This is definitely NOT limited to Canada ~ there has been a groundswell of young deaths by suicide for a number of years everywhere ~ here's a link from the op to a related article: Tribal Leaders Are Looking For Ways To End A Crisis Of Youth Suicides ~ emphasis/bolding below is mine ~ Sooz

After 11 Suicide Attempts In Just One Day, Canadian Community Declares State of Emergency
by Alex Zielinski Apr 12, 2016 10:46 am

On Saturday evening, 11 members of a remote Canadian indigenous community attempted to take their own lives. This wasn’t a premeditated plan or group pact — officials say there was no single cause of these individual incidents. Rather, this has just become the reality of those living in Attawapiskat First Nation, an isolated native community plagued with neglected mental health issues.

Since September, the small community of 2,000 has seen 101 attempted suicides. That’s around 5 percent of the population. But this weekend’s unprecedented spike pushed the Attawapiskat council to officially declare a local state of emergency.

“I’m asking friends, government, that we need help in our community,” said Attawapiskat Chief Bruce Shisheesh in an interview with CBC. “I have relatives that have attempted to take their own lives…cousins, friends,” he added.

This crisis has easily overwhelmed the community’s four mental health care workers, prompting the council to ask for government assistance for months. But it took this weekend’s declaration to finally attract outside help.

Canadian health ministers announced Sunday they would immediately fly in a crisis team of mental health and social workers to the area. Until then, Shisheesh said, the council has hired security guards to monitor all at-risk patients in the local hospital.

Many First Nations advocates are upset with the government’s slow response to this longtime issue. Charlie Angus, the region’s parliamentary critic of indigenous affairs, called the crisis a “rolling nightmare.”

“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,” he told CBC. “The northern communities are left on their own,” he said. “We don’t have the mental health service dollars. We don’t have the resources.”

Angus said that he’s lost count of the communities that have declared suicide-based emergencies since he took office. Suicide has quickly become the leading cause of death for First Nations people under the age of 44.

There’s no sole reason for this sobering statistic.

Drug abuse, overcrowded homes, bullying, and untreated mental health conditions, like depression, all contribute to the growing suicide rate, said Shisheesh.

Of course, this fatal mental health crisis is not unique to Canadian's indigenous populations. Alaska Native men between the ages of 15-24 have thehighest rate of suicide among any demographic in the United States, at around 34 suicide-caused deaths per 100,000 people. In some Native American communities, the youth suicide rate is ten times the national average. International data shows the same pattern: Australian aboriginals have the highest suicide rate in the world.

The weight of this crisis strains those working the hardest to cure it. On Tuesday morning, Shisheesh posted an update on Twitter: "Trying to be positive here, but getting emotional drain...need your prayers here."

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/04/12/3768473/canada-suicide-first-nations/

I honestly do NOT mean to appear unsympathetic because I AM and I know little to nothing about funds to bands (or nations if you will), but I have heard over the years that they receive tons of money from the Feds. Here is an article. At the link there is a live link to the accounting information for the Attawapiskat. It seems there is a hodge-podge of oversight either from the Feds or the Band council. Also, many times the band councils snub Fed involvement into their finances. Now they are begging for help. These poor, neglected members don't have what they need, but who's fault is it? This is not just a problem for Attawapiskat. There are many remote, poor and smaller bands who are suffering the same way. As I said, I really don't know that much. This is just an example of how the band members get the short end of the stick. Maybe oskar, jim or Sid can shed more light..


How Ottawa spent $90 million at Attawapiskat



Note: This article was inadvertently credited to Brett Hodnett. Full Comment apologizes for any confusion, which was due to a misunderstanding on our part. The original article, written by Chelsea Vowel, appeared on the site âpihtawikosisân.

Prime Minister Harper is apparently scratching his head about where $90 million in federal funding to Attawapiskat has gone. There is much talk about lack of accountability, and no one knowing what happened to the money.

Let’s start with some simple math.

First, $90 million is a deceptive number. It refers to federal funding received since Harper’s government came into power in 2006. In the 2010-2011 fiscal year, Attawapiskat received $17.6 million in federal funds (PDF). The document linked to shows the breakdown of federal funds in case you wanted to know how much is allocated to things like medical transportation, education, maternal health care and so on.



