That's what Jen was talking about in terms of providing the services that are necessary to help them with grieving and bereavement. That's the initial service that needs to be provided to them. I do a lot of that work with a lot of the police services that are serving our northern communities. That's happening, and we are trying to do that, but we don't have a sufficient amount of resources to respond to the need. Part of it is actually a funding issue in terms of ensuring we can provide those services to those people.
There's another point, Charlie, that is important to recognize in terms of your question about how we change the system. You're right. These figures that I quoted have been the same for 35 years. The same conditions have continued to repeat themselves. What can we do differently, though? We have learned over that time, but we haven't been utilizing a lot of what we've been learning. That's particularly the knowledge that Louise was referring to, saying that we do have the knowledge within our first nations communities about what can work.
I gave you an example of one that was working really well, but then it was gone. We had 12 communities that we were working with, and huge change was occurring. We were addressing the true needs, and then all of a sudden the funding changed. Priorities change and the resources and the services that are needed, that you're looking for and that you're asking about, are gone. I did that work over 25 years ago. We do learn, but sometimes we don't pay attention to what we have learned that works. I say that first nations people know what has been working.
The other point that I think is really important is the systemic point, and that has to do with the borders. In this country, we've created borders that are not first nations borders; they're the provincial borders and the federal borders. Then, as you know, the politics of it all becomes wrapped up in how children are treated, or how they're not treated. I've got an example of one of the young people from Attawapiskat. We identified the need for that child's services as being immediate and extremely high-risk. A lot of those children were at extremely high risk. She was the highest. We identified where those services were that were culturally appropriate, but they were across the border. They were in Manitoba, so what happened? We couldn't access those services for her. They ended up placing her into a southern Ontario psychiatric facility for adults, where they had virtually no understanding of that child's cultural background, what her needs were, or what was happening in the community.
How do we help? We think we're helping, but we're not. As first nations people, we recognize that. We know that's happening, and we try to educate people and share that. This is where we need to bring together and start sharing that knowledge, listening to each other, and giving some credence to the knowledge that's there within our communities.