Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2016

[Chief Joachim Bonnetrouge]

You have to be truthful. You have to be honest. The high school students are the majority in our community and in our region. The home environment is just not there. An old teacher said to me years ago, “Joachim, if you're going to get anywhere, you need to do at least one hour of homework at night at home.” He kept saying that. Today, I believe that.

If we can get that kind of situation for a kid who is 17 years old, so he doesn't have to worry about a party or his friends knocking and asking him to go out, I think that would make a big difference.

I did not mention it, but the other thing is that a lot of our communities are still devastated with alcoholism and now drugs are in our community. I've been in leadership and in politics long enough that I am not scared anymore to say that. If I said that in a big community hall next week and there were a few hundred people, and I talked about the drinking and the drugs, people would say, “Why has the chief said that?” Then maybe after next election, I may not be around, but I'm not scared of that kind of stuff anymore.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Do I understand, Mike, that you have given Don your time?

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Yes, Chair. I would like to pass my time to my very good friend, my Anishinaabe friend, Don Rusnak.

[Don Rusnak, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

I appreciate that from Hugs Bossio.

Over the last little while, or over many months actually, we've heard some very sad stories, some not so good things coming from the communities, but because it's fresh in my mind, yesterday we were at UNYA. Sure, we heard some sad stories, but we heard some very positive things, like that the kids have a safe place to feel like they can talk to people and they can be open. I just wanted to end on a high note.

Why don't you tell us about the positives in your community, the good things that are going on with the youth, the good things that are going on with the elders, and just the positives in your community.

[Chief Joachim Bonnetrouge]

Yes, that's a good point because I was reminded just recently, “Chief, talk about your strengths, the good things”. For how many generations have we been negative? I guess we still have the land. The water is still good. The culture is still very strong. I started drumming 20 years ago. When I heard my grandfather singing, I was four years old. I prayed enough, and I wished that one of his songs would come to me. I think the spirit in Canada and in the communities, is still there. The other thing is that my wife reminds me that we, as natives and as Dene, are very intelligent. The other thing that some mothers are reminding me is that we come from very powerful people two, three, four, five generations ago. Holy man. Those people who lived in our communities were a hard act to follow, but we could strive to be just like them They were very intelligent. It's kind of interesting because sometimes I wonder what the people did 500 years ago. They were okay 500 years ago. My people were okay, and your people were okay. They were having a very good time then. We come from very powerful people, and we need to remind each other of that, and that will take away all.... It's so easy to get down and negative.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

The next question is from Cathy McLeod.

Thank you.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

That would have been a good place to.... with the positive that....

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Maybe you can find another one.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

You talked about having great hockey and rinks and playing with Jordin Tootoo. Is the rink gone? Is the rink that you had no longer part of your community? You talked about the children and hockey and the teams. What happened?

[Chief Joachim Bonnetrouge]

I think our generation, we had our kids and then the next generation just did not do the trail we made for them. Even though sometimes I never had a job, we still made do. We had a lot of fun when our kids were 12 years old and 15 years old. We did a lot of things in our community. Even as a group of parents, we became like a little groupie. We stuck together and did a lot of things together. Sometimes I wish and pray that the generations coming after us would have seen it or tried it. I guess that's part of the challenge.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

So, you still have a rink.

[Chief Joachim Bonnetrouge]

We still have the hockey rink.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

You just don't have the sort of spirit behind....

[Chief Joachim Bonnetrouge]

Yes, it was only last year, I think, that there were a couple of people trying to regenerate minor hockey. We're fundraising and, hopefully, that will be the rebound for hockey.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I know sports for youth can often be such a positive part of their life and their world.

[Chief Joachim Bonnetrouge]

Even Wilton Littlechild mentioned that. I'm also part of that generation where, “If it was not for sports, I don't think I would have made it through school“, that kind of thing. That might be another key: recreation.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

You talked about how important learning parenting skills is, and that there needs to be support for moms and dads. Is there any support at all that's available through the elders? What's there right now, and how does it need to be supported?

[Chief Joachim Bonnetrouge]

There is none right now. We need to create an awareness or say that there's a real need. It's doable, but I guess the trick would be how we can connect with the counsellors, the elders, the facilitators, and those young parents. Even those young parents right now, I think, feel some sense of abandonment, never mind their own little children. That would be part of the challenge.

