Addictions, mental health issues must be addressed to reduce crime: round table

While last week's round table meeting with MP Wayne Easter, Liberal critic for public safety and emergency preparedness drew a variety of comments from all attendees, it was clear the issue of addictions and mental illness, especially among First Nations People, was on everyone's mind.

Councillor Ray Fox opened the comments by saying North Battleford has been innovative in its efforts, but there are still gaps that need to be filled.

"We are still sending sick people to jail, still putting homeless people in mental institutions," he said.

Roberta Swindler, an addictions services worker with Battle River Treaty 6 Health Centre, said, "The one thing I think might help our community is a detox centre instead of the drunk tank. It shouldn't be a police matter if they are drunk; it's an addiction matter. We give them shelter, but then they go sleep in the bushes."

She said it's not as much of a homeless issue as it is a mental health and addictions issue.

"Only a handful don't actually have a home ... but everybody closes doors on them except the drunk tank. Whether it's FAS [fetal alcohol syndrome] or trauma or stigma of mental health, the police can't do anything about mental health issues," said Swindler.

"I've lived here most of my life and I know pretty much everybody who's walking the streets, going to jail, ending up in the hospital. It's a sad situation."

Others at the meeting said they felt safe in their community, but Swindler said she is afraid to walk alone at night.

"I see it differently," she said. "I know these people who are getting shot, or are doing shooting, ending up in the drunk tank every night, sleeping in the bush, so it hits home for me."

Fox finished the round of comments with an emotional plea for understanding of First Nations issues.

He expressed concern that, while progress is being made, some things have not changed - things that affect First Nations people.

"Those are the violent death rates, the infant mortality rates, the graduation rates, the incarceration rates. Those are still very much there. As a matter of fact they've gotten worse if nothing else."

Fox, whose first language is Cree, said, "When I think on the English side, I go, 'Well, why don't they just get a haircut and get a job,' because that's a lot of people's reaction. Thank goodness my brown side didn't pay attention," he added, displaying his own long ponytail.

As a parent, he said he's lived with the statistical reality that his son (who is now in college in the United States) had a better chance of going to jail than graduating from high school.

"I am a citizen of North Battleford and I want North Batteford to be the safest it can be, the best it can be, but I also have this obligation and responsibility to my First Nations brothers and sisters, they deserve better than what they've got.

"When we talk about missing and murdered aboriginal women, those are my sisters, those are my daughters, those are my grandmothers," Fox said tearfully.

"Why are they disappearing? Why are they being murdered? Because they lead a questionable lifestyle? Because they want to hitchhike to see a doctor in some town and they get raped and murdered along the way?" he asked.

"I don't want to hit anybody over the head with a sympathy stick ... [but] what I am talking about is there's always something that's really not quite there for us."

Fox said he has worked with both Swindler and BATC wellness counsellor Kimberly Night, who were also emotionally affected by his words.

"I know they understand where I'm at and what I'm talking about it. It's real for us ... we wake up every day like that and we spend every day like that."

Easter responded, saying all Canadians should recognize the fastest growing population is aboriginal youth. It is Canada's greatest economic and human potential and our greatest human potential, he said, and it's a federal responsibility to act.

"It is our jurisdiction, and regardless of political stripe, we have failed to deal with it in the proper way."

Efforts have been made, he said, but ground has been lost in recent years.

"I think the recognition is increasingly there among government ... and someday somehow we have to get there."

Thirty-year-old Kimberly Night, a wellness counsellor with Battlefords Agency Tribal Chiefs, presented her story at last Wednedsday's round table on community safety and crime rates in North Battleford.

Night describes herself as not very educated, although she has a school diploma and an electrician certificate. She also attended university, but dropped out,

"I lived the other side to wellness than the life that I lead now. I myself am a recovering drug addict, a recovering user."

Night says she's experienced significant personal growth in the past five years, beginning her journey with BATC and learning about wellness.

"It's not a secret. North Battleford is surrounded by First Nations people, and when I first started my journey I was ashamed," said Night. "I was ashamed of all the crime, of all my people not making the right decisions for themselves, feeding their addictions and passing it down from generation to generation.

"My mom and dad are very highly respected elders of the community I come from, so me being the drug addict, the alcoholic that I was, the neglectful mother I was, they were ashamed of me. I had nowhere to go but up."

 Night says she made a choice to change the cycle.

"Even though my mom and dad weren't addicts, they weren't alcoholics, they did go through residential school, and I think a lot of our trauma as First Nations people comes from residential school."

The hurt her parents faced, she said, was passed down to her.

"They didn't pass it down in a cycle of drugs and alcohol, but passed it down in their parenting skills, or lack of parenting skills. It was very 'residential school,' how we were raised. There were seven of us. I was never taught about the facts of life, about the birds and the bees, about the different types of people that are in the world."

She says she achieved extensive learning in her 20s, and decided to put her education to use.

"I was so blessed to wake up one day and say 'I'm going to train.' I want to be a model for people my age ... so I figured through BATC I could initiate a movement."

She said BATC believed in her and sent her for training in personal growth and how to facilitate. She has now facilitated at every First Nation around North Battleford and about three in the city.

Since then, she and her family were approached to write a curriculum.

"It's all to do with bringing our people back to our spirituality. That's where we need to go as First Nations people in order to instill the pride that we lost, to instill those values that we lost. We suffered a big trauma, a genocide if you will. It's to the point where it's discussed on Facebook every day. If we go to the [North Battleford] Victims of Crime, there are conversations on there that are a hundred plus comments long and it's to do with the drunken Indians, or racism in North Battleford, and people not being educated, even First Nations people not being educated as to why we are the way we are. Why do we drink every day? Why do we choose not to work? Why do we sometimes not even get out of bed? It's a touchy discussion, but it has to be said, I don't know what else to hide behind or what else to not say. This is a real issue; these are my brothers and sisters, my cousins, my aunties and uncles."

Night believes if people would learn from her curriculum and implement it the way the family wellness program is doing at BATC, it can achieve change.

"It needs to be taught from a young age to the elders," she said. "Some of our elders are sick. They don't think the way elders used to a hundred years ago. It's a matter of us losing our language, our culture, our value system and finding that balance between being educated in the western world ... and also remaining in the spiritual realm of our culture. That's where we need to be. That's where we need to go, and we can get there."