The Canadian Press
Grief-stricken members of a remote northern Ontario community were still struggling to cope on Friday after the suicide of yet another 12-year-old girl sparked fears a death pact could claim even more young lives.
The death last week of Jenara Roundsky, the third pre-teen member of the Wapekeka First Nation to die by suicide this year, prompted an anguished cry for outside help.
In a declaration of a state of emergency this week, Wapekeka’s chief and band council noted the community _ which also saw 15 young people kill themselves between 1989 and 1999 _ desperately needed help.
“These losses and recent suicides have put the community in a state of crisis,” the band said in a formal resolution. “Community members are going through a state of shock where they have been retraumatized to a point where they cannot help themselves.”
Of particular concern, the band said, were worries that other youngsters, who were following first responders around the community, were being exposed to traumatizing circumstances after the discovery of Jenara’s body sparked a frantic search for others at risk.
Jenara’s social media suggests a troubled tween whose postings were often dark.
“Suicide people are just angels that want to go home,” she reposted recently.
According to a statement from her grandparents, the girl had been diagnosed with “oppositional defiant disorder” _ an illness they said affected her thinking.
“Her actions were on an impulse,” they said.
They also said everyone had done their best to help her and stressed they cast no blame for her death.
Sol Mamakwa, health adviser for the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, which represents 49 Ontario First Nations communities including Wapekeka, said Friday that community leaders were exhausted. Among the immediate assistance requested were calls for 20 Canadian Rangers to come in to provide support and help from the Red Cross.
What’s clear, Mamakwa said, is that something needs to change with the delivery of mental-health care, given that youngsters simply can’t get the help they need.
“The current approach to crisis, the current approach to mental health, it’s not working for the people,” Mamakwa said. “We need to come up with a process that is community-driven and right now that’s not happening.”
In January, Chantell Fox, 12, killed herself two days after her friend Jolynn Winter died by suicide in the fly-in Oji-Cree community of 430 about 600 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, Ont.
Last summer, the First Nation warned the federal government about a developing suicide pact, but Indigenous leaders said the plea for help went unheeded.
“Our community needs help,” Wapekeka spokesman Joshua Frogg said in January after the girls’ deaths. “My chief and council cannot function at 100 per cent capacity because they are preoccupied with the hurt, the pain, the ongoing crisis.”
In a statement this week, Ontario’s Indigenous relations minister, David Zimmer, called the suicide rate in First Nation communities “devastating.”
“We have heard the concerns raised by Indigenous communities and I know that we must do more to ensure that young people have the support that they need,” Zimmer said. “The conditions that lead to despair and hopelessness are complex and multi-layere,.”
Zimmer said provincial and federal officials were, among other things, reviewing proposals submitted by the First Nation for a youth centre and a three-year recreational activity program for youth.
I would like to offer my sincere apologies to the families and entire indigenous peoples who continue to be treated as second class citizens. It angers me that post residential schools and Sixties Scoop has devastated the lives of thousands. This is the ripple effect of colonialism %. Had this taken place in southern Ontario in a Caucasian community, the outpouring of support and resources would be limitless. Kathleen Wynn, northern Ontario is also your responsibility!
Systematic racism at play. To make your money raping the land, the resulting damage will be forever more. We know the rest of Canada doesn’t care. They tire hearing of our plight and seeing our pain. It distracts from the joy they have spending their money made from the rape. Sickening culture, Colonial Canadians
That wasn’t very nice. Everyone has been touched by suicide, not just natives. And natives abuse the land as much as anyone. Stop disrespecting the families of the people who have lost loved ones to suicide
it is horrible to hear this I think all across Ontario should be helped and attended to as well and it is true all conflicts across Ontario needs emergency help badly. these programs that are ran by Social Services also needed to start doing what they are paid to do.
Perhaps these young people should be temporarily taken to a mental health facility to where they can get assessed and helped to where they can be stabilized to where they are out of danger and implement a plan of care when they are returned back into their community. .a specialized team would need to work with these children’s mental health issues of lonliness..depression..repression. .need cultural programs..ect..
I don’t think taking them away is the answer, they need already qualified people to go in and help. Taking them away would cause more anxiety, loneliness and more. Then they would be sent back home to where their problems started. I hope that they don’t want to die, they want the pain to go away. The struggles of their and their parents lives to get better. Bring someone in stat. And train the troubled ones to qualify to help the others who are also in need of care. My heart goes out to the community and the family’s who have lost loved ones.
Mental health systems r crap in cities / HOLISTIC HEALTH +HERBS +NUTRACEUTICALS/ TARGETED SUPPLEMENTS +HEALTHY FOOD +EXERCISE +TEACHING COPING SKILLS ETC +$$$$ FOR HOLISTIC RESOURCES ETC ETC / DRS +PHARMA IS NOT THE REAL ANSWER / SYSTEMS R NOT EFFECTIVE IN THE BIG CITIES/ I AM A HEALTH PROF W HUGE RESULTS BY HOLISTIC METHODS / NOT PHARMA !!!!