The executive director of child and family services at Carrier Sekani Family Services sees the upcoming closure of the 60-bed Prince George Youth Custody Centre as an unprecedented opportunity to address the gap in treatment for Indigenous youth.
“We need to think of new and innovative ways of dealing with the opioid crisis and deal with the lack of treatment spaces, especially for youth in the North,” Mary Teegee said. “You can see it in downtown Prince George, we know what’s happening in our communities, the death rate in our communities, especially with young people, it’s horrifying. It’s an epidemic, it’s a state of emergency and you need to have a real systematic strategy to deal with the issue.
In 2017, the Cedar Partnership Project study found Indigenous youth in Prince George who use drugs are 13 times more likely to die of an overdose than any other age peer group in Canada.
Five years later, those overdose deaths continue to happen at an alarming rate and Teegee says the fact that the northern half of the province has no treatment centre to get Indigenous youth and young adults off drugs is a contributing factor that must be addressed.
While Indigenous people make up just five per cent of Canada’s population, they are overrepresented in Canadian jails with more than 30 per cent of the prison population identified as Indigenous, a statistical trend that also applies to youth custody centres.
“This facility was built for youth in custody and predominantly they are Indigenous youth, so it makes sense that the centre would look at healing rather than penalizing youth for what it is, in effect, the impacts of residential school,” said Teegee. "You have to look at the root of the problem. It has to be looked at from the lens of multi-generational trauma stemming from the impacts of colonization and the impact of residential school. (Fixing the problem) is going to take a lot of rethinking and it’s going to take a lot of people with open hearts, open minds and courage.”
Teegee said once Prince George's youth custody facility closes at the end of March, it could serve as the initial stage of the detoxification/treatment for substance-addicted youth. That could then lead to more culturally-sensitive and holistic healing in Indigenous communities where they would have the influence of elders and other family connections to positively influence their recovery.
She pointed to the Sk’ai Zeh Yah (Children of Chiefs) Youth Centre that CSFS opened in November 2020 at 1575 Second Ave., as an example of a low-barrier gathering place that inspires hope for homeless youths and young adults to find healthier lifestyles.
“One thing we know for certain is that oftentimes there isn’t aftercare or the treatment may not be long enough or culturally appropriate,” said Teegee. “So I think if we have that initial treatment connecting to those other places where there could be on-the-land treatment. The cultural piece is so important when it comes to Indigenous youth."
Teegee would like to see BC Housing get involved as a provider of permanent housing for youths who have completed treatment programs at the repurposed youth jail.
“I’m really hoping the different levels of government are committed to coming up with really good solutions and having the ongoing resources to do things the right way,” she said. “We’ve been asking for this for years and years I’m really hoping we can get it as close to right as we can.”
