Broken dreams, failed systems: Innu child protection inquiry hears details of death investigations

< warm>WARNING: This story discusses felo-de-se.

They were simply kids.

i wanted to be a musician. Another strived to be a good mom. One excelled while living on the land. All six had hopes and dreams as vast as the rocky landscape stretching out under the Nitassinan sky.

They also shared tragic circumstances. 

All six were from the Mushuau Innu community of Natuashish in northern Labrador. They had all been removed from their families. Five had been sent outside the province for care, far removed from everything familiar, with no plans for reintegration when they came back home. All six struggled with solvent abuse.

None of them lived beyond their early 20s.

Faith Rich, Jacob Collins, James Poker, Kirby Mistenapeo, Thunderheart Tshakapesh and Wally Rich died under differing circumstances between 2015 and 2020, collaborating in death to spark a public inquiry into the treatment of Innu children in the child protection system.

Inquiry commissioners heard this week from Kenn Richard and Tara Petti, the investigators tasked with probing the deaths of those six youths.

A sombre look into the lives — and deaths — of 6 young people at the Innu inquiry

The actual reports are private, but Richard and Petti prepared a public document outlining the systemic issues linking all six deaths.

“Some withdrew inwardly, while others acted outwardly, each searching for ways to cope with a persistent and enveloping darkness,” Richard and Petti wrote in their final report. “The system, rather than evolving to meet their needs, proved unable to change the course of their tragic paths.”

Four died by suicide. Two died of hypothermia. The investigators found there were 12 systemic issues linking each of their deaths, stemming from their time in the child services system.

The first issue identified was the colonial legacy of intergenerational trauma. 

The Mushuau Innu were nomadic hunters and gatherers before being pressured into fixed locations, including the settlement of Davis Inlet in the 1960s. That community — plagued by tragedy and decrepit conditions for decades — was relocated to Natuashish in 2002.

Richard and Petti said they heard repeatedly about the damage caused by forced cultural assimilation and how it filtered down through generations to play a role in each of the six deaths.

“We know full well they inherited all that collective trauma in their personal lives,” Richard said. “That was part of the reason child welfare intervened, creating an even more difficult scenario and additional harm.”

When families landed on the radar of child welfare officials, the report found there was little to no preventative measures to help families stay together. Instead, social workers often reacted only during times of crisis — using child removals as a primary response.

“Child removal should always be the last option, yet all too often it was the first,” the report reads.

Those kids were often placed in homes far outside their communities, in places like Ontario and Saskatchewan, where they were stripped of their language and culture.

“We heard stories of children phoning their families and not being able to speak Innu because the caregivers couldn’t understand them and they wanted to hear what they were saying,” Petti told the inquiry. 

Those caregivers were often for-profit providers that “lacked the same level of accountability as publicly provided services,” the report said.

Both investigators urged the province to look at the money spent on out-of-province placements for Innu children, and think of how that money could have been used to support them in their own communities.

“If the money flow to help this child only happens when we remove [them from their homes], then that is an issue,” Petti said.

Youth often tried everything they could to get home. One boy tried to walk from Ontario to Natuashish on four separate occasions. Another promised “to live like a good Innu boy again,” if he could ever get home to his family.

Those families suffered from communication breakdowns, the report found, and often learned of incidents involving their children in out-of-province placements from third parties. When they eventually returned home, they were so disconnected from their culture that they felt lost and further isolated.

The six death reports found another common theme — solvent abuse.

Scenes from Davis Inlet were broadcast around the world in the early 1990s, where kids were seen sniffing gasoline in abandoned homes and expressing their desire to die. National attention faded over the years, but the situation didn’t go away entirely.

Solvent abuse has ebbed and flowed, the report said, but remains a critical problem in the community of Natuashish today.

“Every case had it as a complication,” Richard said. “When the gasoline sniffing became chronic, and for most of them it did, their spiral downhill was almost sealed.”

In one of the six cases, a boy was found dead in the woods of an apparent suicide with a bag of gasoline at his feet.

“You can’t ignore that,” Richard said. “I strongly feel the bell should ring loudly again on gasoline sniffing.”

Petti said the issue of solvent abuse is tied closely to intergenerational trauma. There’s an extreme crisis, she said, but a lack of resources to treat this type of addiction that has severe impacts on mental and physical health in the short and long term.

Richard said there needs to be more research on the issue — including how the availability of gasoline can be controlled in Natuashish, and whether measures can be taken similar to those in rural parts of Australia where low-aromatic fuel was introduced in place of unleaded gasoline.

The federal government brought in new legislation in 2019, affirming Indigenous nations have jurisdiction over child and family services, and outlining national minimum standards of care.

Bill C-92 cleared final legal hurdles in 2024 and was declared constitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada.

In Labrador, the Innu Round Table Secretariat has already begun work to take over aspects of the system — though full control remains a future goal.

Richard spoke about that future during his testimony, saying the provincial and federal governments have a critical role to play in the transition toward an Innu-led child services system.

“That’s why I sort of react sometimes when people say, ‘We’ll leave the Innu to do their own thing.’ Well yes, indeed, leave the Innu to do their own thing but offer your hand,” Richard said. “Because it’s a mess you’re giving them. In simple terms, I see this as helping clean up and move forward in a very actionable way.”

If you or someone you know is struggling, here’s where to look for help:

Ryan Cooke is a justice affairs reporter based in St. John's. He can be reached at ryan.cooke@cbc.ca.

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