The federal government has announced an inquiry into the disproportionately large number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls across Canada. While the inquiry is tasked with examining cases of women who have disappeared or died tragically, Deborah from Vanderhoof, BC suggests that the inquiry should also investigate the deaths of women who took their own lives as a result of the traumatic sexual abuse they suffered in childhood.
As Deborah recounts to Checkup host Duncan McCue, many of her family members were abused as young children, which led them to taking their own lives by suicide and drug abuse as adults.
Deborah: I understand that the inquiry is for murder and missing women, but they should also talk about the women that have self-destructed on the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver and other places.
In my family, I’ve lost my mother, my sister, my niece, and my grandniece, all to various forms of abuse, mostly by alcohol and drugs. But their background is the abuse that happened when they were little girls.
DM: From your perspective Deborah, what’s the root of the problem?
Deborah: The root of the problem is that they need to go back to the communities and to talk about what’s going on there. All of my family members who have died were abused as children.
My sister committed suicide in 2008 and she was abused when she was maybe four years old and never talked about it. But she killed her pain with alcohol.
My niece died last year and they found her body on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. She was abused and raped when she was 12. And that happened in the First Nations community. Nobody wants to talk about that.
My other niece, Paige— there was a report done about her— she died on the Downtown Eastside, too. They found her with a heroin overdose.
DM: Paige’s story — this is the recent report that the Representative for Children and Families released.
Deborah: Yes. She was abused as a small child.
The inquiry needs to get to the root of the abuse because a lot of the women that put themselves at risk are women that had their souls killed as children with abuse.
There’s a really strong “no talk” culture on First Nations reserves where people know things are going on, but they don’t talk about it because the price of talking is that you become targeted yourself. I know this because two young girls came to me for help about their abuse. When I brought it to the courts, I was targeted and they tried to burn down my house. It’s a really deep-rooted problem.
Deborah’s comments have been edited and condensed. This online segment was prepared by Champagne Choquer.