For Indigenous youth in Northern Ontario, learning is far from simple

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Stormy Towedo is a member of Aroland First Nation. This op-ed is based on an essay she wrote as a Grade 12 student at the Matawa Education & Care Centre in Thunder Bay.

I moved away from my home, the tiny community of Aroland First Nation, to further pursue my education in 2024. I had to leave behind my siblings, parents, grandparents and family. And I had to move to Thunder Bay, the murder capital of Canada.

It was a difficult decision to make, and I wish I didn’t have to. But Indigenous youth have little choice, if we want to grow up.

Many of us feel unsafe living in Thunder Bay due to the unresolved deaths and missing Indigenous youth reported in this city. Local police investigations are often cursory at best, as we saw when seven First Nations youth died in similar circumstances while going to school in Thunder Bay, and all seven deaths were ruled to be either accidental or due to an undetermined cause. This makes us feel that our lives are undervalued and that law enforcement will not protect us. This is not good enough.

In northern Ontario, and particularly in Thunder Bay, many of us have faced racial profiling. Encounters with the police frequently involve discriminatory assumptions that label youth as “troublemakers,” “drunks,” “alcoholics,” or even “criminals.” It’s similar in the healthcare system, where racism can set off a cascade of negative experiences, with Indigenous patients too often stereotyped as drug-seeking, non-compliant, or intoxicated, which can lead to misdiagnosis, neglect and harmful treatment. Based on the clothing we wear and the colour of our skin, we have been targeted by security or store employees on the assumption that we are shoplifting, triggering feelings of judgment, humiliation, and being unwelcome.

But what else can we do, other than leave home for Thunder Bay? The majority of the 34 schools in Nishnawbe Aski Nation territory – which covers about two-thirds of Ontario – only go up to Grade 8; only eight schools offer education up to Grade 12. Thousands of First Nations youth, including some as young as 13, have had to travel hundreds of kilometres away from their homes, families, and communities to pursue greater opportunities through education.

Thunder Bay is one of the closest northern cities where such students can attend high school. Many of my classmates come from small, remote communities accessible only by air or winter roads. We are often placed into boarding homes or live in dorm rooms. Loneliness and homesickness quickly sets in. We can only visit home at Christmas break, March break and the summer break. This distance and isolation are among the sacrifices we make just to get an education.

Not only are we detached from our homes, we’re also removed from the support and love of our families. This causes anxiety and a sense of feeling out of place – a “neither-here-nor-there” feeling. Students may experience cultural disconnection or culture shock, which can negatively affect our mental health. Peer influence and the other common pressures of the teenage years can lead to the use of drinking and drugs, which are easy to access, in the name of fitting in. This unhealthy behaviour can lead to dependence and addiction, and to unsafe situations that can lead to accidents and acts of violence, all of which affects the academic performance we work so hard to achieve.

It is clear to me that many Indigenous youth do not feel safe living in Thunder Bay due to systemic racism and discrimination, the unresolved deaths of our peers, and the challenges of moving away from home at such a young age. These are all real struggles that we face as Indigenous youth. I fear that things will get worse, and that nothing effective will be done to stop it.

So this is a call to action. We need to acknowledge the systemic failures and address the injustice of these failures. I hope that if we all put in a little work, we can change Indigenous-directed biases and racism, create environments where students feel safe, and give all youth the same opportunity to achieve their educational goals.