It's a social, human thing to make that connection. I also mentioned that relationships need to be mended among family groups and even within the family. I know that in my own family there's a certain bit of disconnection with my brothers and sisters. All of those things can only happen through recovery. It's hard work, and you have to get through the pain and the tears, but it's doable.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

That closes this panel. Thank you so much, Chief Bonnetrouge, for spending the day with us, really. We're very grateful indeed for that and for you taking the long journey that you took to get here. You've helped us in a tremendous way.

I'm not going to suspend the meeting. I think we're going to go right into comments from the floor. We have about half an hour. Then the committee needs to pack up and get on an airplane because we're going to do this again in Sioux Lookout.

In that half hour, it looks like we have four people who would like to speak, and that's wonderful. I'll ask you to sort of self-regulate to fit the four of you into that 30 minutes. You'll each have about seven minutes or so. That way everyone will have their chance at the microphone. We're very obsessed with time, it appears, and for that I apologize.

I'd love to welcome anyone at all who would like to come up to the standing microphone in the aisle there. If you would prefer to pull up a chair, that's wonderful as well. We'd love to have you at the table.

[Sam George, As an Individual]

My name is Sam George. I come from the Squamish Nation.

We all know the suffering of the suicide, one who leaves suddenly and unexpectedly. I came late, but I look at my grandparents. They didn't drink, they didn't do drugs, and they lived off the culture. My parents turned to the alcohol. My parents were residential school survivors, and then my generation turned to alcohol and drugs. My children's generation—I'm not saying everybody—but that generation got into the alcohol and drugs too. Now I'm seeing, so to speak, the grandchildren going into the drugs and alcohol. I was once drug-and-alcohol dependent myself, but I've been without now for going on 27 years. I was taught by my grandparents. I went to the culture. My grandparents didn't have any funds or government sponsors. All they had to go on was what their parents left them. I'm finding out, being a drug-and-alcohol survivor, that I want to get back to my culture—drumming and singing, the sweat lodges. It's not my culture, but I adopted it. I had to find something to go back to.

Funding from the government helps, but it has to be put into regenerating our culture. I really feel this strongly. I am a residential school survivor—I went there for nine years. I was forced to abandon what my grandparents taught me. When I finally straightened out my life, I went back to the culture and what it had to give us. All it cost was some hard labour—cutting wood, building a sweat lodge, and finding the creator. I needed to find something to give me hope.

I also went to prison and finished seven years at the age of 15, because of my alcoholism. I wanted to find something different, to find something meaningful in my life, and that meaningfulness came from my culture, in an adopted culture. We need to get back to whatever we had before. I think it's so important to find out what my parents did, what my grandparents did, even if I have to go back three generations.

My grandfather was sort of like a policeman. He walked around the reserve when it got dark, and he had a stick. He never used it on anybody, but we always thought he did. When we saw him coming, we all went running inside. When it got dark, we were all inside. It's things like that. When I look at my alcoholism...you don't look at the drugs, the alcohol, the gas sniffing, the glue sniffing. We do it because there's nothing else; we don't know anything else. We have nothing to do. I look at my generation. I have a grade 10 education, and my Dad had a grade 3 education, and the ones I was brought up with had a grade 7 education. I know where it stands now, but you have to have something to believe in, something to do.

I had a sweat lodge. I had a young man come to me on a Friday night. He said, “Sam, are you having a sweat tonight?” I said, “No, I'm not.” On Sunday, he jumped off the Lions Gate Bridge. I don't blame myself because I didn't have a sweat lodge that night—but he asked me. You know, if I had had that sweat, would he have done that? He was looking for something. He wanted something.

It's okay to give them education. It's okay to say, “Let's put some funds in this, let's put some funds in that.” I know that's what you are here for, to find out what they need. What do these kids need? What does anybody need who takes their own life? Why do they get stuck there in their pain? Why are they stuck there?

I've been stuck there. I thought of suicide. I'm glad.... The only thing stopping me was my fear. The only thing that kept me back in this world was a belief in something to give me back some of my self-respect, to give me something I needed, and that was my culture. All it takes is to make a drum. Maybe they don't use drums. Find out who they are, where they're from. I'm glad you are here to find out and try to help. The strongest thing is to find out what they believe in.

