Suicides Plague an Aboriginal Community in Canada
By IAN AUSTEN

OTTAWA — She was bullied relentlessly. She suffered from asthma, diabetes and other ailments. Her living conditions were unbearably cramped: 20 relatives taking refuge in a two-bedroom government nursing station for more than a year after a sewage backup made their home uninhabitable.

Still, it came as a shock when Sheridan Hookimaw, a sociable 13-year-old girl, took her own life last October, her great-aunt said.

It was the kind of shock, the aunt said, that has become all too familiar.

Since September, 101 people in the Attawapiskat First Nation, a remote aboriginal community with about 2,000 residents, have attempted suicide. That is about 5 percent of its population.

There were an astonishing 11 suicide attempts on Saturday alone.

“It’s quite scary when you hear the air ambulance at 2 in the morning, 3 in the morning,” said Jackie Hookimaw-Witt, Sheridan’s great-aunt. “That’s the youth being taken out.”

Overwhelmed, the chief and the council of the Attawapiskat community have declared a state of emergency. It was more of a call for help than a legal measure, and once again it has focused Canada’s attention on longstanding problems in the region.

“I hope it gets governments to react,” said Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, the regional body for aboriginal groups around James Bay. “You see right across the territory a lack of proper housing, a lack of proper health care, the lack of access to clean drinking water.”

“Unfortunately, suicide attempts are quite, quite prevalent in many of our communities,” he added.

It is not the first time that Charlie Angus, the federal member of Parliament for the area, has seen a state of emergency declared after a suicide crisis swept native communities.

“We go through spikes with these crises, and we are definitely in a very, very dire moment,” he said, adding that Attawapiskat had gone through a similar wave of suicide attempts in 2009 and 2010. “I’ve lost count of the states of emergency.”

Attawapiskat is only about 60 miles from an open-pit diamond mine owned by De Beers, yet it has the unenviable distinction of being unusually poor even by the standards of aboriginal communities.

While the diamond mine has provided some employment, most of the community of about 2,000 people survives by hunting moose and caribou in the surrounding bog-like muskeg or by fishing. Its only connections to the outside are ice roads in the winter or by air.

Grand Chief Fiddler said there had been no clear pattern to the recent suicide attempts. Men and women, young and old have tried to kill themselves.

While drugs and alcohol have played a role in some of the attempts, Mrs. Hookimaw-Witt, who has a doctorate in education and who has taught in the community and been involved in academic research on it, said that none had been found in the system of her great-niece.

And while underlying causes can be identified, isolating what precisely has set off the attempts has been elusive. While some attempts among children and teenagers may have been prompted by Ms. Hookimaw’s death, her great-aunt said, “that doesn’t explain the older men.”

Whatever the cause, Mrs. Hookimaw-Witt said that she and others were now hiding and securing knives, ropes and prescription medications.

“It reaches into your house,” she said.

The declaration did spur some action. On Monday, Health Canada, a federal department, said it was sending two mental health counselors to the area and working with a regional health authority. The province of Ontario is flying in a team of mental health nurses and social workers. Its minister of health will travel to Attawapiskat later this week.

The problems facing Attawapiskat and numerous other aboriginal communities have long been known. But the current crisis comes at a time when relations between aboriginal groups and the federal government appear to be transforming.

After 10 years of tense relations with the Conservative government of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, many aboriginal leaders are buoyed by promises from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to make their issues a priority. His government’s recent budget included an additional 8.4 billion Canadian dollars, spread over five years, to deal with aboriginal issues.

“There are good things happening in our country,” said Grand Chief Fiddler, who met with Mr. Trudeau last Friday. “That openness, that type of dialogue, it filters down to the different departments of the government.”

Cindy Blackstock, the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, pressed a case that led the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to rule in January that the government’s underfunding of native youth problems was a form of racial discrimination. She said she was waiting for Mr. Trudeau’s positive words to be turned into concrete action.

She estimated that governments spent 30 to 40 percent more on non-aboriginal children through a variety of programs.

“This is our Confederate flag,” Ms. Blackstock said. “There’s no excuse for a country that is as wealthy as ours for racial discrimination like this.”

Mrs. Hookimaw-Witt said she had seen some positive events in her community’s otherwise bleak crisis. Last week, a group mainly of teenagers from a neighboring aboriginal community walked along ice roads for two days to Attawapiskat to raise awareness of the suicide problem.

After a feast, she said, they lined up to comfort Ms. Hookimaw’s relatives as a drummer played an increasingly loud beat.

“It was very emotional; it was sacred,” Mrs. Hookimaw-Witt said. “These kids made that happen. That gives me hope.”

1天11人想自殺 加拿大原民社區進入緊急狀態

加拿大國營媒體CTV新聞網（CTV News）10日報導，在9日晚間發生11人試圖自殺未遂後，加拿大一個2000人的原住民社區已宣布進入緊急狀態。

報導指出，位於安大略省北部偏遠地區的原住民社區─阿塔瓦皮斯卡特第一民族（Attawapiskat First Nation），上個月發生28起試圖自殺事件。而從去年9月起，該社區內已有超過100人自殺未遂，另有1人自殺身亡。

地方議員安格斯（Charlie Angus）說，這是整個冬季以來有越來越多年輕人自殺未遂的一場夢魘。

加拿大通訊社指出，在這個原住民社區宣布緊急狀態之後，地方上的第一民族政府已派遣危機處理小組前往當地。而加拿大衛生部則發表聲明說，已派出2名心理健康輔導員隨行。

加拿大總理杜魯多（Justin Trudeau）在推特上發文說，「來自阿塔瓦皮斯卡特的消息令人心碎。我們將持續致力改善所有原住民的生活條件。」

在加拿大西部省份緬尼托巴的另一個原住民社區，上個月曾向聯邦申請援助，表示2個月內就發生6起自殺案，而且2周內有140人自殺未遂。

加拿大有140萬名原住民，約占總人口的4%，他們的生活貧困，平均壽命也比其他加拿大人短，而且常是暴力犯罪、吸毒和監禁的受害者。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/world/americas/suicides-plague-attawapiskat-aboriginal-community-canada.html

2016-04-12 世界日報 編譯中心