Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Sept. 26th, 2016

[Dr. Christopher Lalonde]

No, there isn't one single solution. I think that if you look at the kinds of solutions that we've found—or that the communities have found—that work, things like supporting elder-youth interaction, the form that takes in any community can be wildly different. The important factor is promoting that. The notion of giving communities control over education can take different forms in different places, but for most communities it means inserting their culture into the curriculum that their children are being asked to learn.

If you look at language, there are different ways to support language revitalization. Communities will figure out what works best in their community.

There isn't one answer. There are probably several dozen. The communities are better placed than us to tell you the form of those things.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you both for that response.

We're out of time. However, because of the technical difficulties, we're going to proceed for one final five-minute question, even though it goes beyond our 4:30 limit, and that's going to come from Arnold Viersen.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our guests for being here today.

I'm assuming that you must have had something to do with the ITK proposal on suicide, because we're hearing a lot of the same terms, cultural continuity, protective factors, risk factors, these kinds of things.

One of the things that I do need some clarification on is whether it is possible to define “cultural continuity”. There are fairly tangible aspects to it, and there are fairly non-tangible aspects to it.

Then, could you go into how to pass that on to the next generation, or raise kids? Michael, I think you talked about that. You mentioned the term, “raising kids”, three times. How does that play into it? How do people work with that?

Can you define “cultural continuity” first of all?

[Prof. Michael Chandler]

I think in some sense it's easy enough to define in the abstract: that is, the assumption is that the principal consequence of colonization has been to demean the cultural past of indigenous people and, in some paternalistic way, to take out of their hands control of their own future.

If, broadly defined, continuity of culture is a way of preserving a connection to one's past and a sense of ownership of one's future—and here I echo something that Chris has said at various times—then the particular way that might be done will probably vary importantly from community to community. But the broad outline of the task is to act in a kind of restorative way that essentially allows indigenous people to value and rehabilitate their endangered culture, or absent culture, and to restore their rights to control their own future and that of their children.

At a kind of broad level, it's easy enough to define what it means to talk about the continuity of a culture in time. What it means in particular for a given community really varies from one community to the next and needs to be hammered out by the members of that community itself.

I addressed part of your question, but there was a tail end to it that I need to be reminded of.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

How does that relate to raising children? You've mentioned raising kids three times now, along with cultural continuity and passing on our culture to the next generation. What would be some of the factors that come into passing that on to the next generation? Who's in control of that and where does that go?

[Dr. Christopher Lalonde]

I can speak to that briefly, Michael.

I don't know if Michael summarized this. One of the factors we found was the participation of women in local governance; that is, when women formed a simple majority of the band council, suicide rates were lower in those communities than where women were absent or a minority.

Michael and I tried to figure out what this could signal. Does it signal something about the women when they form a majority or does it signal something about the community that would elect a majority of women? I had a graduate student who said, “Well, why don't we just go and ask those women?” That seemed like a really good idea, so she drove all around British Columbia interviewing band councillors, chiefs, and former chiefs.

We were very careful not to say anything about suicide or youth health but just to ask them how it was that they came to be involved in the governance of their people. When we looked at the transcripts, we saw that almost everything these women said had to do with preparing the next generation. They saw it as really a kind of nurturing role. They were very explicit about how that meant both to create a firm cultural foundation for the youth within their community and to equip them to be able to walk in two worlds, in the indigenous world and the non-indigenous world.

I think the notion of raising children pervades indigenous communities in ways that are plain to anyone who goes into those communities. The fact that we've had several generations of parents removed from the raising of children makes that more poignant, but I think first nations people understand better than anyone else that raising the next generation of children is our most important job in this world.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Professor Lalonde and Professor Chandler, on behalf of the committee, I'd like to thank you very much for your time and your thoughtful remarks.

We're at the end of our time now, but I would like to let you know that Michelle Legault, our committee clerk, will be sending you an email address. It's a web link to a portal where I would invite you to submit a brief or any other comments up to 3,000 words. That will be rolled into the indigenous suicide study, along with the remarks we've heard from you today and, in fact, with the remarks we've heard from all our witnesses. It's another opportunity to get more input if we were unable to cover everything today.

Again, I want to say thank you. I hope we have a chance to speak with you again.

[Dr. Christopher Lalonde]

Thank you for taking the time to hear from us, and I apologize to the translators for how fast I talk.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

They're professionals. They did just fine.

Thank you so much.

We're going to suspend for a couple of minutes while we disconnect and prepare for an in camera session.

[Proceedings continue in camera]