Suicide tide in Canadian indigenous community, ‘third world conditions blamed

http://youtu.be/7MEgB4zglTw/ RT - NEWS 03:24

Published on Apr 17, 2016

Canadian lawmakers have vowed to take immediate measures to end a wave of suicides that have hit a remote aboriginal community in the country. People there are taking their lives supposedly out of desperation at living in dire conditions.

http://www.rt.com/news/339171-canada-suicide-epidemic-emergency/

Spate of 11 suicide attempts in 1 day prompts emergency in small Canadian community

A First Nation community in Ontario, Canada, has declared a state of emergency after 11 of its 2,000 inhabitants tried to take their own lives on Saturday. There were 28 suicide attempts in Attawapiskat in March, and more than 100 since September last year.

The spate of suicide attempts has so far claimed one life in the community, Chief Bruce Shisheesh told CBC News. The youngest person to attempt suicide was only 11, with the oldest being 71.

"I'm asking friends, government, that we need help in our community," Shisheesh said. "I have relatives that have attempted to take their own lives... cousins, friends."

Dealing with the crisis in Attawapiskat are four healthcare workers without specialized mental health training.

"These four workers, crisis workers, are burned out. They can't continue working daily because of the amount of suicides [that] have happened. They're backlogged," said the council's Deputy Grand Chief, Rebecca.

The federal and Ontario governments announced that the Weeneebayko Area Health Authority hospital was flying in a crisis team, including mental health nurses and social workers.

"We recognize that there are serious and long-standing issues of mental health and addiction in some communities," Health Canada spokesman Sean Upton told The Canadian Press.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered his support on Sunday, calling the news from Attawapiskat "heartbreaking."

The news from Attawapiskat is heartbreaking. We'll continue to work to improve living conditions for all Indigenous peoples.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) April 10, 2016

Shisheesh said there was no single cause of the rash of suicides. Overcrowding, school bullying, drug abuse and other likely factors were found in various cases.

Attawapiskat resident Jackie Hookimaw told The Canadian Press that the suicide epidemic may have been triggered by the death of her 13-year-old niece Sheridan, who killed herself in October after being bullied at school.

Charlie Angus, the MP for the area and NDP indigenous affairs critic, said northern communities like Attawapiskat don’t have the resources to deal with mental health problems on their own.

"When a young person tries to commit suicide in any suburban school, they send in the resources, they send in the emergency team. There's a standard protocol for response. The northern communities are left on their own,'' he said, describing the situation as a “rolling nightmare.”

"I've lost count of the states of emergency in the James Bay region since I was elected."
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Related:

4 killed, multiple injured in Canada school shooting; suspect arrested

22 Jan, 2016 21:32

http://www.rt.com/news/329864-school-shooting-saskatchewan-canada/


* NOTE: This is the FORTH Indigenous community, in Canada suffering from suicide tide -see top video *

Residents of Canadian community suffering more than 100 suicide attempts: 'The damage has been done'

Michelle Mark
3hrs ago


People take part in a march and candlelight vigil in the Attawapiskat First Nation in northern Ontario, Canada, April 15, 2016.


When Chief Bruce Shisheesh declared a state of emergency on April 9 for the suicide crisis in the Canadian aboriginal community of Attawapiskat, the news caused an international uproar.

There have been more than 100 attempts and at least one death since September, Shisheesh told CBC.

Canadian media descended on the Attawapiskat First Nation, and provincial and federal officials quickly made plans to fly out to the northern Ontario reserve.

On April 13, the Ontario government announced in a statement it would provide $2 million in assistance to the community. The prior evening, Canada’s House of Commons convened an emergency six-hour debate on the unfolding crisis.

Barely two weeks later, many Attawapiskat residents say they’re already wary of the government’s promises to solve the community’s suicide crisis.

“They want to look good ... I’m not really optimistic until I see concrete steps taken from the Prime Minister’s office about his promises for renewed relationships,” Jackie Hookimaw-Witt, an Attawapiskat resident who works as a photographer, told Business Insider. “This is just the tip. We need to address other physical and social infrastructure if we’re going to recover or heal from these oppressive conditions.”