Thus, $90 million refers to the total; the average is about $18 million per year in federal funding since 2006.

[As an aside, you will often see the figure of $34 or $35 million in funding given to Attawapiskat on a yearly basis. This refers to total revenues. As noted, federal funding was $17.6 million, and provincial funding was $4.4 million. The community brings in about $12 million of its own revenue, as shown here. So no, the ‘government’ is not giving Attawapiskat $34 million a year.]

Okay fine, but where did it go?

Attawapiskat publishes its financial statements going back to 2005. If you want to know where the money was spent, you can look in the audited financial reports. This document (PDF) for example provides a breakdown of all program funding.

Just getting to this stage alone proves the falsehood of the claim that there is no accountability and no one knows where the money goes.

But $90 million could have built the community 360 brand new houses!

Assuming, as Grand Chief Stan Louttit of the Mushkegowyk Council has stated, that a new house costs $250,000 to build in Attawapiskat (with half of that being transportation costs), then yes, 360 new units could have been provided by $90 million.

However, this money was not just earmarked for the construction of new homes.

An important fact that many commentators forget (or are unaware of) is that section 91(24) of the Constitution Act of 1867 gives the Federal Crown exclusive powers over “Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians.”

You see, for non-natives, the provinces are in charge of funding things like education, health-care, social services and so on. For example, the Province of Ontario allocated $10,730 in education funding per non-native pupil in the 2010-2011 fiscal year. For most First Nations, particularly those on reserve, the federal government through INAC is responsible for providing funds for native education.

How is this relevant?

It helps explain why the entire $90 million was not allocated to the construction of new houses. That $90 million includes funding for things like:
•education per pupil
•education infrastructure (maintenan­ce, repair, teacher salaries, etc)
•health-care per patient
•health-care, infrastruc­ture (clinics, staff, access to services outside the community in the absence of facilities on reserve)
•social services (facilitie­s, staff, etc)
•infrastruc­ture (maintenan­ce and constructi­on)
•a myriad of other services

These costs are often not taken into account when attempting to compare a First Nation reserve to a non-native municipality. In fact, many people forget that their own health-care and education are heavily subsidized by tax dollars as well.

What’s the point here?

How much money was actually allocated to housing in 2010-2011? Page 2 of Schedule A (PDF) shows us that out of the $17.6 million in federal funds, only $2 million was provided for housing. Yes, even $2 million would be enough to 8 brand new homes, if those funds were not also used to maintain and repair existing homes. The specific breakdown of how that money was spent is found in Schedule I.

Now, I admit I am confused about something:


According to figures providing by Aboriginal Affairs, the Attawapiskat Cree band has received just over $3 million in funds specifically for housing and a further $2.8 million in infrastructure money since 2006.
.
That is actually less than I estimated it would be, going by the 2010-2011 figures. I estimated $10 million for housing, but INAC (now Aboriginal Affairs) is saying it was $5.8 million.

Anyway, that isn’t too important. The point is, if INAC is correct, only $5.8 million has gone towards housing for Attawapiskat. At most that could have built the community 23 new houses, if Attawapiskat had merely let the older houses go without any repairs or maintenance for 5 years. Letting existing homes go to pieces in a remote and harsh environment is not a great strategy, however.

The point here is, $90 million sounds like a huge amount, but the real figures allocated to housing are much, much smaller.

Fine, they got $5.8 million for housing, surely that is enough?

Again, assuming 23 new homes were built, and all older homes were left without maintenance and repairs, and the people in charge of housing worked for free and there were no other costs associated with administering the housing program, Attawapiskat would still be experiencing a housing crisis.

It is estimated that $84 million is needed for housing alone to meet Attawapiskat’s housing needs (you’ll find those figures in a small table on the right, titled “Attawapiskat by the numbers”).

The Feds are just handing that money over and the Band does whatever it wants with it!

Many people seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that First Nations have self-governance and run themselves freely. This is far from the truth, but given that most Canadians are familiar with the municipal model, the confusion is actually understandable. It isn’t as though Canada does a very good job of teaching people about the Indian Act.

Section 61(1)(a-k) of the Indian Act declares that: “With the consent of the council of a band, the Minister may authorize and direct the expenditure of capital moneys of the band” for various purposes.

