Overlooked tragedy of Quebec’s aboriginal young people

Their deaths go unnoticed. They do not make headlines. However, the families of these young victims remain reeling for years.

During the past 15 years, 3,000 young Quebecers under the age of 19 have died in violent or suspicious circumstances. Of these, some 260 are aboriginal children — more than half of them Inuit — according to the La Presse investigation, which analyzed thousands of Quebec coroners’ reports dealing with the deaths of minors and 18-year-olds since 2000.

This corresponds to roughly 9 per cent of suspicious deaths of all Quebec children and adolescents during this period. But aboriginal youth represent only 2.6 per cent of Quebecers in that age range.

The data for aboriginal youth shows their suicide rate is unusually high, as is their rate of sudden infant death syndrome, lung disorders, diseases and accidents of all kinds.

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In 2012, Tessa Chachai-Petiquay, from Wemotaci, an Atikamekw reserve north of Shawinigan,suffocated between a couch and a mattress placed on the floor, on which she slept with her parents. She was 2 months old. The coroner denounced the wretched conditions of the family’s rented housing.

The next year, Tukaq Amarualik was driving a snowmobile at a high speed through the northern village of Puvirnituq in Nunavik. The 17-year-old had been drinking. His friend, Quinuajuak Mina, 15, was a passenger. Amarualik failed to negotiate a curve and slammed into a metal staircase. Both died instantly.

In 2009, Zachary Adams, 13, from Akwesasne Mohawk reserve southwest of Montreal, bought an AK-47 rifle. His father asked him to take it back to the gun seller — a friend of his brother — but the seller refused to return his money. Adams kept the rifle and ammunition hidden in his bedroom. One day the father scolded his son, who had been suspended from school for possession of marijuana. The teenager was locked in his room, where shot himself in the head.

The same year, Anna-Louisa Oginany, 13, of Lac-Simon, an Algonquin reserve in Abitibi, hanged herself with a nylon rope attached to a beam in her ceiling. Her cousin had committed suicide three months before. “I miss you so much and I cannot live without you,” wrote Anna-Louisa in a letter found in her computer.

Multiple causes

Suicide is the leading cause of violent death for those 18 and younger in Quebec’s aboriginal communities, the La Presse investigation reveals. According to the data, 102 teenagers have taken their own lives since 2000. The youngest was 11.

The data also reveals at least 73 avoidable fatalities, including fires, car or snowmobile accidents or drownings. In many cases, one of those involved was intoxicated or had been negligent.

This past summer an 8-month-old died in a house fire in the Inuit village of Puvirnituq. The police investigation concluded a cigarette caused the blaze. The fire chief confessed to the local newspaper that “nobody knew how to use the equipment” and called for urgent training for his men.

“In general, (indigenous communities) are much more likely to be poor, to live in substandard housing and have difficulty accessing health care,” says a report by the Canadian Paediatric Society on the First Nations, Inuit and Métis health.

Problems associated with remoteness or lack of resources, as in the case of the fire in Puvirnituq, are also responsible for dozens of deaths.

In 2011, for example, a 1-year-old boy died of septic shock on the plane carrying him to the hospital. Papigattuk Kadjulik had spent the night at the health centre in his Inuit village of Kangiqsujuaq on the Ungava peninsula.

The medical team decided to transfer him by emergency air ambulance to the nearest hospital. He didn’t make it.

Like young Papigattuk, 70 babies died of suspicious causes before their first birthday, according to the data.

There have been cases of sudden infant death syndrome. Newborns, especially in the Far North, succumbed to lung infections that are hardly ever fatal in the south. Parents have crushed their children as they slept in the same bed.

Cry from the heart

“We struggle. Do Quebecers know that we struggle? Do they care?” asked Siasi Smiler Irqumia, the mayor of Inukjuak, a remote village of 1,600 on the eastern edge of Hudson Bay.

“It’s so frustrating to lose so many young people. Youth are our future. We try to make sure that our people are OK, that they do not suffer all the time. But we don’t have enough resources to heal our community.”

More and more aboriginal young people see parenthood as a way out of poverty. Leaders are sounding the alarm.

In Manawan, an Atikamekw reserve of 2,200 inhabitants in the Lanaudière region, there will be 85 births this year. The chief of the band council, Jean-Roch Ottawa, describes the baby boom as a ticking “time bomb.”

“Imagine all the new housing, health services, child care spaces, classrooms and teachers we will need if we do nothing,” says the former businessman. “In 10 years, it’ll be what: 120 pregnancies per year? Federal funding does not follow that boom.”

Chief Ottawa, himself a father, is concerned about the abilities of these young parents — sometimes as young as 13 or 14 — to care for their children.

There are similar concerns for the Inuit.

“Here, children are having children,” says Andy Moorhouse, corporate secretary for Makivik Corp., an organization mandated to protect the rights and interests of Inuit from Nunavik. “The average age for having a first child is 16 or 17 years. It’s rare for someone who is 20 to not be a parent.”

Moorhouse, a former mayor of Inukjuak, speaks from experience.

“I had my first at 17. I did not know how to raise a child. I was too young,” he admits. “Young people must understand that they are not obliged to have a child so young.”

In Canada, nearly a third of aboriginals are aged 14 and under, according to Statistics Canada figures. The proportion is even higher in Nunavik, where 40 per cent of Inuit are younger than 15. Thirteen per cent are under 4.