My name is Roseann Martin, and I'm from Listuguj, Quebec. I'm a residential school survivor. I'm also a sixties scoop survivor. In my community, we had 35 members way back when, from 1929, who attended these schools. The majority of our families that eventually came back to the community were affected so deeply by what was done to them. Over the years, it generated a lot of addictions, a lot of mental health issues and a lot of serious problems.
I went through almost 26 years of hell, living a lifestyle that was very unhealthy. It affected my community. It affected my family. It affected my children, mostly. Today, I have grandchildren, and I see the impacts of what happened to me affecting them.
We have 39 families in the community. You can bet that a lot of them are affected, and there's a high rate of suicide. There are high rates of addiction, homelessness and poverty—you name it. There are no jobs. There is nothing available for them. What do they turn to? They turn to things to medicate themselves, and all that.
I see a lot of problems with opiates. Our people are dying left and right, because there is no help for them. Where are they going to go? The detox centres are full. The healing lodges are full. Our people are sent away. When they are sick and dying, they are sent far away. There is no place for them. I went to see my mother when she was in the hospital dying of cancer. I was lucky at that time, when I went to see her, because she was in the bathroom in a wheelchair. She had been knocked over. She had been there for a couple of hours, and nobody had checked on her. We had to take our mother out of there, and put her closer to our area.
These are some of the ongoing factors right now in our communities. There's a lot of homelessness and a lot of.... Addictions are number one.