What this means is that Ministerial approval is actually a requirement before any capital expenditures can occur on reserve. In practice, a Band will generally pass a Band Council Resolution (BCR) authorising a certain expenditure (say on housing), and that BCR must be forwarded to INAC for approval.

That’s right. Most First Nations have to get permission before they can spend money. That is the opposite of ‘doing whatever they want’ with the money. Bands are micromanaged to an extent unseen in nearly any other context that does not involve a minor or someone who lacks capacity due to mental disability.

Any claims that INAC has no control over what Bands spend their money on is false.

I would hope by now you’d ask the following question:

If INAC has to approve spending, why is Harper so confused?

There is a tendency to believe that our government officials do things in a way that makes sense. This, despite the fact that most of us don’t actually believe this to be true. We want to believe. I know I do.

So upon learning that the federal government is the one in charge of providing services to First Nations that are provided to non-natives by the province, we might assume that the provision of these services are administered in a comparable manner.

Not so. And it actually makes sense why not, when you think about it for a moment. Have you ever seen a federal hospital, for example? No, because hospitals are built, maintained, and staffed by the provinces. Thus, when a First Nations person needs to access health-care, they cannot access federal infrastructure. They must access provincial infrastructure and have the feds rather than the province pick up the tab.

If only it were as easy as federal funding via provincial structures.

The Auditor General of Canada speaks up.

The Auditor General of Canada released a report in June of this year examining Programs for First Nations on Reserve. A similar report was published in 2006. This report identifies deficiencies in program planning and delivery by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC), Health Canada, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), and the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat.

The reports also provide a number of recommendations to improve these deficiencies. The 2011 report evaluated the progress made since the 2006 report, and in most areas, gave these federal agencies a failing grade.

Don’t worry, there is a point to this, stay with me.

The 2011 report has this to say:


In our view, many of the problems facing First Nations go deeper than the existing programs’ lack of efficiency and effectiveness. We believe that structural impediments severely limit the delivery of public services to First Nations communities and hinder improvements in living conditions on reserves. We have identified four such impediments:
•lack of clarity about service levels,
•lack of a legislative base,
•lack of an appropriate funding mechanism, and
•lack of organizations to support local service delivery.
.
I know this is going to look like mumbo jumbo at first, so let me break it down a little for you. This will help explain why millions of dollars of funding is not enough to actually improve the living conditions of First Nations people, particularly those on reserve.

Lack of clarity about service levels

As explained earlier the federal government is in charge of delivering services that are otherwise provided by the provinces to non-natives. The Auditor General states:


“It is not always evident whether the federal government is committed to providing services on reserves of the same range and quality as those provided to other communities across Canada.”
.
Shockingly, the federal government does not always have clear program objectives, nor does it necessarily identify specific roles and responsibilities for program delivery, and has not established measures for evaluating performance in order to determine if outcome are actually met.

That’s right. The federal government is not keeping track of what it does, how it does it, or whether what it is doing works. The Auditor General recommends the federal government fix this, pronto. How can a community rely on these services if the federal government itself isn’t even clear on what it is providing and whether the programs are working?

Lack of a legislative base


“Provincial legislation provides a basis of clarity for services delivered by provinces. A legislative base for programs specifies respective roles and responsibilities, eligibility, and other program elements. It constitutes an unambiguous commitment by government to deliver those services. The result is that accountability and funding are better defined.”
.
The provinces all have some sort of Education Act that clearly lays out the roles and responsibilities of education authorities, as well as mechanisms of evaluation. There is generally no comparable federal legislation for the provision of First Nations education, health-care, housing and so on.

As noted by the AG, legislation provides clarity and accountability. Without it, decision can be made on an ill-defined ‘policy’ basis or on a completely ad hoc basis.

Lack of an appropriate funding mechanism

The AG focuses on a few areas here.

Lack of service standards for one. Were you aware that provincial building codes do not apply on reserve? Some provincial laws of ‘general application’ (like Highway Traffic Acts) can apply on reserve, but building codes do not. There is a federal National Building Code, but enforcement and inspection has been a major problem. This has been listed as one of the factors in why homes built on reserve do not have a similar ‘life’ to those built off reserve.

