I'm sorry.
Evidence of meeting #7 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was school.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #7 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was school.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Chief, Dakota Oyate Lodge
[Witness spoke in Dakota and provided the following text:]
Han mitakuyapi.
[Witness provided the following translation:]
Hello, my relatives.
[English]
Thank you to the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs for the invitation to speak today.
My name is Chief Jennifer Bone, and I represent Sioux Valley Dakota Nation in Manitoba.
As I present before you, I ask for you to hear me with an open mind and heart. The year 2020 has been an incredibly difficult year for many of us. It's widely known that the COVID-19 pandemic does not differentiate between nationality, gender, religion, wealth or the economies and markets it affects.
We as a self-governing nation can attest to this. Dramatic challenges have impacted businesses in every part of the country and, in this context, Sioux Valley Dakota Nation was not spared. The COVID-19 pandemic still hangs over our community. It has brought economic activity to a standstill and has resulted in dramatic declines in community growth and self-reported indices of well-being. It has also brought this theme into a sharp focus. The loss of livelihood, social isolation and fear of contracting the virus have created fear and anxiety among our people, which has led to mental illnesses with an exacerbation of chronic disease, deepening addictions and other types of severe illnesses.
With a state of emergency announced in October due to a suicide contagion, our Oyate have mourned in loneliness. The severity of COVID-19 illness and subsequent risk of death is increased among those of us with underlying health conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer or pulmonary, renal or endocrine comorbidities. Reductions in health care access will differentially impact on indigenous populations for non-COVID-19 outcomes, for which we already have inequities.
Combine this with excessive ambulance wait times, and a bleak situation is further worsened. Action beyond the health system is vital to reduce such health injustices.
Equally, as an indigenous community, as we have known since before its onset, the impact of the pandemic and responses to it are not felt equally by different groups. Differential access to health care as a result of colonization and racism plays an important role in the creation and maintenance of inequities in health for indigenous populations.
The main priority in today's scenario has been to save the lives of individuals. This can be accomplished in part by creating awareness amongst them to follow social distancing measures and maintain proper hygiene. Socially isolating is easier for people with spacious homes with areas to walk and reliable[Technical difficulty—Editor] . On-reserve people living in overcrowded conditions with few or unsafe open areas, lack of running water and inadequate access to the Internet have been and will continue to be more vulnerable to the negative effects of isolation measures.
Social distancing and personal hygiene requirements have highlighted a legacy of housing neglect. Through the collaborative fiscal policy process, self-governing indigenous governments have provided Canada with concrete evidence of gaps that exist between our communities and other non-indigenous communities in Canada. We have hired experts in infrastructure and housing to provide factual information, yet Canada continues to underperform on its promises to resolve long-standing issues in these areas.
Our most urgent need at this point is adequate housing, both in terms of repairs required for healthy living as well as new housing to help with overcrowding.
Within Sioux Valley, the impacts evolving from COVID-19 are causing extensive social, psychological and economic damage. Far from being just a disruption, the pandemic is an indication of the urgent need to reset economic and industrial relations, health and other policy sectors. Those of our members holding insecure and casual jobs have been the first to be laid off and face unemployment with its attendant mental and physical health effects.
Overall, the pandemic will almost certainly increase inequities both between and within our members both on and off reserve. As a consequence of the widespread unemployment generated by the pandemic, our people continue to suffer systemically.
Eliminating all forms of mistreatment such as discrimination by reason of race or social class should constitute the crosscutting axis of all responses formulated by the standing committee to halt the spread of the virus within indigenous communities.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada called on the federal government to close the gap in health outcomes between indigenous and non-indigenous communities and to recognize indigenous healing practices.
Like many indigenous nations, Sioux Valley had stepped into this jurisdictional fear in response to COVID-19 with limited resources and funding. Some broad issues for deliberation have already been identified, including the rebuilding of public health care infrastructure, protection of workers, welfare, promotion of community voice, ownership of key instrumentalities, and more effective measures to address inequality.
The history of first nations' relationship with industy has been one of give and take. First nations gave and industry took. This cannot continue today.
Thank you again for your time and consideration.
[Witness spoke in Dakota and provided the following text:]
Pidamaya ye.
[Witness provided the following translation:]
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bob Bratina
Thank you very much, Chief Bone, and thanks for noticing the time because we are in dire straits as we try to get our round of questioning in before signing off, and we have some business to do as well.
Once again, if there is anything that our witnesses wish to share that doesn't come up within the round of questioning, please submit it in writing. It will be captured by our analysts in our report.
Mr. Vidal, you are up for six minutes. Please go ahead.
Conservative
Gary Vidal Conservative Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank all the witnesses for attending today and for their valuable testimony.
I am going to selfishly focus my time today on Chief Mitsuing. Chief Mitsuing is from a community very close to my hometown.
Chief, thank you for being willing to come today. You have experienced so much in the short time I have known you. Your care and your concern and your commitment to your community have been inspiring to me as we have gotten to know each other.
