Aboriginal Suicide

There is an epidemic of suicide in some Aboriginal communities in Canada. In the Arctic and on some reserves, it has been stated to be as high as 250 suicides per 100,000 population. Nunavut, the most recently created Canadian Arctic Territory, has a rate often quoted as 77 per 100,000 population. To put these statistics into some perspective, the 2012 Canadian average, according to Statistics Canada, is 11.5 deaths from suicide per 100,000 population. This is made up of 17.9 per 100,000 for males and 5.3 per 100,000 for females. Statistics aside, many reserves, such as the Stoney Reserve in Alberta in the mid 1990’s, when I lived there, had real numbers of 19 suicides per year for just that reserve of some 2000 souls. Many waited in the ditch, then ran out in front of cars tearing along the Trans-Canada Highway to Banff or Calgary. Imagine being the driver.

The Stoney Reserve was awash in oil money and corruption was rampant in those days. Social programs were proposed for the reserve, funded and died away almost as fast. Alcoholism, depression, violence, a divided community composed of several bands, and leadership unequal to the challenge - both at the Federal and the band level - were all factors in the high suicide rate.

To add to the ‘strange, but true’ nature of suicide, the reserve was placed under third party management by the Federal Government because of financial irregularities. The accountant from a major Canadian audit firm sent in to handle the file, turned on his car in the garage and gassed himself with exhaust after only a few months on the reserve. I remember hearing of this situation and, as I did similar work, wondering just what had driven him to such a desperate act. Was the raw despair hanging over the reserve like a pall, and expressed in the suicide toll, an influence on this outsider?

I have worked on the west coast of Canada in small Aboriginal villages where the economy is not good. When the number of suicides rise until there are three or four or five a year, which is a huge number in very small communities of around 300 people, the grieving intensifies. The community of Kitkatla on Porcher Island, which is many miles seaward from Price Rupert, was one of those communities. I was there one day to hear the Chief, Councillors and elders talk about their plans for an economic turnaround. They wished to emulate their neighbours at Kitasoo, another community, who had managed to revitalize their economy by investing heavily in fish farming. As we talked, we got word that a fishing boat was bringing the body of the latest suicide home for the funeral. I watched as the somber community gathered to take the body off the boat. They carried it, with a series of pall bearers, up the hill and into the community church. I wanted so much to be able to assist with the process of an economic resurgence through farming fish, so that the youth could see a viable future. I believed in the vision that prosperity and jobs would be the tonic the community needed. I was promised a huge feast in the community, if I could help make it happen. However, it was not to be. A moratorium was placed on new fish farms in the northern part of the Province, to allow time to study rumoured negative impacts. Although economics are still quite desperate today in Kitkatla, an emphasis on programs for the youth have helped them find relevance in their traditions and the suicide rate has dropped. One youth worker, brought in to help with the marking of the anniversary of the spate of suicides five years before, wanted to be positive. Instead of asking about people’s thoughts of suicide specifically, he framed his question, “how are you being held and supported by the culture?” People’s responses would not only address the positive aspects, but would also give them pause to consider how they themselves could better promote the culture. I thought it was brilliant.

I still believe that the discovery of another sustainable economic driver will also bring good results. This has been seen in other communities, such as Kitasoo, mentioned above, where 80% of the jobs are fish farm related. Kitasoo’s suicide numbers are much lower.

Suppression and Suicide - Exploring Aboriginal Suicide in More Detail.

My experience with aboriginals in Canada began with my early years on an Ontario reserve, then continued with my education in the Northwest Territories where the school population was roughly 50% aboriginal. Later I studied Archaeology, Native Studies, Sociology, Psychology, Cross Cultural Studies and Aboriginal history at University. In the summer, I worked with Aboriginal firefighting crews. My professional work with Aboriginals and indigenous communities has been extensive in Western Canada working with various Commissions, two Provincial Governments, the Federal Government and several Municipal and Aboriginal Governments as Chief Administrative Officer and as a consultant.

Based on this experience, I have a theory about the reasons suicide rates in some aboriginal communities can rise well above the average. First, the history. The disastrous history.

I want to recap that history; however Canada is a big country. There are hundreds of separate First Nations speaking dozens of languages. In order to avoid telling anyone’s long history incorrectly, I will invent a hypothetical First Nation on the west coast and summarize its history as an example of what has happened, more or less, across Canada.

