(BBC) – An indigenous community in northern Canada has declared a state of emergency after 11 people attempted to take their own lives in one day.
The Attawapiskat First Nation in Ontario saw 28 suicide attempts in March and more than 100 since last September, Canadian media said, with one person reported to have died.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the news “heartbreaking”.
Canada’s 1.4 million indigenous people have high levels of poverty.
Their life expectancy is also below the Canadian average.
Bruce Shisheesh, the chief of the Attawapiskat First Nation community, said 11 people attempted to take their own lives on Saturday, prompting him to declare a state of emergency.
The First Nations government was sending a crisis response unit to the community following the declaration on Saturday, Canadian media said.
The Health Canada federal agency said in a statement it had sent two mental health counsellors as part of that unit.
Charlie Angus, the local MP, said: “This is a systemic crisis affecting the communities.”
“There’s just not been a serious response from any level of government until now,” he said.
“We’ll continue to work to improve living conditions for all Indigenous peoples,” Prime Minister Trudeau said.
Another Canadian aboriginal community in the western province of Manitoba appealed for federal aid last month, citing six suicides in two months and 140 suicide attempts in two weeks.
sounds like you were rejected by a white woman–lots of venom on white woman– what about “all lives matter” and stop your racist shit.
Amerindian people in Canada are treated like sub-humans. I did my Phd. thesis at an American university regarding the mistreatment of First Nations people in Canada.
The silly thing with countries like Canada is that they put the Anglo-Saxon white woman on a pedestal and claim that she is more oppressed than a black man, yet thousands of Amerindian women in Canada go missing from sex slavery and ritual killings.
Thousands of Amerindian First Nation women in Canada become so impoverished due to drug addiction that they end up selling their bodies for pocket money just to survive.
But no, the feminist movement and racists only want to enforce “EQUALITY” for privileged classes of white women, and then the racist Indo-Guyanese will call me a “racist” for pointing out discrimination like they did to another commentator…