Poor timing for provision of funds is another key issue. “Most contribution agreements must be renewed yearly. In previous audits, we found that the funds may not be available until several months into the period to be funded.” This is particularly problematic for housing as “money often doesn’t arrive until late summer, past the peak construction period, so projects get delayed and their costs rise.”

Lack of accountability.


“It is often unclear who is accountable to First Nations members for achieving improved outcomes or specific levels of services. First Nations often cite a lack of federal funding as the main reason for inadequate services. For its part, INAC maintains that the federal government funds services to First Nations but is not responsible for the delivery or provision of these services.”
.
The AG also refers to a heavy reporting burden put on First Nations, and notes that the endless paperwork often is completely ignored anyway by federal agencies.

Lack of organisations to support local service delivery

This refers once again to the fact that there are no federal school or health boards, no federal infrastructure and expertise. Some programs are delivered through provincial structures, while others are provided directly by the federal government, with less than stellar results.

As the Auditor General states, “Change is needed if meaning full progress is to be realised”. There is extreme lack of clarity about what the federal government is doing, why, how, and whether it is at all effective. No wonder Harper is confused.

Tired yet? Just a few more points.

The Chief of Attawapiskat made $71,000 last year while her people live in tents!

Apparently we are supposed to be outraged at the excess involved here. This of course follows on the heels of a report by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation about ‘jaw-dropping’ reserve salaries. It’s become fashionable to rant about chiefs making more than premiers (though no one could make that claim here).

Attawapiskat publishes its salaries, travel expenses and honorariums (again, nothing being hidden). Chief Theresa Spence was paid $69,575 in salary and honorariums in 2010-2011, and had $1,798 in travel expenses for a total of about $71K.

If you are like most people, you don’t spend a lot of time looking at what public employees actually make. What number wouldn’t shock you in the absence of such context? $50,000? $32,000? I suspect any amount would be offered as some sort of proof that…something’s not right.

Well okay. Why don’t we take a look at some other salaries? Ontario Premier McGuinty made $209,000 in 2010, and apparently over 100 public service executives made more than he did.

It is difficult to do a really accurate comparison of salaries, because Ontario’s Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act (doc) of 1996 only requires that salaries over $100,000 be reported. (In addition, if the salaries are reported elsewhere, they are not necessarily included in this report) However, the annual reports are a fantastic resource. Here is the list of various public sector employees making over $100,000 a year. I offer this merely in order to ask…were you aware these people were making this amount of money?

I sure wasn’t. These are salaries paid by tax dollars too. I have no idea if the Director of Quality Services for the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation should be paid $147,437.58 a year (sorry to single you out, sir, I chose randomly). If this corporation were in the news and having financial difficulties, I have no doubt this salary would be brought up as somehow relevant…but is it?

I don’t know. That’s the point. I don’t think the people bringing it up know either. I haven’t been able to find a source listing the salaries of mayors of municipalities in Ontario to compare to Chief Spence’s salary. Then again, I doubt anyone would seriously claim that if she worked for free, the housing crisis in Attawakpiskat would be over.

A good comment was sent to me recently on the issue of salaries that I’d like to share. “Whenever one is talking about the salaries of say a [premier or a] prime minister versus someone else, two things: 1) parliamentarians get very good pensions and for a relatively short time of service; 2) more particularly, a post like the prime ministership or the presidency of the United States opens up all kinds of doors for later life. So even if the salary is $200,000, the person is virtually guaranteed a very comfortably post-office life. Counsel in a big law firm. Paid corporate director. University professor. Etc. etc. I don’t think we imagine that the Barrick Gold Corporations of the world will be banging down the door of a past chief of Attawapiskat in a comparable way.”

I wonder what kind of pension Chief Spence can count on?

The more you know…

I’m sure I’m forgetting some of the common accusations and arguments being made about Attawapiskat on various forums and comment sections of online news articles. I might update if necessary to address them, but I think you now have at least a base to begin with, whether you honestly just want to understand the situation a little better, or want to fight those comment battles.

Originally published here.

Update: December 2, an article by Michael Posluns sheds some light on what third party management means in practice.

Chief Theresa Spence has published a press release on the imposition of third party management in Attawapiskat.

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comme ... 90-million

Roseanne: That's a fantastic opinion piece. I remember saving it to PDF when it was posted during Teresa Spence's protest. Thanks for posting it.

