Nine Percent: The Sandy Bay/Stanley Mission Dichotomy
Nine percent…it’s hard to get your head around a suicide rate of nine percent, especially when the statistic applies to the youth of your community. It essentially means that nine out of every one hundred children will not see their twentieth birthday. A sobering thought no doubt. I first heard about Sandy Bay – a remote Woodlands Cree village situated in northeastern Saskatchewan – from a CBC documentary back in the late 1990’s and my immediate reaction (besides being completely stunned) was to somehow find a way to travel there and experience this community for myself. Five years after viewing the CBC documentary I was on a tour of Saskatchewan high schools and I made sure Sandy Bay was added to the schedule. The tour also included another native community called Stanley Mission, situated just north of Prince Albert and, as I would find out when I arrived there, this community had a youth suicide rate near zero percent. These two contrasting percentage rates – nine and nearly zero – formed the basis for an investigation into the root causes of youth suicide in Canada’s First Nations, Inuit and Metis cultures.
Session #2 will examine the unique conditions existing in each of the two communities which account for their respective youth suicide rates. These conditions include the following.
Sandy Bay
The community’s education system is a good place to start when trying to comprehend a nine-percent youth suicide rate. The teachers were mostly, if not all, non-aboriginal and the curriculum was essentially the ‘white man’s’ education model similar to that taught in mainstream Canadian schools. On both visits to Sandy Bay (my second visit occurred two years after the first) I was free to walk through the corridors of the school and recall angry white teachers yelling at and berating young native students for not paying attention or not learning the lessons or not sitting still, etc. It reminded me of some of the Catholic institutions I attended when I was a kid. The Sandy Bay school ‘felt’ unhealthy, dysfunctional and broken. The high school kids attending my presentations were generally distracted, disinterested and disrespectful. It was clear that many of them were suffering from some level of psychological damage which was probably due, in part, to some form of substance abuse. I spoke to the principle and some of the support staff about this and they acknowledged that drugs and alcohol were rampant in the community and that drug-awareness programs, healing circles and counselling were available to the students. The adults fared no better. During both visits to Sandy Bay I was billeted in guest housing on the reserve and had the opportunity to walk through the rows of cheap pre-fab dwellings, many of which had curtains drawn with the ubiquitous blue glow of televisions emanating out into the cold winter’s night. The adult community’s dysfunction was palpable…no where was there even a hint of spirit, celebration or cultural pride.
Stanley Mission
Stanley Mission high school was the complete reverse…I was delighted to hear Cree being spoken in the hallways and the classrooms. Most, if not all, of the teachers were Aboriginal who had completed their post-secondary education and had returned to the Stanley Mission school. I seem to remember that the only non-aboriginal staff member at that time was the principle. There was definitely an air of positivity filling the class rooms, school corridors and the extended community as well. The corridor walls were plastered with vibrant arts and crafts depicting native culture and native spirituality, and the front lobby of the school resembled a large circular tepee with an open fire pit in the centre with a seating area that was laid out in concentric circles to accommodate large gatherings. Again, what really caught my attention was the lively, animated exchanges between the students and the teachers…in Cree!!! Unlike Sandy Bay, the students who attended my sessions in Stanley Mission were attentive, respectful and engaged. I was escorted through the community during lunch breaks and the same sense of positivity was felt as much outside the school as within it. I remember thinking to myself…what a healthy community this is.
“Aboriginal people must be allowed to be Aboriginal people”
Stanley Mission is the light at the end of the Indian Residential school tunnel. A beacon of hope in the midst of a national tragedy. Much thought, much compassion and much wisdom went into creating and re-designing a community so that it could heal itself from within. And the Stanley Mission high school’s philosophy is indicative of the right balance that needs to be struck between the Canadian mainstream’s education model and the traditional ways of the Woodland and Chipewyan Cree. Yes, the natives now live in a colonized world with some ostensibly benefits from reading, writing and arithmetic but the core of their communities and the core of their culture (which includes education) must remain true to Aboriginal traditions and Aboriginal sensibilities. In essence, Aboriginal people must be allowed to be Aboriginal people…while in the midst of the Euro-Canadian mainstream.
Dennis feels strongly that this is the only way to solve, or at least mitigate the Aboriginal youth suicide crisis in Canada. The mainstream education system has failed Aboriginal youth…the paternalistic, suffocating, wardship approach, which has been in place since the early days of the Indian Act is fundamentally flawed in that its original intent and design was to assimilate Canada’s Indigenous cultures out of existence. A new native-friendly education paradigm (similar to Stanley Mission) needs to be developed and implemented in Aboriginal communities and it needs to include those elements which can re-ignite the flame of cultural pride and self-esteem in our youngsters…elements that provide our youth with every opportunity to celebrate who they are as Aboriginal Peoples.
Those elements include; regional dialects, native spirituality, connection to the land, music, dancing, art, story telling and the wisdom of the elders. (Traditionally, native education included moral and ethical teaching…how to live in harmony with the Earth…how to respect women as equals and honour the elders, etc.). This does not mean we do away with the mainstream education system…it simply means we create a workable balance between the two systems that incorporates the ancient wisdom and Earth-reverent values of Canada’s First Peoples. And lastly, this new native-friendly education paradigm must be considered as only one part of a much broader transformation and cultural renaissance that needs to happen at the community level. It is not only the children who need to have the flame of cultural pride and self-esteem ignited in their hearts and minds… it is the whole community.
After recounting his personal experiences while visiting these two remote northern Saskatchewan communities, Dennis and the students will discuss Aboriginal youth suicide, especially the psychological/social conditions and the broken native education system that drives so many young children to take their own lives. What level of hopelessness and despondency would lead to such a horrendous waste of human life? What are the religious and cultural attitudes (especially the attitudes of superiority, domination and subjugation), that would, over a relatively short span of Canadian history, create an atmosphere that has been – and continues to be – conducive to mass suicide among our youth?
What does a nine percent youth suicide rate actually mean? What would happen if nine out of every one hundred children from a mainstream, Euro-Canadian community (like Calgary or Ottawa or Vancouver or Halifax) committed suicide? The Indian Residential schools have been closed now for decades…why are so many of our children still killing themselves? Dennis will pepper the students with questions and insights (during this open forum) that are mainly drawn from ‘The Psychology of Cultural Trauma’ which is Pt One of his most recent book titled ‘The Honour Song Trilogy’, a link to which is provided below.
Dennis Lakusta
January, 2011