Prior to the European invasion, typically stated to have started with Columbus in 1492, but as we know now, is much older than that, our hypothetical Aboriginal community is hunting, gathering, and engaging in social activities. There is a ‘seasonal round’ where people move into different parts of the territory at different times of the season to take advantage of the resources as they become available. The group is predominately related as an extended family; however there are lots of exceptions to this rule such as outsiders accepted as spouses or brought in as slaves. The community is sometimes engaged in defending its territory from aggressive outsiders and sometimes expanding its territory because of war or opportunistic happenstance. For instance, a neighbour of the community, weakened by war with an aggressor from far away, may seek protection in exchange for some or all of its territory. The number of people able to live from the resources of the territory varied with factors such as productivity of the land or water in any given period, year or season, as determined by ecological factors like rainfall, climate change, or degree of harvesting. As better methods of hunting, preserving food stocks, defending or expanding the territory, and encouraging natural productivity were learned, the population able to be supported on the land base changed as well from century to century. The economic system, the social system, and the spiritual beliefs were established and changed relatively slowly over hundreds of years. Wealth was redistributed through institutions like the Potlatch Ceremony and sharing of the harvest and the catch; while dances, songs, naming ceremonies, and a panoply of social events created community cohesion, order and stability. Life was not dull, and accidents, wars, environmental emergencies, sickness, famines etc. added drama to life.

Enter the Europeans and things change rapidly over the next couple of hundred years. Disease, against which our hypothetical community has no immunity, wreaks havoc in a series of plagues. Smallpox and influenza reduce the population by 80%. The remaining 20% cannot defend the territory, harvest, gather or socialize quite like they had in the past. The impact of such cataclysmic reduction in numbers throws the whole system out of kilter. By now, say around 1800, there are guns being introduced. It is possible for the outcome of wars to change radically based on who has them first. Aboriginal territories expand and shrink at a dizzying pace until enough European settlers arrive to usurp the land. Added in to the mix is the massive disruption caused by the search for and exploitation of resources. Furs, fish, gold, minerals, coal and foodstuffs are exported out of the territory to a world which seems to have an insatiable appetite. The rout of our imaginary aboriginal community is almost complete. Transportation systems such as railroads, river boats, and roads are rapidly built, not only to bring new settlers, but also to carry trade goods. Now the traditional economy has been usurped too. Soon thereafter, the European ideas of governance, justice and punishment, the land title system, police and armed forces and religious doctrines have become the dominant forces organizing the territories. All of these systems are completely different in concept and execution for the aboriginals. They were foreign systems evolved under completely different social conditions a world away. Across Canada, many of the new cities grow up on old aboriginal village sites.

By the turn of the century, 1900, our unnamed community has retained a presence in its primary village site by lobbying for the creation of a federally protected reserve. The community has adapted somewhat to the drastically reduced population. Some immunity to the diseases has developed. An economy has arisen in concert with the European economy. There is the growing and selling of crops, day labour, selling of trade products and resources such as wood, fish, fish oil, and furs. It is still possible to go onto the land to gather, hunt and fish to provide sustenance. Old spiritual beliefs are melding with the new Christian beliefs so enthusiastically proclaimed and enforced by the missionaries.

Drastic change has been wrought, but the resilience of the aboriginals has also been demonstrated and a good measure of pride, resourcefulness, spiritual integrity, and economy remains. It is at this point that the dominant society, sometimes for greedy intentions and sometimes believing it to be the right thing to do, turn up the pressure with the widely expounded concept that the ‘savages’ of the New World must become European in all respects. This concept developed directly from Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. Eugenics, or the social manipulation of the breeding of humans to emphasise aspects believed to be positive and to discourage the breeding of inferiors with an aim of improving the human condition, developed great traction after 1870 and was grasped onto with vigor by Hitler in the 1940s. As dictator he was able to implement the ideas of eugenics being propagated throughout the world with the greatest effect. The topic of eugenics is broad and worthy of another essay. I will simply remind the reader that North American Aboriginals (and Negroes and East Indians, and Aborigines of Australia……) were caste throughout the world as inferior under this concept. Northern Europeans were seen as the superior race. Many of the social policies promulgated throughout the world at that time were based on the idea of Eugenics. Would it not be depressing to be caste in the role of lesser human generation after generation?

Once again in our West Coast imaginary community we see the larger society insisting that Aboriginals should conform to European concepts of land ownership whereby it is all ‘Crown’ land until disposed of by the Government. Even the tracts of land ‘reserved’ for the original peoples is titled to the Federal Crown. It also means that all members of our village must conform to European education systems, justice, laws and customs. Indigenous religious beliefs and practices are outlawed, so that village members who participate in banned ceremonies can be arrested and punished. This is interpreted to include dances, social gatherings, songs, ceremonies and anything else which looked religious, like art, medicine bundles, carvings, and, and especially the Potlatch.

As education centers expand, more Aboriginal youth are taken from their homes and put into residential schools to learn the new language, the new systems and the new religion. This enforced hijacking of the up and coming generation disrupted families, created massive social disruption and family anguish. This created a huge gulf between the schooled children, divorced from their culture for years at a time, and the older generation. In this simple move, the seeds of misery were deeply sown for at least the next two or three generations as schooled children lost role models, culture, parents, religion and identity in one fell swoop. Today, the Canadian Federal government has officially apologised for this cruel regime.

