Quebec coroner Bernard Lefrançois will present the findings Saturday of his inquest into the five suicides that rocked the Uashat-Maliotenam Innu communities in 2015.
Lefrançois wrote his report after a nine-day hearing last year that saw the victims’ family members and a group of mental health experts testify in Sept-Îles.
The province called a public coroner’s inquest into the suicides in November 2015, after 18-year-old Nadeige Guanish took her life in a forest on the edge of the Innu territory.
The other victims were Marie-Marthe Grégoire, 46, her son Charles Junior Grégoire-Vollant, 24, Céline Rock Michel, 30, and Alicia Grace Sandy, 21. After Guanish’s death, mental health workers, police and other stakeholders in the community said they were exhausted by the constant trauma associated with suicide.
Lefrançois’ report is expected to deal with how to prevent suicide in the Innu communities, but may also weigh into the broader phenomenon of suicide among Canada’s indigenous peoples. Suicide rates among aboriginal youth are between five and six times higher than among non-aboriginals, according to Health Canada.
Many of those who died on the Innu territory were either the children or grandchildren of residential school survivors. Experts on aboriginal suicide cite the idea of intergenerational trauma — a phenomenon whereby the abuse and pain sustained by parents can be handed down to future generations.
