Suicide is Genocide

I was a little girl when I first heard of suicide. She was my moms friends and she had a granny square blanket that was white and blue. Sometimes she watched me when my mommy was out and her name was Mahogany, she was a lesbian and carried a lot of pain I imagine. She hung herself and I remember my mommy crying and hearing the conversations. All I knew was that I was missing a friend, no one thought of me though in my little girl heart left to grieve and try to understand on my own at such a young age.

Later when I was a young crazy 17 and living with my first daughters biological father I received a phone call. It was my father calling to tell me that my brother Norman killed himself on a beach back home in Snuneymuxw. I was so devastated I cried and cried and he said to me to be strong for my older sister because she knew him longer. So once again my grief was pushed aside and stunned and shocked I made my way home. The next few days passed in a blur of crying and preparation. I will never forget that slow walk up to the casket to say goodbye, remembering our play times as kids, our scared times as kids, our beach time, and our teenage years. My father and his wife held me up as my legs gave way and I cried so hard I thought I would cry my life away. I felt as if I was slipping away from reality, like I was going crazy, I was anxiety ridden and insane with grief and yet again my father left me out of my process in favor of being there for my sisters. Left alone to stumble and make my way through this pain that felt like a black hole was opening in my heart and that if I looked too deeply I too would die. These are wounds that never heal, I think of him often and push my feelings inside because I was trained and taught not to feel grief, that was for other people in my family but not me.

This led to a cycle of self destruction, I was not important, no one cared about me. I suffered from anxiety and panic attacks, I drank as much as I could and when I told my mom or my sister they were so involved in their own addictions and pain cycles they ridiculed me and told to me stop being so dramatic. I often thought I was going insane and lived a year in a terrifying abyss, I also got pregnant at this time. Alone as my mom and sister drowned and snorted their sorrows away I was left to care for as best I could my little sister and that was not well at all. I often abandoned her and ran away to my fathers to sanity, but that was not better. It was during this time as I suffered on my own I shared my story of being sexually abused with my family. It was met with love and care and I was surprised, nothing came of it though and we never talked of that again either. The cycle in my life was always to be the one who listened never the one who shared.

When my baby was 8 months or so old my uncle Dwayne came to visit us from the north, he brought presents he made and took us out and generally had so much fun, he brought with him his nephew, a handsome young Dene / Blackfoot man and we hit it off very well. What a fun trip, we partied, we hung out, we had family dinners. I showed Darryl my Courtney Love impression, he thought I was nuts and I thought he was wild. Than another dreaded phone call came. Uncle had killed himself down the lake and I was numb, I was sick inside. How? Why? He was just here, I hid under the table like a little girl and shook near too falling apart. My friend came and coaxed me out and as our family gathered at my moms we all made the plan to go up north. They asked me to write the eulogy because even at that age I was known to be a writer, I always carried journals and was always writing poems. We gathered into a big caravan and took off on the journey to say goodbye to our most loved uncle. During the ride everyone was sleeping and I was awake writing, I looked up when I felt the van sliding and my aunty was getting scared, I remember thinking turn into the slide and think I shouted by than it was too late. We slid for a long time and than the van flipped over three times finally coming to a stop and landing in the only snow bank for miles around. It was too quick I was in shock, I had no idea if I was alive or dead. I remember opening my eyes and seeing white and what looked like crystal, I felt numb was I dead? Than I heard a keening wailing underneath me, and I realized I was alive and I was covered in snow and glass against the window. The crying was my little sister right underneath me, she was trapped under the van. We dug her out and everyone just cried, her neck was broken, my mothers foot broken, my aunties finger, along with the bumps and bruises the rest of us had. I remember thinking as I sat in the ambulance that his death ripped something in the universe, he wasn’t meant to go and now there was a ripple effect shaking us all up and drowning us in a river of fear. I was so angry and filled with hate, seething white hot hatred, how dare he do this to us, how dare he leave us and almost make us die!? The funeral was long and hard and we later found out that as his friend was on the way to the funeral he stopped his vehicle and got out to pee and was hit and killed by a vehicle. This confirmed it for me, he was not meant to die this way, something did happen in the universe. When you take your own life you are ripping not only your family up, but you are also changing the very fabric of our world.

A couple years later someone I loved so very much and had a brief love affair with, was married to my cousin in the north. They fought, and he ran off to the bush to kill himself. How much more of this could I endure? My pain was so great it shredded me open, left me eviscerated my guts open for everyone to see. I had since broken up with Darryl and was in vancouver with a broken foot. I flew up and spent more time as the walking wounded, putting someone else I loved in the ground, burying my heart in his hands and left to question again why? Left to hate and shake, left to contemplate. Left to pick up the pieces of my broken heart that I had to keep silent, out of respect for my cousin and her son and for my husband. We got back together in our grief and tried to comfort each other as best we could. Tried to put our shattered hearts together and make a whole one. Such a long cold winter of hurting, how could he? How could anybody?

