Canada: 16-Year-Old Death in Residential Treatment Facility Inquiry

“16-year-old Thunderheart Tshakapesh, who died by suicide in 2017 shortly after returning home to Natuashish from Regina, where he was admitted to a youth facility to treat his addiction.

In July 2017, Thunderheart’s father Simeon Tshakapesh — at the time deputy grand chief of the Innu Nation — and other Innu leaders crashed then federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett’s Canada Day barbecue in Toronto.

Tshakapesh pleaded with Bennett in front of onlookers, with other Innu leaders at his side.

“Stop stealing our children! Stop it!” he shouted. “Something gotta end. We can’t keep burying our own.

“My son Thunderheart had a dream, and that dream was killed by the system! Thunderheart!” the Innu leader cried. “I want my son back! You don’t know how much pain I’m going to carry the rest of my life.”

Bennett promised action, and Thunderheart’s death became the catalyst for the inquiry.

But it took several years before the government of Newfoundland and Labrador and Innu leadership agreed to the inquiry’s terms of reference. Finally, in 2022, the Inquiry Regarding the Treatment, Experiences, and Outcomes of Innu in the Child Protection System began.

It has a mandate to look into the systemic issues within the provincial child welfare system, conduct investigations into the death of six Innu youth and young adults, and make recommendations to the government.

Through the inquiry, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey said in April 2022, “we will acquire a better understanding of the treatment, experiences and care that Innu children have received in the current system, and more importantly, how we improve for the future.”

Inter-generational trauma
For decades, Innu have told provincial and federal governments the province’s child protection system has contributed to poor health outcomes for Innu, including addiction and suicide. Some have likened the epidemic to the residential school period.

A previous inquiry resulted in the 1992 report Gathering Voices: Finding strength to help our children. Produced by the Innu Nation and the Mushuau Innu band council, the report condemned the province’s policy of removing Innu children from their families instead of supporting families.

“Innu families used to stay together. We don’t like to see our children taken away,” the report reads. “If the parents are drinking, the answer is not to take their children away. We think Social Services should try to work with the families, not just take the children away.”

More than three decades have passed since then.

According to provincial records, in March 2024 there were 303 child welfare cases in Sheshatshiu and 184 in Natuashish — the two Innu communities in Labrador. In 2021, Sheshatshiu had a population of 1,225, while Natuashish had 856 residents.

In November 2024 the inquiry’s first phase concluded with a final week of public and private community hearings in Sheshatshiu. That’s when Thunderheart’s memorial was displayed.

The inquiry’s commissioners heard how the residential school system and then the child welfare system similarly contributed to intergenerational trauma, forcibly breaking up Innu families, leaving them without support, and leading to addiction and other mental health issues.

An Innu mother whose daughter was taken by the Department of Children, Seniors and Social Development (CSSD) told the inquiry how forced assimilation by federal and provincial governments led to intergenerational trauma in her family. The Independent is not publishing the mother’s name to protect the identity of her daughter, who is still in provincial custody.

The mother told the inquiry how government policies have torn parents and their children apart in her family for three generations. Her mother is a residential school survivor and endured abuse and trauma that left her angry and lacking self-worth, the woman said.

“I do love my mother, but in the beginning I didn’t. I hated her. I hated her thinking that she was the issue; she hurt us, she hurt me. Then I became a mother that was similar to her, and I hurt my own children,” she recounted.

She described being taken into provincial care at age four, after her mother’s partner sexually assaulted her. She lived with her aunt for several years before CSSD told her she had to return home, which devastated her.

“I don’t think that was fair for me when I didn’t want to be there, but I was forced to go back to a family that I didn’t want to be in. I was forced back to staying with the abusers,” she said.”

“Florence Milley, who was put in a foster home at age four with her brother, told the inquiry she felt the system that was supposed to save her, destroyed her. She said social services separated the siblings by placing her sister in a different house than her and her brother.

She said the foster family she was placed with physically and sexually abused her and other kids in their care. “We were treated like animals. We were tortured,” she said, adding her sister, though in the care of a different family, was also abused. “The stories don’t change.”

Milley, now 47, described how a foster family caged her and her brother as punishment. “We were pushed down the stairs in the basement — there’s a cage that’s in the basement, like a dog cage. That’s where they put me if I didn’t listen,” she told the inquiry.

“So I was an animal to the foster parents,” she continued, recalling her screams for help. “I kept crying for my mother, night after night,” she said. Milley also recalled her brother screaming as one of the foster parents burned him with a cigarette. The siblings tried to escape, but Milley said they were on an island and couldn’t leave the community.

She told the inquiry she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and severe anxiety, and is seeing a therapist. “You could never erase an image of trauma, no matter what age you are.”

Milley’s mother was a residential school survivor and, like many other survivors who did not have access to supports, she began drinking. Milley did too, but said she has been sober for almost a year.”

N.L. child protection system part of ongoing colonization, Innu tell inquiry
[APTN news 1/29/25 by Yumna Iftikhar]

 

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