A large part of the problem the First Nations people face is the inculcated ignorance among the non-native population. There were a lot of violent, hate-filled comments during Ms. Spence's protest and it struck me that the people posting their hate were doing so, not necessarily out of rage but out of inculcated systemic hatred. If you recall, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was preparing their report on the Residential Schools - a report that later would conclude that successive governments of Canada over the past 150 years were engaging in "Cultural Genocide". In the meantime, the Harper government deliberately changed the terms of First Nations funding agreements when they came up for renewal. The "new deal" demanded that no First Nation receiving funding can stand opposed to any government or resource company project. Failure to sign resulted in denial of funding. Some First Nations Chiefs signed the deal not knowing that the change had been made in the fine print, but most Chiefs refused to sign and lost their funding. Yet another challenge to be brought to the Supreme Court to be sure, but then again, that's exactly what Harper wanted.

Another contributor to the funding problems is the Indian Act itself. It was deliberately designed to be confusing and inefficient. What better way to keep the restless natives under control than by holding a great big stick while dangling a measly carrot.

Personally, I'm tired of the standard blowhard comeback every time lack of funding comes up in comment sections. The comments are usually visceral hate-inspired diatribes that contribute nothing in the face of the fact that MY COUNTRY has been engaging in Cultural Genocide throughout our lifetime without our knowledge or approval. Considering the attitude of the previous government - that's frightening.

Is there a solution to cultural genocide?

Well... we can stop doing it. That would be a start. And whatever it takes in funding and resources to begin fixing the complex problems faced by First Nation people should be done - period. This is the first government I've experienced that really seems ready to roll up their sleeves and actually do it.

The OP stated that this wasn't a group pact. I appears that it may have been and is still ongoing.
So very sad.

Youth suicide pacts highlight 'desperate' situation in Attawapiskat

Upwards of 15 youth, including a nine-year-old, in the remote Attawapiskat First Nation had planned to overdose on prescription pills as part of two separate suicide pacts, local health officials have confirmed.

Health officials in the area say only one or two of the young people managed to ingest the drugs before they were apprehended by police and transferred to a local hospital on Monday.

"The only thing I could understand was that we gather together in happy times, and we gather together in desperate times. I believe these young people were desperate for attention," said Anna Betty Achneepineskum, Deputy Grand Chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, which includes Attawapiskat.

The incident comes after Attawapiskat declared a state of emergency over the weekend, when 11 people in the community of 2,000 attempted suicide in a single day, prompting federal and provincial health officials to descend on the community.

Local officials have said community health-care workers are overwhelmed by the recent string of suicide attempts – which have totalled more than 100 since September of last year.

Following Monday's suicide attempts, the local hospital was so inundated that some of the affected youth were sent to the jail in Attawapiskat.

Another five more youth were taken to the Attawapiskat hospital for suicide attempts late Tuesday afternoon.

More here: http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/youth-suic ... -1.2855386

There was an emergency debate in the House yesterday. Don't know what came of it, though.

It's hardly ancient history ....



Sheena Kennedy

1. Nine year old Vicky Stewart of the Tsimshian nation was killed at the United Church residential school in Edmonton on April 9, 1958 by school matron Ann Knizky, who hit Vicky over the head with a two by four. The RCMP refused to press charges against either Knizky or the United Church, and threatened Vicky`s family with imprisonment if they pursued the matter.

2. Margaret Sepass was raped and then beaten to death by an Anglican priest named John Warner on December 5, 1969, at St. Michael’s Indian school in Alert Bay, British Columbia. Margaret was nine years old. Her burial site is unknown and John Warner was never charged.

3. On January 5, 1938, Albert Gray was beaten to death by Reverend Alfred Caldwell of the United Church of Canada when Albert took a prune from a jar without permission. Albert was eleven years old. His body was buried in secret behind the Ahousat Indian school and Alfred Caldwell was never charged.

4. On December 24, 1946, the same Principal Caldwell kicked 14 year old Maisie Shaw to her death down a flight of stairs at the United Church`s Alberni residential school, as witnessed by Harriett Nahanee. The RCMP covered up the murder.
5. On April 3, 1964, Richard Thomas was sodomized and then strangled to death by Catholic priest Terence McNamara at the Kuper Island Indian school. Richard was buried in secret in an orchard south of the school, and Terence McNamara, who is still alive, was never charged.