When upset village elders determined to use the European laws and court system to reverse some of the more grievous outrages, the lawmakers created a law denying the Aboriginals the right to hire lawyers. The draftsmen of such an obviously unjust law had no reason to fear a loss of support at the polls, because Aboriginals were not allowed to vote. In addition, it became necessary for our hypothetical village members to seek approval of the federal Government each time they wished to leave the reserve. The wage and sales economies once exploited by Aboriginals were being taken over by better financed Canadian corporations and entrepreneurs and the state created a welfare system to ensure that the now destitute Aboriginal population across the country had something to eat. This led to the routine purchase of ‘white’ food stuffs and less reliance on the traditional, healthier diet. It also created dependencies.

Alcohol became available much more readily in this period of incredible disruption. Its effects numbed the pain of loss. Loss of land, mobility, defense, children, religion, economy, autonomy…….. Alcohol abuse became rampant to the point where many Canadians automatically added in front of the word ‘Indian’, the word ‘drunken’. The monthly welfare handouts began to create a population of dependant beggars into the second and third generation.

At this point our made up community is near the bottom of a complete depression. Traditional spiritual beliefs and practices have been supplanted by a new system involving the psychologically depressing concept of original sin. The traditional economy has been supplanted by welfare. The traditional territory has been for most practical purposes been reduced to the size of a tiny reserve. The children who were removed from their homes and re-educated as if they were European, have come back not knowing their traditions, the old skills or customs, nor anything recent about their families. They have no parenting skills, yet are producing children in record numbers. The welfare officials see these young children mixed up in disrupted family structures, surrounded by the loss of ambition, aimlessness, poverty, and living in alcohol ravaged communities lacking in such amenities as running water, sewage treatment, and proper housing. They feel obliged to step in again for the protection of the young. They begin what came to be known as the ‘sixties scoop’ named for the 1960s when thousands of Aboriginals where taken from their homes and placed with settler families. It is a fact, that some communities in Canada did not retain 10% of their children.

Disease also caused grief in this period. Alcohol caused mental and physical debilitation and increased the accident rate. Poor diet caused diabetes to sky rocket in Aboriginal Canada until it is at epidemic proportions today. Tuberculosis has been another major disrupting influence in the communities as many people died directly from the disease. For those who received treatment and were taken off to far away sanitariums for months and years at a time it was also another loss of connection with their roots.

I call this period the ‘trough’ of the depression that settled across the Aboriginal landscape. It started at different times across the country based on when the economies went bust, when alcohol or the new road came in, joining the village to the outside world, or what percentage of the kids were taken to residential schools, or off to foster homes. Whatever the unique circumstances, it has been almost universal, that for some length of time; perhaps twenty years; fifty years; one hundred years - Aboriginal communities have been led into this trough. They have wallowed in it until someone or something has changed the dynamics to allow a new paradigm to emerge.

Thankfully, today, hundreds of communities across Canada, (not all, but a growing percentage), have moved out of this trough of despair and have forged new community strengths. Alcohol and drug abuse has been managed, housing has been renewed, local governance and an entrepreneurial spirit based on the old pride, has been instituted. A local economy has developed. Family life has stabilized as fewer families are torn apart. Voting by Aboriginals has been allowed for all Federal elections since 1962. Old traditions, ceremonies, spiritual practices and cultural traditions have been revitalized as the greater Canadian society has relaxed its repressions. The laws restricting Aboriginal people from the legal system have been repealed and over two hundred court decisions favouring the rights of Aboriginals in Canada have restored a grudging balance of First Peoples vis a vis the new colonizers.

Against this background history my theory about suicide is simple. If a community is still working its way through this trough of despair, there is great potential for suicide rates to be extraordinarily high. Suicide becomes an option for people who do not have control in huge areas of their life. If drugs or drinking or gas sniffing have worked through their nasty early delusions of false ease, if there are no new houses, few job prospects, and it looks like the future does not hold hope for a person, suicide offers a way out. Once the option is successfully exploited by one or two people and this trauma is added to the community, then the copycat effect on others usually follows and suddenly there is an enormous increase in suicide.

This is why I promote economic self-reliance in a community as one of the factors which can reduce suicide. I also encourage the return to cultural roots, education, and role modelling. The direct influence of elders, family and other community members in the life of the young can support them. Sports programs, water and sewer services, healthy food choices, a spiritual resurgence, teaching of traditional practices, better access to loans, local governance, economic partnerships and the securing of the rights of First Nations in Canada are also helpful. Every one of these things has the potential to improve suicide rates in the Aboriginal community.

To all readers…… athletes, engineers, social workers, community workers, educators, health workers, farmers, counsellors, artists, legislators, historians, bankers, governance experts, neighbours, family , friends…….who are actively involved in encouragement of any potent improvements to Aboriginal lives, please stop doing for a moment to receive gratitude. Remember that your contribution matters, often where it hurts the most.