Native suicides drop sharply in Alberta

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After rising steadily for the previous six years, the Native suicide rate dropped sharply in Alberta in 1988.

But the number of suicides recorded in Edmonton took a sudden jump to 15, more than double the seven suicides recorded in 1987. Calgary had only two Native suicides in 1988 and four in 1987.

More Native suicides have occurred in the capital city than Calgary ever since 1981. In fact in that year and again in 1985 there were no Native suicides in Calgary while Edmonton had seven and 10 respectively.

While the provincial suicide rate in the Native community has dropped it's still high, although nowhere near as high as 1987 when 13 per cent of the 391 suicides in the province were Native even though Native people comprised just 4.4 per cent of the population.

But Natives still account for almost 10 per cent of the suicides, according to figures compiled by Windspeaker from the provincial office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

In 1988, the last year for which figures are available, 402 people took their lives in Alberta; 39 of the people were Indian or Metis. Seventy-seven per cent of the Native suicides were male, just one per cent higher than the provincial rate.

Edmonton and northern Alberta accounted for almost 80 per cent of the Native suicides--15 occurred in Edmonton while 16 happened in the remainder of northern Alberta. The division between northern and southern Alberta is an imaginary line through Hobbema.

Calgary accounted for but two of the 1988 suicides; the rest of southern Alberta recorded six Native suicides--all of them male.

In the 1980s, northern rural Alberta consistently accounted for a majority of the Native suicides in the province.

It peaked at 76 per cent in 1984 when 31 of the 41 Native suicides occurred in northern rural Alberta; only four of the suicides were female.

In that year 420 suicides occurred in the province; almost one in 10 suicides were Native, although Natives made up only 3.3 per cent of the population, according to Statistics Canada.

The provincial suicide figures peaked in 1986 when 431 people took their lives; 51 of those people were Native giving the Aboriginal community a 11.8 per cent rate.

But the Native rate didn't peak until the next year when the provincial total dropped to 391 suicides, but the Native total remained stubbornly high at 51 making for a 13 per cent Native suicide rate.

All other ethnic communities like Blacks, Asian Indians and Orientals are a distant third behind white people and Aboriginal people, according t the provincial figures.

Natives need their own justice system

The justice system is stacked against the Native person.

It's been found that for years many Native people plead guilty to a crime because the stigma of being in court and the inability to understand the charges force them to give up their rights. Native court interpreters are few and far between in Canada's justice system.

Twelve years ago, a provincial inquiry into Native justice headed by Justice William Kirby recommended essentially that Native people in Alberta have a parallel justice system that would mete out punishment and a standard of justice in their own communities.

Kirby urged that the province train and appoint Indian justices of the peace to handle minor offenses on the reserve.

In addition, recommended provincial court sittings on reserves, training for Native interpreters, and an overhaul of wildlife laws to better serve Native people. He blamed high unemployment and poverty leading to alcohol abuse which has been determined is a major factor when Native people commit crimes.

Since that time, his major recommendations have collected dust on a shelf. But clearly, when Natives in 1990 comprise 29 per cent of the prison population in Alberta yet make up only 4 per cent of the general population, very little has changed in twelve years.

In 1978, Kirby's inquiry was launched to determine why so many Native people sat in Alberta jails.

Today, in 190, the Alberta government and its federal counterparts are essentially reinventing the inquiry although the answers are already available.

Much of what Justice Kirby recommended in 1978 was endorsed in 1988 by the Canadian Bar Association. It released a study which concluded traditional western notions of crime, justice and punishment are incompatible with aboriginal values and culture. It recommended a parallel justice system, largely controlled by Indians, be established.

The system proposed would borrow from Indian traditions where practical and be implemented by Natives as much as possible.

For minor offenses, Native justices in concert with band elders could arbitrate disputes, dispense justice and mete out punishment with solutions such as banishment or community service.

The study concluded Native self-government, including a Native justice system, was vital to the survival of Native people.

Three inquiries into the treatment of Natives in Canada's justice system--Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia--have painted the same inexcusable, sad portrait of how a white-dominated justice system of courts and police have abused the rights of Native people.

The recurring conclusion of all those inquiries is self-evident: Native people are excluded from the Canadian justice system except as defendants.

Donald Marshall, a Micmac Indian in Nova Scotia, spent 11 years behind bars for a murder he did not commit.

It took 16 years before the killers of Manitoba Cree teenager Helen Osborne were prosecuted despite clear evidence who the murderers were.

In the same province, an inquiry has learned Indian leader J.J. Harper may not have been shot by a policeman in self-defense and that the real circumstances have been covered up by police.

Alberta's inquiry into Native justice will likely find similar startling results.

Native people continue to be victims of a justice system which must be changed because it discriminates against them.

But this time, the politicians wo control the purse-strings of that justice system cannot turn a blind eye and hide their heads in the sand.

Justice demands they take action.