6. Elaine Dick, age 6, was kicked to death by a nun in April of 1964 at the Squamish Indian school in Vancouver. The RCMP refused to press charges when requested by the victim`s family.

7. Daniel Kangetok, age 4, was infected with an untreatable virus as part of a Defense Research Board experimental program funded by the Canadian military. He was left to die at the Carcross Anglican residential school in the Yukon, in February of 1971.

8. David Sepass, age 8, was pushed down some stairs by a priest at the Kuper Island catholic school and left to die, early in 1958.

9. A newborn Cree baby was burned alive by a senior priest at the Catholic Muscowegan Indian school near Regina in May of 1944, as witnessed by Irene Favel. The priest was never charged.

10. Susan Ball, age 5, starved to death in a closet at the United Church Edmonton residential school during the winter term of 1959, after being confined there by a church matron for speaking her own language.

11. Pauline Frank, age 8, died from medical experimentation performed by Canadian army researchers at the Nanaimo Indian Hospital in March of 1972. Her body was buried in secret on the grounds of the hospital, which is still restricted military property.

12. Albert Baptiste, age 9, died from electric shocks from a cattle prod wielded by a catholic priest at the Mission residential school over Christmas in 1951.
13. Nancy Joe, age 14, died from involuntary drug testing by military doctors at the Nanaimo Indian hospital in the spring of 1967.

14. Lorraine white, teenager, was gang raped by United Church residential school staff and left to die, Port Alberni, summer of 1971.

15. Eighteen Mohawk children, all under the age of sixteen, were shot to death by Canadian soldiers outside Brantford, Ontario, in the summer of 1943, as witnessed by Rufus McNaughton. The children were buried in secret in a mass grave.

16. Johnny Bingo Dawson, an eyewitness to crimes in Anglican residential schools and a leader of protests against these criminal churches, died of injuries from a police beating after being threatened by them, in Vancouver on December 9, 2009. Official cause of death was alcohol poisoning, despite the absence of alcohol in his blood.

17. Ricky Lavallee, the eyewitness to Bingo’s beating by the Vancouver police, died of a blow to his chest in early January of 2011.

18. Harriett Nahanee, the first eyewitness to a residential school murder to go public, died after mistreatment in a Vancouver jail, February, 2007.

… and more than 50,000 others, all of them children.

No-one has ever been charged or tried under Canadian law for any these killings. And the criminal government and churches responsible for this mass murder have been legally absolved of any responsibility for them under Canadian law.

Nothing has been healed. Nothing has been reconciled. Justice has been exterminated as completely as these innocent victims.

**Pictured is Victoria Stewart 1949-1958**

I take a lot of this stuff with a grain of salt. Indians seem to do a lot of whining and not much doing for themselves. They live in these little villages way out in the middle of nowhere and then cry about there being no employment. Fewer kids died in residential schools than would have died had they stayed home. In fact the death rate was below that of white and native children not in residential schools, but to hear the natives and even our own namby pamby prime minister tell it you would think we lined the kids up before firing squads.
Unmarked graves, my ass, even some of the chiefs admit they knew the graves were there and they had been marked but the crosses rotted away and they couldn't be bothered to place new ones. Now we have the kids who went to school during the day and home at night whining about wanting big payouts. They feel cheated because the kids who went to residential schools got big money and they want some too.

Do you have statistics to support that? I'm getting fed up with it all as well.

Is it slightly comforting to know that all of the problems do not belong to the US? I don't know.

...and yet the Chief was on the news this morning saying "Oh no! We knew the graves were there."

What she said was that they all knew that sooner or later the graves would turn up. After all, a lot of kids went there and they didn't all come home. And those graves are "unmarked and undocumented".



https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/ ... t-site-of/

Okay: https://edmontonnews.org/2021/07/02/we- ... e-context/

This is being milked for every guilt-dollar possible.

it will never be enough.

Researchers say that TB at residential schools was no accident
Jeremy Appel

Two experts in tuberculosis say the mass death from TB at residential schools was no accident, but the result of deliberate neglect that was part of Canada's broader genocidal project.

