They're stealing our children [editorial]

We’ve heard so much about gang activity in First Nations communities over many years, but this latest tragedy, which happened in Hobbema in July, should be a wake-up call for all of us.

While police have yet to confirm it, they haven’t ruled out the possibility that gang violence took the life of an innocent five-year-old boy. He was tucked into his bed for a good night’s sleep at Hobbema and should have been safe from the world behind the walls of his father’s home, but a stray bullet shattered the illusion of that. He’s dead, and a family grieves, and unless we start to take gang violence in First Nations communities seriously, he won’t be the last to lose his life.

We wonder if we’ll lift our heads for awhile, rage at the injustice of it all and then go back to ignoring the situation like it didn’t happen at all.

Well, perhaps some of us will. Yes, some of us still have the choice to ignore the violence on First Nations territory that erupts around gang activities. But others of us are just not that lucky. We must figure out a way to survive the effects of gangs every day. These are people that are exhausted by it, in danger all the time, indoors and out, and never have a moment’s peace around it. It remains ever present as they go about their lives.

We’re not saying that the situation of gangs on reserve is a simple one to solve. What we are saying, however, is that we are in a crisis. We are losing our children and our future to thugs and criminals. And we can’t say that it just started to happen, because it didn’t. Gangs have been growing roots in our communities for many years; decades, in fact.

They have taken over our cultural events so that elders are afraid to attend, and disrupted legitimate opportunities for our young people. Families are moving away to protect themselves, leaving fewer and fewer good and honest people to fight against the onslaught.
Gangs are a scourge, and once they take hold it becomes a torturous effort to wrestle back the community from them. Who is there to help us?
We look at the problems that the major cities in Canada are having with gangs, and see the money that is being poured into those areas and we think ‘What chance do we have?’ The resources to fight these lawless, ruthless, murderous hoodlums are just not there for our small villages. The criminal activity increases while the good and the just who must live amongst it shrink to the background.

They are, of course, afraid of offending the drug lords who are hooking our kids on crack and heroin and sending our young women and men out onto the streets to hook other parents’ kids on these drugs, and the viciousness of this cycle plays out day after day.

Is there no hope?

First Nations leaders arrange summits on everything under the sun. They develop strategies for economic development, send out panels to find ways on improving education and health, they gather to discuss land claims, and treaty settlements, and have war-chests to take governments to court over lack of consultation, and to prove Aboriginal rights, and, of course, these things are important.

But what will it be all for if we can’t pass along safe, stable, gang-free environments to our children?

In one of the news briefs you will read in this paper, the chief of Lac Seul, Ont. says, “We borrow this world from our children.”

Is it our intention to use it up and return it in such a dangerous mess?

Twenty-thousand young people are estimated to have been adopted out of our communities during the time of the Sixties Scoop. How many of our young people across the country are currently being scooped up by gangs today? Will we allow that gang involvement to grow until it rivals the number adopted out in the sixties? Currently, of the 430-odd gangs operating in Canada, 21 per cent of their membership is made up of First Nations youth.

If we measure the harm that is being done to our people and their futures by gangs, would it compare to the devastation wrought by the residential school system that was imposed on us? If we were given fair warning back then and had the power to stop the horrors of that, wouldn’t we?

Well, we, as a group, are no longer powerless, and we have had more than our share of fair warning about gangs and the swath they are cutting through our nations. So we ask you, isn’t it time that we rise up and fight with everything that we have against this?

Leaders, it is your responsibility to push back. We rely on you to do so. Where are the summits on gang violence? Where are the marches, the walks, the gatherings to raise awareness of these robbers that are stealing our children away?

Help the gentle folks of our communities to live peacefully again on our territories. Don’t let that young boy in Hobbema be just another death among many deaths. Let him be the last, and we will commemorate him as such.

Seek out the resources available to you to put an end to this. Find willing partners. Make a nuisance of yourself on Parliament Hill, in the provincial legislatures across the country. Flex your collective muscles and shout it from the rooftops that we need help to rid this plague in our communities.

We can’t give up, or give in to this. There is just too much at stake.

Windspeaker