In a series of tweets sent this week, Shisheesh criticized the government for not adequately providing Attawapiskat with adequate mental health services in the past, and prompted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to visit the community.

Will Feds deliver their promise? Youth Center for young people...for a long time Gov't has failed the First Nations across Canada
— Chief Shisheesh (@BruceShisheesh) April 21, 2016

.@JustinTrudeau Attawapiskat is waiting for your visit, remember u mentioned reconciliation & now is the time 2 demonstrate your good will.
— Chief Shisheesh (@BruceShisheesh) April 19, 2016

In March, 28 attempted suicide in the community of 2,000. The crisis came to a head on April 9, when a staggering 11 attempts occurred within 24 hours.

Despite the emergency declaration and the 18-member crisis team deployed by Health Canada, five more children attempted suicide last Friday, according to Reuters. It was just days after police broke up a suicide pact between a dozen or so teenagers.

Canada’s indigenous affairs minister Carolyn Bennett and Charlie Angus, a member of parliament representing the area that includes Attawapiskat, arrived in Attawapiskat on Monday afternoon to meet with Shisheesh and the community’s newly established youth council. The officials promised the community a new youth center, but didn’t attach an immediate dollar figure.

Hookimaw-Witt was unimpressed.

“You know politicians. They look at their watches and they just want to come and go,” Hookimaw-Witt said. “If she was serious about telling us, ‘Your identity is important,’ how come she didn’t talk about changes to our education system?”

Hookimaw-Witt’s grand-niece Sheridan Hookimaw was 13 years old when she took her own life last October. The girl’s suicide was the only successful attempt to occur during the nine-month crisis.

A new youth center in Attawapiskat was far from the only thing Sheridan needed, Hookimaw-Witt said. The teenager suffered from an array of illnesses, including diabetes, arthritis, obesity and asthma. Beyond that, Sheridan was homeless, according to Hookimaw-Witt, living in a packed two-bedroom "temporary residence" with 20 other people.

Like many First Nations communities in Canada, Attawapiskat has been plagued by long-standing infrastructural issues. Flooding and sewage backups have prompted emergency declarations in the past, CBC reported, leading to severe drinking-water and housing shortages.

The residents’ frustration was summed up by Robert Sutherland, an Attawapiskat youth who questioned Bennett sharply during her public meeting with the youth council on the priorities of the Canadian government.

“Tell me why we First Nations live in third world conditions,” Sutherland said, according to the Canadian Press. “Why is it so easy for the government to welcome refugees and offer them first-class citizenship in our country? When will Canada wake up and open its eyes to First Nations communities?”

The Canadian government has acknowledged the complexity of Attawapiskat's problems, but many First Nations residents say they're tired of rhetoric, and are waiting to see concrete solutions.

“We know that as we move forward, communities like Attawapiskat need more than short-term fixes,” Bennett and Angus said in a joint statement following their visit. “We have to work together to put the interests of our young people first and ensure their voices are heard.”

Charles Hookimaw says that he has heard similar words before. The Attawapiskat First Nation member grew up in in the community, but moved to North Bay, Ontario several years ago, in part because of the reserve’s housing shortage.

According to Hookimaw, assistance from the government frequently comes tightly controlled and with strings attached in the way of fees, administrative obstacles, and bureaucracy.

“Even if the federal government provides let’s say 50 houses each year for five years, the community would have to go through a whole bunch of red tape in terms of allocating the land, the property. You need engineering, you need everything to go through approval, you need a plan to present,” he told Business Insider. “It just goes on and on and never ends.”

Hookimaw pointed to confusion surrounding the $2 million in assistance offered to the community as typical of Attawapiskat's interactions with the provincial and federal governments. The assistance money will not be handled directly by community. Instead, the Ontario government announced it will fund a “youth regional coordination unit” and be supplied to the Mushkegowuk Council, an umbrella organization that represents six other First Nation communities in northern Ontario.