I want to focus on a couple of significant things you have said to me over the last year, Chief. I know the committee is going to get very limited knowledge of who you are and what you represent, but we got to know each other when you declared a state of emergency last fall because of a suicide crisis in your community. You had to deal with the drowning of a child this past summer, and in your testimony you talked about the four suicides of adult members of your community, one of them being a mother and a grandmother who cared for so many children. You talked about the fact that the number of kids in your community who are on your suicide watch-list has grown from 40 to over 100 in the course of the last 10 months or so.
There is so much you have dealt with, but there are two things I would ask you to comment on in the short time we have together.
One, when you brought Elder Morningchild to my office to visit with my team here not so long ago, you talked about the impact that CERB was having in your community on things like mental health and addictions and some of those things. You expressed concern about that.
I'd like you to expand on that for a minute, but more important, I'd like you to talk about one of the solutions that you proposed for your community to deal with the suicide crisis and the children in your community, which was programming to actually teach people to be parents, to teach mothers to be mothers and fathers to be fathers, and how the kids in your community were begging for the leadership of the family unit.
If you could talk about those two things for a few minutes, the committee would be well served by your knowledge and what you share from the heart.
Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation
Thank you, Gary.
Ever since CERB came along, our addictions have really skyrocketed. Our domestic violence record speaks for itself. In four months we had 1,148 calls for the RCMP. They couldn't focus on any drug-related activities. They couldn't even have a coffee break is what they were saying.
That was somewhat alleviated with the security coming on. They can at least have a coffee break. The area served really took a toll in the addictions area. We had a lot of people having a lot of money that they had never had before. They could just spend it any way they wanted. The children actually suffered more from that.
I lost I think it was five friends due to alcohol. We just buried one here recently, and two of them here just this past weekend. Alcohol is a major contributing factor to our people's addictions.
Right now all of our centres are closed, even our AA centre. Our people do try to go out but they are also scared of the virus. We have to find more people to help in the addictions area. We have two, but they're scared to go out there too.
Elder Morningchild talked about taking our children back to their cultural ways and bringing along the parents with them to learn how we used to live. Alcohol wasn't a major problem in my era. It was for some, but not as much as now. The kids are crying out that they want to find their identity, so this is one of the ways with the community scan that we're trying to get them out and maybe do some snaring or teach them how to shoot a gun so they can shoot grouse, and then when they're older they can learn how to hunt on their own.
Also, in our ceremonies we're trying to get them back to singing groups. We hardly have any of that right now because with all the addictions some of our people who are skilled in the traditional areas have addictions too.
Our young are very important. We have to teach them how to become self-sufficient and help them with their future for when they're older.
Another thing we want to touch on with the other chief was, yes, we do have a severe housing shortage all over. We have young families that are living with their parents, and they have kids of their own and they don't have anywhere to go. We're also caught in that housing situation.
If a kid goes to school from a happy home, he'll be happy to learn all day. If they don't have that overcrowding to deal with, they can study and try to upgrade their skills.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bob Bratina
Chief, thank you for sharing that testimony with us.
We go now to Mr. Battiste for six minutes.
November 24th, 2020 / 12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Jaime Battiste Liberal Sydney—Victoria, NS
I want to start off by thanking the chiefs for their testimony today. It's been difficult to hear.
I live in Eskasoni, the largest Mi’kmaq reserve in Atlantic Canada, of close to 5,000 people. We're just getting prepared for the second wave that you're already dealing with.
I remember the first wave saw blockades put up in my community, curfews put in place, ceremonies and sporting events cancelled, These are things that have kept our communities going and kept us resilient for generations.
I'm trying to get a sense, hearing about all of your testimony of all the things that are going on, with the powwows and the sporting events cancelled. It's so disheartening for vulnerable communities. I can relate to a lot of what you describe, because I have a son who goes to an on-reserve school. He goes to school two days a week because they can't accommodate any more than that.
I am just trying to get a sense. I know that indigenous people are some of the most resilient people in Canada. We've gone through so much. We've gone through pandemics before, although never like this one, but I'm trying to get a sense of what our government can do in the short term, really.
What are you hearing for best practices as all indigenous communities across Canada approach this second wave? I'm trying to figure out if there are any best practices out there, anything that we're hearing in the communities that can give other communities hope as to how to adapt and survive this.
Thank you.
Liberal
Jaime Battiste Liberal Sydney—Victoria, NS
Either chief is fine.
Chief Mitsuing, do you want to start off?
Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation
Our first plan was to try to get our own people trained to deal with the suicide crisis and also try to go to these families and work with them on a day-to-day basis, but we don't have enough staff for that. We tried to group them together but always something came up, one disaster after another, so we couldn't get that going. We were going to have some workshops and a death would happen and that cut us off and then we couldn't gather as much.
This summer we had only one sun dance where there were a lot of people attending but it was pretty safe the way they set it up. We couldn't have too many of those.
