4.5 stars

There are all kinds of issues on indigenous reservations in Canada. Education is just one of them. In 2000(?), a group of indigenous people built and started running a high school in Thunder Bay, Ontario for those students living north who didn’t have a high school to go to. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before some of those kids – many who were away from home for the first time, who had never been in a city before, a new culture, a new language, no (or not many) family or friends to help – started disappearing. And dying. Over 11 years, seven teenagers died.

The Thunder Bay police did very little to help, often not even contacting the families on the reserves to let them know their kids had disappeared. In some cases, they went too long before starting to look for the kids. Five of the kids were found in the river, and in most cases, just written off as “no foul play suspected”. But the indigenous people running the school, the families and friends question this. It was so unlike these kids to just get drunk and drown in the river. It has never really been figured out what exactly happened to these kids.

Wow, this is so sad. And aggravating that not enough is being done to help the indigenous kids and their communities. It’s an eye-opener and definitely worth reading. There are some repetitive bits and the author kind of went all over the place sometimes – between telling the kids’ stories, then working in other information about other people or communities. But really worth the read. ( )

NA ( )

Heartbreaking. An examination of the tragic loss of Indigenous communities forced to send their high school age students to a different culture thousands of kilometers away. The failures of colonial governments continue to destroy Indigenous communities.

This is one of the best books I've read this year (and I've had a lot of free time on my hands, for obvious reasons). ( )

Accounts of the of 7 deaths, the investigations and impact in Thunder Bay, with family and tribal background. It is an accounting of the continuing grinding genocide of aboriginal North Americans via government hostility, outright racism and deliberate neglect. In other words only the details are new. There is nothing pleasant, positive or hopeful as whatever the committees find never seems to be funded or positively implemented. ( )