This isn't the first the First Nations communities have experienced suicide crises. In 2013, the nearby community of Neskantaga reported 20 suicide attempts and seven deaths within a year, CBC reported. To fight the crisis, the federal government funded an $800,000 suicide-prevention project to the regional health authority that serves Attawapiskat. However, the program was “sidetracked” from its goal of coordinating the area’s fragmented mental health services, and resulted in little more than two suicide-training sessions for workers and a contact list of regional service providers, the Globe and Mail reported.

Hookimaw says he tries not to be too cynical when it comes to his home community, but Attawapiskat’s problems run too deep for the superficial solutions the government proposes.

“For proper housing, safe drinking water — it’s going to take maybe 10, 20 years. The damage has been done, and it’s going to take awhile to rebuild again,” he said. “We will get through this with or without the government.”

http://www.businessinsider.com/attawapiskat-residents-say-the-canadian-government-hasnt-done-enough-2016-4/
* Embedded Links & Pics *

never understood why anyone would care if someone wants to kill themselves... it should be their right

Damn.. That is cold blooded to say. We are not talking about random, variety cases of people with a grave illness.
This is at least FOUR communities (& undoubtedly there are a lot more) that have been ignored, forgotten, abandoned & abused.

Sadly ... Canada apparently agrees with your philosophy.
I guess there is another type of people to bring in, & to fight for, to build for & spend money on.
Obviously it is... to hell with indigenous people or nationals.

Were it not for the fact that most instances where people become suicidal are NOT when they are in an even and emotionally balanced condition, I would agree with you.

However, suicide is most commonly a mistaken choice, made by someone who'd perceptions have been severely distorted.

If there is a sudden surge in suicides somewhere, there is good reason to suspect that an environmental poisoning of some kind has occurred.

cold blooded or not, everyone is going to die... why not make it your choice as to when and how?

and you base that on what facts?

The suicide rate in the US went up by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to a new federal report, with the top increases seen in females aged 10 to 14 and males aged 45 to 64.

A new analysis by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) has reported that the rate of suicide in the US steadily increased from 1999 to 2014 after consistently decreasing from 1986 to 1999. The report found that greater annual rises occurred after 2006.

From 1999 to 2014, suicide rates increased for males and females of all ages between 10 and 74, the NCHS revealed Friday. Only those aged 75 and older saw declines in suicides in that time period.


The rate of suicide among women is climbing at a rate faster than men. The age-adjusted suicide rate for females increased by 45 percent from 1999 to 2014, as opposed to an increase of 16 percent for males.

However, males (20.7) still hold a suicide rate that is triple the rate of female (5.8) suicide.

"The findings in this report are extremely concerning," said Nadine Kaslow, an Emory University researcher and former president of the American Psychological Association, according to the Associated Press.


For females, the suicide rate was highest in the time period studied among those aged 45 to 64. For males, those aged 75 and over held the highest rate.

Men aged 45 to 64 had the highest increase in suicide rate among all groups, rising from 20.8 per 100,000 in 1999 to 29.7 in 2014. The largest increase in suicide rate among females belonged to those aged 10 to 14, although this group's number of suicides was comparatively lower than other age groups. In 2014, there were 1.5 suicides per 100,000 females in this age group. In 1999, this group committed suicide at a rate of 0.5 for every 100,000.

More than 42,000 people in the US died of suicide in 2014, the report said. Middle-aged white males and females - about 18 percent of the US population - accounted for one-third, or about 14,000, of all suicides in the 15-year timespan, more than twice the combined number of suicides for all blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, American Indians, and Alaska Natives.

Late last year, a study found that white middle-aged Americans were the only first-world group of people dying faster than their counterparts in other developed nations. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported this month that life expectancy for white people declined in 2014.

The report did not attempt to identify causes for the suicide boom since 1999.

"We wanted to highlight the growing problem of suicide in America," said Sally Curtin, lead author for the report, according to the Guardian. "Deaths are just the tip of the iceberg. Many more incidents end up as hospitalizations and ER visits."

