Essay On First Nations Suicide

First Nations peoples tend to be stereotyped as unmotivated, lazy or careless in western culture today. There are a great deal of cases where people jump to conclusions when they see an aboriginal youth who has dropped out of high school, a First Nations person drinking, or hear of a suicide that took place on reserve. The main cause behind all of these problems is not themselves, however, it is the resulting trauma from Residential Schools introduced by the Canadian government.

First Nations suicides, deaths and even murders seem to be overlooked by people today due to stereotypes. When you hear of a suicide of an aboriginal youth how much attention and action is really drawn to it? Or if it does appear on the news, you may hear people discussing

An extreme factor in Aboriginal youth not having an education lies in government funding and resources that are readily available to them. In multiple rural reserves and communities there are remarkably few schools and supplies to provide a professional education or a traditional education to the youth who reside in these places. It is not widely known the degree of which “schools on reserves are grotesquely underfunded compared to . . . non reserve”(Boyden, 2016, para. 16) schools, presenting a barrier that First Nations people are often not equipped to tackle. Even those who do not live on reserves may have trouble attending school, for multiple of their relatives may have attended Residential Schools ingraining the idea of school is destructive or hurtful. Residential Schools have driven crowds away from an education, even to this day. Consequently, Traditional education is even a struggle to accommodate due to the severe lack of wealth and government funding. Education is the most important component for giving any person an upper hand in life; there should be a greater focus on providing a stronger education system to all