but of the federal government’s history of legal trickery, its failure to fulfill its treaty obligations, and its domination of almost every aspect of aboriginal life. In reviewing this history of colonization, the Commission has, piece by piece, deconstructed the Doctrine of Progress, which elevates European civilization above all others, and the Doctrine of Discovery, by which Europeans justified the theft of land from those who were here long before them – those archaic and racist doctrines which nevertheless persist in the national mythologies and prejudices and have been the basis of the EuroCanadian relationship with its aboriginal peoples. To reconcile Canada with its aboriginal people means not just addressing the historic crimes against children; it will mean restoring and dignifying the unique legal status of aboriginals as the original and rightful inhabitants of the land we call Canada.

More:
http://www.towardfreedom.com/31-archives/americas/4213-they-came-for-the-children-truth-commission-sheds-light-on-canada-s-genocide-against-indigenous-peoples