I worked in an all-native treatment centre. You see so many. The treatment centre was trying to give them what to believe in—to find something, to find themselves—to give them some hope, and to teach them to love themselves. Maybe you've heard it all before and you all know that, but that's so important.

Even on my reserve in North Vancouver, there are a lot of people who have nothing, or they think they have nothing. We've had one too many.... Even one suicide is too many. They walk around at night, three or four in the morning, thinking they have nothing, and they go home and....

I've done it all, and I've seen it all. I just can't stress how culture plays a big part in our lives, to readopt it, to strengthen it. That's what I really believe in.

Thank you for listening.

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you very much, Mr. George. It's very much appreciated.

Who would like to come and join us?

[Gertrude Pierre, As an Individual]

My name is Gertie Pierre, and I am from the Sechelt Nation.

I work for the residential school society, and I am one of the committee members for the study on murdered and missing women. I have travelled to Manitoba, Prince George, and Williams Lake and listened to the stories of grandmothers, mothers, sisters, and children about their mothers having been murdered and gone missing, and now there are men who are going missing and being murdered.

I think about what it is going to take for the government to start doing something. They say that they've hired all these commissioners to start doing something about the murdered and missing women. We had one meeting with the commissioner, and I don't even know where their office is. I don't know when they'll have another meeting in regard to the seriousness of what's going on.

I always say that the people in Downtown Eastside weren't born to be living Downtown Eastside. They're there because they came from residential schools or they're the product of residential schools. My children are products of residential school. I went to residential school for 10 years, and my husband went for 13 years. My daughter said to me, “I didn't have to go to residential school because I was raised in one in the home.” Everything that we did.... We disciplined them just like they disciplined us in residential school. There was no love, there were no hugs, and there was no caring for them because I wasn't healed at that time.

I look at all these young girls who are running away from home and ending up in Downtown Eastside, or they're being murdered, or they're going missing, and it's because of that. In the home that they lived in, there was no love. We were never taught that in residential school. All we were taught was a lot of anger and hate. We were put down, and we were never praised. I could never remember a nun, a brother, or a priest praising me for anything. They just made me feel like I was nothing and I was going to end up as an alcoholic, which I did. I was an alcoholic for 35 years, from 15 until 35, and then I decided enough was enough. I tried to commit suicide a lot of times because I just couldn't stand myself because of the way I was brought up in residential school. They made you feel lesser than....

I decided I couldn't kill myself by overdosing on my prescription sleeping pills, Valium, and drinking, so I had to start to look at sobering up. I had four children at that time. They were taken away by the ministry, and I was all by myself, so I decided to sober up. I sobered up in 1981. My husband was an alcoholic, and we decided to go through a treatment centre. We went, and we've been 35 years clean now.

I have to say that the children are really suffering. In my community, they start young. They are 12, 13, or 14 years old, and they're already into drinking and starting to experiment with coke, crystal meth, and marijuana. We've heard that it's peddled in elementary school. They have dealers outside of an elementary school to sell drugs to the children. In the high school they're up there peddling their drugs.

I really believe that they need to look at more treatment centres, programs, and services for our youth to make them come to realize the dangers of what drugs and alcohol are doing to them.

They're becoming alcoholics and addicted to drugs at a younger age, and we don't have treatment centres for younger children who are addicted. They land up in the city, and they're living on the streets. I walk in Downtown Eastside and I see young children down there. It really concerns me: parents are looking for them because they are missing, and they don't know where they're at. I believe the government has to look seriously at what is going on with our younger generation because if they don't we're going to keep on losing them. They're going to go missing, and they're still going to be murdered.

My niece was brutally murdered in 1992. They started the march because of my niece because she was so brutally murdered. Now the murderer is trying for parole. The family is trying to prevent him from coming out because he's such a horrible person. I'm hoping he doesn't get parole and that he won't do again what he did to other women on the streets.

Thank you for listening; I really appreciate it.

[Witness speaks in an aboriginal language]

[The Chair, Liberal, Andy Fillmore]

Thank you so much for that, Ms. Pierre; we're very grateful.

Mr. Thunderchild.