In February 2015, Swiss scientists posited that one in five suicides around the world were associated with unemployment.

"Our findings reveal that the suicide rate increases six months before a rise in unemployment. What is more, our data suggests that not all job losses necessarily have an equal impact, as the effect on suicide risk appears to be stronger in countries where being out of work is uncommon," said Dr. Carlos Nordt, lead author of the study.

Other researchers say that psychological stressors related to economic strains outside of unemployment - including falling income and debt - have affected many that go on to commit suicide.

About half of all suicides were firearm-related. More than half of male suicides in 2014 were in this category, while one-third of suicides among females were attributed to poisoning, the most common method of female suicide. About one in four male and female suicides were attributed to suffocation of some sort.


so i take it everywhere in the US is has environmental pollution?

* "The news from Attawapiskat is heartbreaking. We'll continue to work to improve living conditions for all Indigenous peoples.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) April 10, 2016 "

** Personal loss of "hope" can become epidemic so quickly and respects no boundaries or income.

I was shocked to read that over 100 people tried to commit suicide and only 1 succeeded. I'm pretty sure that if I really wanted to kill myself I would be successful. I'd start by doing lots of research on different methods and their success rates, then I'd use several high quality methods simultaneously. (Note: I am definitely not thinking of killing myself.)


So I looked at stats online and saw that some researchers report a 3-5% success rate for attempted suicides, in general.

Why is that number so low?

because most suicide "attempts" are just people who want attention...

Suicide can be a cultural issue as studies have shown in Alaska.

Alaska Native men between the ages of 15-24 have the highest rate of suicide among any demographic in the country, with an average of 141.6 suicides per 100,000 each year between 2000 and 2009.

Youth who are exposed to suicide or suicidal behaviors are more at-risk for attempting suicide, according to the American Association of Suicidology.

The Attawapiskat First Nation is quite isolated with an alcoholism problem much the same way many Alaskan Native communities are. Throw in the depression associated with long (and dark) winters it is a prescription for suicide.

A variety of previous occurrences. Direct communication with suicidal people. Studies of people who tried to commit suicide and failed. Rudimentary understanding of how neurology and mental states are affected by exhaustion, toxins, starvation, stress.

More than anything else, there is no such thing as a large group of individuals all deciding to kill themselves, without external factors being involved.

so there is no facts on your conclusion...thank you

Yeah, I just don't know what percentage they make up. There are also a handful of people who use suicide attempts as a way to control the people who love them - they never intended to die, just put on a good show and then use it to emotionally manipulate others. Again, I have no idea what kind of percentage they are, but those folks are definitely out there.

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* Even some Governments that have institutional death penalty "FAIL" at a good kill.
* Often suicide deaths are listed as accidents or other. I feel the true numbers are deeply hidden.

Some of the attitudes, are quite disgusting.

Youth, shouldn't view suicide as their only way
out of any given situation.

Unfortunately, the poverty, and lack of "things to do" in
many isolated/rural communities, leaves people with a
whole lotta nothin' to do, but drink and use drugs.
Propagating a destitute view of life and lifestyle.

Some of the attitudes, are quite disgusting.

Probably one of reasons so many went to check out & go "home"

That northern community area. The band receives millions of dollars from not only the Cdn govt, they also receive funds from mining companies (Diamonds)...
Unfortunately they SQUANDER the money
There are no recreation facilities there
There is hardly a library there
They have no programs and resources for the youth nor families
The band council or elders should be held accountable for not providing something...
Just my Cdn perspective

their aboriginal way of life has been terminated by the british corporation who through deceptive contracts with the indiginous people and the corporations right to operate where through 'mission creep' and cancerous growth now rule.

"We are the Borg. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile."

sad that state crime has to be reduced to science fiction. I find it hard to believe the indigenous people should have been expected to envision the corporation to grow like cancer.

a corporation called canada with no legitimate jurisdiction but a legitimate obligation to perform.