I believe on-reserve, or when I experienced suicide pacts with our youth—it's not only youths, it's young adults, too—it's a lot different than off-reserve because off-reserve has a lot of services. We don't have any services in our communities, none whatsoever.
When I was on band council, for example, I worked 24/7. If someone wanted to commit suicide, the cops would call me in the middle of the night, like 2 o'clock in the morning, because they can't get there fast enough. I'd go to the house. I'm not a counsellor. I was a political leader. I would go there and sit with the person until an ambulance attendant and the cops could come.
That's what the chief and council continue to do now. They're not psychologists, psychiatrists, or counsellors. They're political leaders, but they put their own time in to help. If they hear there is a suicide pact going on, then they go into the houses, regardless of whether the residents are drinking, or doing drugs, or whatever. We were all there at one time. We don't segregate them. We don't isolate them. We make them feel like they are part of the community and they're worth something, because we are all human beings. We're all Cheslatta people.
The thing is that we don't have services that can assist these people in our communities. We have lots of services here in the city. That's one reason why, as Scott was saying, a lot of first nations people are segregated on the east side.
I live in southwest Vancouver, and I did that on purpose. I wanted my children to have a chance to have a better education and a better outlook on life. They're doing amazingly, all three, well, two of them. One has to go to the east side to a day care, but it's an awesome day care. As I say, on-reserve we don't have the services. Even mental health workers don't necessarily live on the south side. There's no housing there, so they live in town. When something like that happens, the ferry is not going to start up just for them. They will start up for the ambulance or the police, and that's it.
I remember one time, there was an incident that happened, and they told my uncle, who was the chief at the time, “Go see if they're really dead.” when there was the murder of two people. The cops told him to do that. He came and got my mom and my sister to go there and check if the two individuals were murdered, and they were. Then he called them, and then they came.