Friends, new numbers from Statistics Canada are the reality we in the North have to wake up to.
In a recent issue of News/North, reporter Brendan Burke cites our level of crime severity as being 4 times that of the national Canadian average.
Even more sobering is that our crime rate has jumped to 8 times the national level.
In the same story Bree Denning, Executive Director for the Yellowknife Women’s Society, mentions homicides and other serious crimes as partly reflecting inter-generational residential school trauma.
Having done research in these fields now for over a decade, and as a survivor of twelve years in these places of cultural genocide I, too, am well aware of the monster in our midst.
In my relatively small Northern community of Radilih Koe, Fort Good Hope, we have had two murders in four years.
Just this past summer one of our key traditional drummers went to a wedding in neighbouring Kabami Tue, Colville Lake only to be medivaced out to Edmonton, only able to move his toes.
Over talks with relatives I was saddened to hear that our young people don’t only fight to prove themselves, as we once did. Our games were rough, mind you, but not to the point where it is now, taken from videos of Mortal Kombat and kickboxing. The idea now has become to gang up on the innocent and injure for life.
As a visual artist, now in my fourth year of Indigenous PhD studies I am able to come up with realistic pictures of what we are faced with today.
The primary goal of my research project, Sa Ra-ahyileyea Tsodanake, Youth in the Midnight Sun, is to help strengthen our youth in their Dene identity.
Over the last few months I got to put it into practice, taking part in an RCMP initiative, doing art-related projects with the younger people and women-at-risk.
One of the things we talked about is how residential schools were intentionally planned and carried out as cultural genocide, separating our Indigenous peoples from home and culture, and right at about the time of Canadian Confederation.
We were physically removed from our homes at the times of year, the Fall, when we boys would normally prove ourselves, as hunters.
The girls were away, too, when they could contribute, with their sewing.
This lack of involvement with family and the People is a disconnect we are still trying to survive.
So, these are not just numbers from Statistics Canada, friends. These are makers, to prove how far we have been taken from home.
Mahsi, thank you.