Our idea is to try to settle the kids down for now and then work on the parents with our plans. We need to teach them to become parents and try to help out their youth as much as possible. Even where there are addictions, they have to reach out and we need people to go out there and talk to them. We don't have the training right now because everything keeps getting cut off. On our suicide training, I think we only had one and a half courses so far.
Anyway, our plan is to try to train our band members so we can look after ourselves after. We'll have people here 24 hours. That's our plan. Hopefully, it works.
Liberal
Jaime Battiste Liberal Sydney—Victoria, NS
Chief, thank you for that.
Our community went through the same crisis a few years back. What we did was establish a crisis centre with our own community members who could speak in our own language to help other people. We started that 15 years ago and we still have it today in our community. If you reach out to the Eskasoni crisis centre, they might be able to offer some suggestions on how to deal with these crises.
I'm wondering if you could comment on what the loss of ceremony and the loss of these gatherings has meant to your communities.
Chief, Dakota Oyate Lodge
I can comment on that.
Normally in our community different families come together and they host their annual sun dances here in the community. Unfortunately, those were cancelled. I think there were about four of them that were cancelled throughout the summer, sweat lodges and ceremonies. Cancelling those things because of COVID has definitely had a huge impact here in the community. The Dakota people here in the Sioux Valley rely heavily on prayer and ceremony, so that has definitely affected us.
We have an incident commander who works with the leadership and all our managers here in the community. We were able to come up with some solutions to help people address their spiritual needs while still maintaining social distancing and all of our safety precautions. Back in October we had a four-day sacred fire that was monitored by the community. All community members were able to come and go so that the gathering numbers were still kept to a minimum. They were able to offer their prayers and prayer ties, that sort of thing.
Those are some of the things that we tried to incorporate into the community so that they still are able to reach out for assistance through that way of ceremonial life.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bob Bratina
Thank you, Chief. Thanks very much.
Ms. Bérubé, go ahead for six minutes.
Bloc
Sylvie Bérubé Bloc Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC
My question is for Chief Bone.
You said earlier that life in your community was very difficult because of the current pandemic and that Canada was not keeping its promises in terms of first nations community housing.
What do you think the federal government could do right now to rectify the situation caused by the rise in the number of COVID-19 cases in Manitoba and in your community?
Chief, Dakota Oyate Lodge
The issue of overcrowding not only in Sioux Valley but in every other first nation needs to be addressed.
In Sioux Valley—cross our fingers here—we currently have no active cases in the community. I attribute that to effective communication by our management team. We are learning different communication styles to communicate to the elderly and younger people. We use social media, radio, door to door to educate our community about the virus and encourage everyone to take precautions.
We are in a lockdown right now, but people can still come and go freely. Unfortunately, we have two provincial highways that run through our community which doesn't allow us to set up any kinds of blockades. We're taking those measures within our community. Education is important, because then members of our community know. They come to us and ask if they are allowed to do this, and can they do that, and what precautions need to be taken. It's working for us right now.
Bloc
Sylvie Bérubé Bloc Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC
Thank you, Chief Bone.
My next question is for Ms. Driedger.
You participated in research on H1N1. What is your take on the situation with the current pandemic?
As an Individual
In Manitoba, based on our current case rates, even though indigenous people make up about 10% of the provincial population, they are representing about 20% of the provincial cases and almost 68% of ICU bed occupancy. Indigenous people are experiencing a much more severe outcome associated with exposure to COVID-19.
Many of our first nations communities—not all of them but some of them—have been able to successfully close their borders because they don't have provincial roads going through them. That same effort does not exist for Métis communities, because they don't have any control over any of the land other than their own personal property. Métis citizens don't have access to any kinds of housing programs that exist for first nations and Inuit communities.
There are equally similar problems associated with overcrowding, poor ventilation, poverty and other socio-economic circumstances that affect those communities in the same way they affect our first nations relatives.
Bloc
Sylvie Bérubé Bloc Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC
Thank you, Ms. Driedger.
Chief Mitsuing, you talked about closed schools. What have you done to reduce the number of cases?
You said that parents were worried and that children were happy to return to school.
How have you avoided problems related to school closures in your community?
Bloc
Sylvie Bérubé Bloc Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC
You are saying that you have closed schools four times. What impact did school closures have on the concerned parents?
Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation
The effect is that our kids have nothing to do, because sports were shut down. We have overcrowding, so the kids are always fighting, and the parents are always trying to cook. Some parents are doing bad stuff, and the kids are caught in there. They don't have anywhere to go. They consider the school as a safe house, so when we shut down our school, that's not a good thing.
Today we have a pandemic meeting. I am hoping there will be a reconsideration to keep the school open. After the meeting, I'll go and ask if the school could be kept open. Another situation is that if the Saskatchewan health officer shuts us down, then what do I do? I'm playing with safety.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bob Bratina
Chief, thank you for your response.
We have six minutes now with Ms. Blaney.
Go ahead, please.