Lena Faust, a PhD student at the McGill International TB Centre in Montreal, and Courtney Heffernan, manager of the Tuberculosis Program Evaluation and Research Unit at the University of Alberta, acknowledged in a July 12 Globe and Mail op-ed that it's unknown how many of the children whose remains were uncovered from unmarked graves in the past two months died as a result of TB.

But as early as 1907, chief medical officer of the Department of Indian Affairs Peter Henderson Bryce identified schools an ideal vector for TB transmission, going as far as to say it was "almost as if the prime conditions for the outbreak of epidemics had been deliberately created."

Faust and Heffernan, who are advocates for ending TB in Canada and abroad, emphasize that although there was a TB epidemic at the time, it was greatly exacerbated by conditions in residential schools.

"TB is a communicable infectious disease directly shaped by inequity at the individual and population level. It is well-established that social determinants of health, including malnutrition, overcrowding and poor ventilation, contribute to the development and spread of TB, and these conditions were common in residential schools," they write.

Bryce found that TB death rates were far higher in residential schools than among children in the general Canadian population. In southern Alberta alone, he found that 28 per cent of residential school children died, with TB as the most common cause of death.

According to the Canadian Public Health Association, TB death rates in First Nations communities in the 1930s and `40s were 700 per 100,000, some of the highest ever recorded in a human population. But in residential schools, they were astronomical -- 8,000 per 100,000 children.

As a result, Bryce recommended improvements to the school buildings and children's diets, as well as having TB nurses on staff. The federal government of the day not only ignored Bryce's advice, arguing that these changes were too costly, but prevented ...

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/researche ... -1.5513755

Assomeone very aptly put it, "We didn't create Canada, we inherited it".

Not just residential schools ...

Class-action lawsuit alleges 'widespread' sexual, physical abuse of Indigenous patients at tuberculosis hospitals
Elizabeth St. Philip, Avis Favaro, Medical Correspondent, Ben Cousins

In a year of reckoning for the legacy of Canada’s residential schools, a new class-action lawsuit is exposing the alleged torment Indigenous people faced at medical facilities specifically built for them.

According to the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre at the University of British Columbia, these so-called “Indian hospitals” formally began in the 1930s as a way of tackling high rates of tuberculosis (TB) among Indigenous people, but were chronically understaffed and ended up using “experimental treatment” on their patients.

Ann Hardy is the lead plaintiff in a $1.1-billion class-action lawsuit against the federal government alleging “widespread and common sexual abuse” by hospital staff at these facilities, relating to her time at Edmonton’s Charles Camsell Hospital.

“I think that people need to know that this happened in our hospitals, it happened recently and we need to acknowledge it,” Hardy told CTV News.

“I know that sometimes Canadians think they're just hearing too much of it, and ‘Why can't we just get over it?’ and I think we're not going to be able to, in my case, until we fully expose that this happened.”

The Charles Camsell Hospital, the largest such hospital in Canada, began treating Indigenous people for TB in 1945 and ultimately closed in 1996. There is currently a radar search for possible unmarked graves on the property, similar to those investigations at the sites of former residential schools across the country.

Hardy was transported 700 kilometres from her home to the facility when she contracted TB in 1969. While at the hospital, Hardy said hospital staff sexually abused her and she witnessed the sexual abuse of other patients.

“The medical staff that would come in that was rooming this child would just pull the curtain across to separate us,” she said. “I could hear everything that was going on.”

“It was horrifying, just horrifying and I had to lay there and ...

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/class-act ... -1.5547678

I thought we paid all these "survivors" off a few years ago. I take it they are back at the trough looking for more.

60 Minutes did a segment on Canada's horrific residential schools and the ongoing impact on Indigenous families.

Don't forget that "residential schools" were not unique to Canada. They were found throughout the US as well.

Canada's unmarked graves: How residential schools carried out "cultural genocide" against indigenous children
60-minutes
ANDERSON COOPER

Last year, when archeologists detected what they believed to be 200 unmarked graves at an old school in Canada, it brought new attention to one of the most shameful chapters of that nation's history. Starting in the 1880's and for much of the 20th century, more than 150,000 children from hundreds of indigenous communities across Canada were forcibly taken from their parents by the government and sent to what were called Residential Schools. Funded by the state and run by ...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/canada-res ... 022-02-06/