I have been clinically depressed over periods of my whole life, dealing with the historical trauma, the fall out from genocide and the family circle of abuse. I have dealt with the insanity of alcohol abuse and the downward spiral of panic and anxiety. There have been many times I have felt helpless, hopeless, and like I didn’t want to live but throughout all that I had a drive to live, I was terrified of death, I was constantly in and out of the hospital with “hypochondria” I was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder. I sought out counselling and none of it mattered I still lived in a dark place, where I couldn’t even look into any ones eyes. I couldn’t breath and was constantly thinking I was going to die or go insane. Yet something, saved me. My ancestors, my grandmothers and grandfathers on the other side, my spirit protectors, the Creator kept me safe when surely it seemed I would die, I must die. I endured.

I had more babies, broke up with their dad and moved home. There I found the love of my life, someone who understood my insanity and lived there too, a Queen and her Crow together we managed to hold each other up as best we could and learn to love with our whole spirits. We knew what it was to find the other half of our red souls, we had a well spring of indigenous love that is still going strong to this day. Out of the darkness of colonialism, genocide, dysfunction, and addiction we made it. There were hard times, and there were good times, rich times and poor times but through it all we knew to look behind us was to be lost, and shakily with great courage and fear we walked forward. Together.

Yet of course again life was broken for me, my beautiful cousin K’ai Spring Willow left us of her own will. So beautiful and broken she was, as we all are and her hurt swallowed her whole and left us picking up our broken pieces. How much of this could one family endure? Could our people endure? How was it she felt so alone, she who was so loved and was precious? Death comes for us all, but should it come at our own hands? Is it our choice to make the Creators decision? I love my cousin so much and think of her all the time, she was so special. She lives on as a spring willow.

Not long after as I was pregnant with my last child once again I received the call, the dreaded call. My beautiful cousin Becca left us, she left us alone with her babies and a hole in our lives. Drugs took her away and I think of her all the time, it was not an official suicide but how else to describe what happened? What are drugs but pain killers and a way out. Every time I look into the eyes of her daughter my heart breaks, I remember how we used to dance. Carefree and laughing together, how we lay around with out baby bellies and teased each other

How many times can my heart be broken? How many times must we gather to bury and mourn? Countless, canada is ruthless in the pursuit of the dead ndn at any costs. That dreaded call, telling us that the children’s cousin died in suspected suicide, how many tears can we cry for our babies, that now they know the heartbreak, they are in the circle of our grief and the insanity of why. Less than two weeks ago we again received the message of pain, the children’s sister left her family of her own accord. I have been broken and struggling since, lost in the sorrows and the anger of the pain my children have to endure. So many triggers and loss kept tucked away in the darkest hells of my soul had been broken open again, and struggling I could not support them the way they needed. This pain is so hard to bear, all those of my loves gone before, knocking on my door. If I look behind me I am broken and lost, so struggling to live another day with this pain in me and to bear witness to the pain of my children is all I can do. Two days ago we heard of another death, a young man who couldn’t go another day. I didn’t know him but my children did and it hurts me to see them hurt and than to become numb. Is this our lot in life? We become so numb because it happens to us so often there is no other way to cope.

Sometimes I dare to peak behind me and what I see is generations of horror, I see our ancestors raped, beaten, slaughtered, enslaved, exterminated like vermin so that our land could be stolen. Kill the ndn in the child is what they tried to do but little did they know they couldn’t kill the ndn in ME. Every man, woman, child who commits suicide is canadas burden to bear. Many citizens desensitize themselves to our ongoing genocide and our dysfunction with causal racist remarks and thoughts. They rely on generations of separation not realizing that residential schools just closed, that they are stealing our babies, that they are living on our stolen land. They are raping our lands just like they rape our bodies. Yet somehow they just decide to turn a blind eye to their role in our ongoing genocide. All the while they want to free tibet, and they are enraged about palestine yet its so easy to pretend we don’t exist except for being a nuisance and whiners when we shout our truths. How dare we protect our lands, and ourselves, how dare we speak out and call out the truth for what it is. How dare we mar their colonized lives with our existence? Suicide is Genocide but canadas citizens do not care.

Poem: Suicide is Genocide

Suicide is genocide and nothing more,
all these loves I’ve lost,
I lay at Canada’s door.
suicide is genocide and something more,
I tremble and shake when death knocks on my door,
I open it to a river of indigenous blood,
it leaves me shaky and breathless,
my heart sore.
Suicide is genocide and everything more,
when my loves die,
it makes me hate canada more.
Every precious life we lose
every sacred breath not taken,
is colonization’s ugly spore.
Suicide is genocide this I know,
I am covered in the blood of those gone before,
warriors are lost and families broken,
we all tremble to answer the blood at our door.
Suicide is colonized and nothing more,
just another dead native on the floor.
Suicide is murder canada commits,
they hide their sin in feigned innocence.
suicide is genocide this I know,
another dead loved one delivers this blow.
How can we fight, how can we resist,
when canada is killing us with an iron fist,
Suicide is canadas blame,
don’t believe me just ask,
every child man and woman hanged,
all their lives whisper canada shame.
Suicide is genocide and so much more,
I have cried ocean’ of tears on my floor.
Suicide is genocide and nothing new,
if your skin is red watch out,
canada is gunning for you.

In the spirit of all my loves gone before, Mahogany, Norman, Dwayne, Ernie, K’ai, Becca, Tiff and Zach… and the countless others opening their veins right now. You are precious to me and to us all, our indigenous hearts love you! Please if you are contemplating suicide seek help. You are loved to us if not canadas seething masses of blinded eyes.

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