Good day. I'm from a community called The Pas. It's about 600 kilometres north of Winnipeg. Right across the bridge is the community of Opaskwayak Cree Nation. There's a bridge separating the two communities. The communities are very engaged and work together.
I guess what I'd really like to talk about today is prevention.
I just want to mention the name Daniel Wolfe. I don't know who is familiar with Daniel Wolfe, but Daniel Wolfe was originally from The Pas. He was in and out of foster care for the first 12 years of his life, and then he basically grew up on the streets of Winnipeg. Daniel Wolfe was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder and was in the Regina penitentiary. He and a couple of other guys escaped from the penitentiary and were eventually apprehended and placed back in the penitentiary. At the hands of six of his own, Daniel Wolfe was murdered.
Basically, when you look at a story like Daniel Wolfe's, people will see him as a hardened criminal. At one point, Daniel Wolfe was a little boy. Daniel's mother has spoken of drinking with him and smoking pot with him. She says that he turned to gangs, because he was looking for a home that she didn't give him.
Parenting is probably the most significant factor we can look at when we talk about prevention. So many of our parents today, our aboriginal parents in particular, are living in conditions of risk. They don't feel they have the supports. They have had their ways of parenting basically taken away from them. Many of them are affected by the residential school system to this day. Those needs have not been addressed.
I know that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was established to address those needs. I think at this point in time it has basically opened a can of worms. People are left with open wounds, and there's no way to address them at this point in time. It's the children who continue to suffer.
Every day when I walk outside the organization I work for, I see a huge gang presence. We are located in the Manitoba housing units, the Kelsey Housing Estates in The Pas, which is commonly referred to as “the ghetto”. You walk through the yard in the morning to get to your office door and you come across broken beer bottles. You see broken windows. You see gang tags. You see little kids wandering around. Parents are sleeping or are not home, or whatever. I mean, basically, it's very dismal going to work in the morning.
As a result of that, we developed, based on a promising model, gang prevention through targeted outreach. We are observing in our neighbourhood kids at the age of eight or nine wearing gang colours. They're in and out of the apartment buildings. You know they're running stuff for gang members. They're little kids. They are being exploited by gang members. I know it has been said that many of them have gang members in their families. It's their parents, their uncles, their aunts, and their grandparents. It's a vicious cycle for all of them.
Through our project, we are basically looking at reaching the kids by providing alternative activities for them, starting at the age of six. We feel it is really important to start working with them young, because a lot of times, by the time they're 14 or 15, they're quite entrenched. At that point, if they haven't been reached already, it's quite a task, as I know some of the other people sitting at the table can attest to.
In just the last three years, four youth from The Pas have been charged with six murders and three attempted murders. Most recently, just after New Year's, there was a gang-related incident; a man was killed at gunpoint--shot--uptown.
This may not be gang related, but it does speak to the subculture within our community. A couple of weeks ago, a six-year-old girl on her way to school in the morning was abducted by a 17-year-old boy and sexually assaulted. And in the last couple of weeks, a young man from The Pas was killed up in Thompson by a fellow gang member.
That's basically what it comes down to and what the people in our community, in particular in our neighbourhood, come to expect. I think the kids look at that and most of them see that as their future. They don't believe there's something else for them. The parents are at their wits' end. They're saying things to us like, “My kid is 12. He's out running around. He won't come home. He's smoking. He's drinking. He's swearing. He's quitting school. He's doing all this kind of stuff.”
If we had been able to work with mom when that child was born, to address attachment, to look at preventing FASD, to meet the parent's needs in terms of how to parent, to provide that parent with the supports, we might not have this issue when that child reaches the age of 12. He's 12. What's further down the road for him? Is he the next Daniel Wolfe?
You know the saying that it takes a whole community to raise a child. Well, it takes a whole community to save a child. In the words of Dr. Mark Totten, the best way to prevent crime is to prevent child abuse, and the way to prevent child abuse is to educate and support parents and caregivers.
Thank you for your time.