Indigenous youth from Cross Lake, Man., document hope and despair
Last winter, the remote northern Indigenous community of Cross Lake was hit by tragedy. Five young people killed themselves. In the weeks that followed, 140 more attempted suicide.
The Fifth Estate's Gillian Findlay went to Cross Lake to find out what was happening.
"Cross Lake is a Cree community. 8,500 people .... very isolated as you can imagine. And it has all the problems that we associate with those kinds of communities ... unemployment, addiction rates, violence, overcrowding, there's a severe shortage of housing," she tells The Current's guest host Piya Chattopadhyay.
Over the course of nine months, Findlay spoke with the people who lived there and gave some of the teens cameras.
"What we discovered was a lot of darkness ... and a lot of joy and hope," says Findlay.
The Fifth Estate interviewed teenagers like Christian Bailey, a 17-year-old teen who is struggling to finish high school. He has grown up with alcoholic parents.
"Whenever my parents drink, my brother will drink too with them. It like hurts to see my brother want to just grow up to be like them," says Bailey.
With so many teens taking their own lives or trying to hurt themselves, most of the towns youth know someone who has tried to harm themselves.
"All these people thought they can just get away from their problems, but then they're just like putting their problems on other people," says 18-year-old Vince Gill.
"I know a lot of people that tried killing themselves," Gill says.
Along with Gill's pain, he also has dreams of being a pro athlete and play for the NHlL
"I am chasing smaller goals right now before I chase that one. I don't believe in myself that I can accomplish these goals but I just want to make my dad proud."
For 15-year-old Maxine Monias, thoughts of suicide are often with her.
"I always think about killing myself. I want to die so bad. Nobody knows how much I want to take my own life. Nobody knows how much I want to leave this earth," she says.
Findlay says over time, she witnesses transformation in the youth she met. She hopes that by bringing attention to the issues youth are experiencing in Cross Lake, the community will feel like someone is listening.
"We could see in each case, I hope, this increasing sense of self-worth. 'I must be important because they have come in and they want me to tell my story,'" she tells Chattopadhyay.
The CBC's The Fiffth Estate: Cross Lake: "This is Where I Live" airs Friday, April 7, at 9 p.m./9:30 p.m. NT on CBC TV.
Listen to the full segment at the top of this web post.
This segment was produced by The Current's Lara O'Brien.
Cross Lake youth give voice to their struggle in music video: