Another utterly tragic episode involving life and death on a First Nations reserve has been uncovered by B.C.'s children representative, and her report is deeply disturbing.
Mary-Ellen Turpel-Lafond, who has established herself as the perhaps the most effective of all the so-called "legislature watchdogs" in B.C.'s history, pulls no punches in her findings. She has once again raised some fundamental issues on how First Nations bands are allowed to police themselves with no accountability and how governments and officials just look the other way in times of apparent crisis.
The case involves a 14-year-old aboriginal girl who took her own life in 2011 after living a nightmarish existence for years.
She was being sexually abused by an adult male while living on a First Nations reserve somewhere in rural B.C. She was being raised by a violent mother with deeprooted mental health issues which deteriorated to the point of her threatening her daughter's life and physically assaulting her. She was bullied in school and abused by classmates.
Her situation was well known on the reserve and off of it, as well. A number of professionals were all aware of the perilous situation in which she found herself, yet she was allowed to spiral downwards, to the point where she hanged herself.
Turpel-Lafond's report torches the conduct (or misconduct) of social workers from the Ministry of Child and Family Development, physicians, nurses, school officials and the federal government for effectively abandoning the girl at every turn.
A truly astonishing finding is that social workers essentially turned the reserve into a "no-go zone", because they had been threatened by aboriginal band leaders with a gun and a knife if they tried to gain entry.
Rather than alerting police or some higher authority to this monstrously unacceptable situation, they did nothing. And so, the nightmarish life of a young girl was allowed to continue unchecked, with the inevitable tragic result.
Her report is a damning indictment of the whole system that is designed to help aboriginal children, a system she notes "virtually collapsed" around the traumatized girl.
And as Turpel-Lafond notes: "If she was not First Nations, living on-reserve, it is very likely she would not have been left as isolated, invisible and unsupported."
Turpel-Lafond has told me she fears there are indeed similar cases to the one she has uncovered in her latest investigation, and if she is correct that means somewhere, right now, another child may be living a nightmare on a reserve and everyone may be looking the other way.
The child in the latest report is now unknown outside a relatively small group of people. Only a few clues about her identity were unearthed in the report: she was small in stature, had serious dental problems, liked to listen to music, was a star wrestler on her school team, had emerging mental health issues of her own and cared deeply for her three-year-old baby sister, whom she protected from their violent mother whenever she could.
Her name will likely never be made public. But hopefully, as always, some valuable lessons can be learned from her short life and her tragic death.
The politics and political correctness of aboriginal childcare need to be put aside in favour of real action and professional help.
As Turpel-Lafond's report makes clear, the time for talking and obeying the "sensitivities" of the topic is over and the time for action is now.
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global BC. Contact him at [email protected]
