As toxic drug crisis persists, Youth in ‘care’ are especially vulnerable: ‘It’s just a horrific cycle’

Content warning: This story deals with trauma from the child “welfare” system, including addiction and loss. Please read with care for your spirit and well-being.

During her path to sobriety, Eva Takakenew has done a lot of thinking about her time in the child welfare system.

“I figured there was something wrong with me that my [birth] mom didn’t want me,” shared Takakenew, who is from Piyesiw-Awasis (Thunderchild First Nation).

“Why did she give me away? Didn’t she love me? And so I would always be thinking about that.”

Takakenew is 43, but when she smiles — which is often — she looks almost childlike. She wears an oversized hoodie, often with the hood up, and has a piercing through her right eyebrow.

As she speaks, it’s like she’s rushing to tell you everything all at once. The “mundane” (as she calls it) outside world unfolds too slowly for the ADHD she carries with her.

Takakenew is a social worker who works as a writer and, more recently, a photographer at Megaphone Magazine.

As a young teen, she said she used to run away from home a lot, looking for any way to alleviate the pain she was experiencing. Without knowing why, she’d hitchhike or take public transit to the Downtown Eastside. It felt like a “magnet,” she explained.

By the time she was 14, she said, she was using crack cocaine and living permanently in the Downtown Eastside. But five years ago, after decades of drug dependence, Takakenew got clean from a toxic supply.

She is reflective about her experiences, and the clarity also provided her the strength to find out more about her birth family.

A year into her sobriety, Takakenew was on a call with Piyesiw-Awasis in “Turtleford, Saskatchewan,” the place she’s from but has never been.

An impulse evoked her to question the woman on the other end of the line. Did she know anybody on the reserve with the last name “Sim”?

“Sim” was a name that inadvertently slipped through the closed adoption process. Takakenew says her adopted mom saw it on some paperwork and didn’t want to hide it from her.

“I was really wishing I could find my mom,” said Takakenew.

The woman on the phone told her to sit down. They knew who her sister was.

It wasn’t long before Takakenew discovered ten more siblings. She also learned that her grandfather was the famed veteran and Indigenous activist Phillip Favel and that Cree chief Pitikwahanapiwiyin (Poundmaker) was her great-great-grandfather.

Today, Takakenew consciously carries the strength and resilience of her ancestors. But for so many Indigenous Youth in provincial care, reconnection isn’t possible, let alone a journey towards healing from the pain that stems from cycles of colonial harm, including the child “welfare” system.

As Indigenous children continue to enter the child welfare system at alarming rates, the province’s public health emergency on toxic drugs deepens with little relief. Between 2017 and 2022, 73 per cent of the Youth who died (aged 19 and under) received Ministry of Child and Family Development (MCFD) services at some point in their lives.

Experts say that the provincial MCFD must do more to respond to the highly challenging and rapidly escalating crisis and ensure that its efforts are focused on prevention support and services for Youth in the system.

The statistics are staggering. In “British Columbia,” unregulated toxic drug overdoses are the leading cause of death for people aged between 10 and 59, accounting for more deaths than homicides, suicides, accidents and natural diseases combined.

In 2023, more than six people died every day from toxic drugs in the province, and the Vancouver-Centre North local health area, which includes the Downtown Eastside, reported a rate of death more than 12 times greater than the provincial average.

In a 2014 study published in the BMC Public Health, researchers found that Youth aged 14 to 26 who use illicit drugs in “Vancouver” are over 160 times more likely to have a history of being in the child welfare system compared to the general population of Youth.

The study also found that those with a history in the child welfare system were more likely to be of Indigenous ancestry and were more likely to start using harder substances at an earlier age.

Despite these harsh realities, the coroner reported a decrease in Youth deaths due to unregulated drugs in 2023. At a recent press conference, Alexis Crabtree, a senior scientist and medical lead of harm reduction and substance use at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) shared that data collected since 2020 demonstrates there has been no increase in the rate of Youth being diagnosed with opioid use disorders.

“Clearly though, more monitoring is needed,” said Crabtree. “The truth is, we don’t have a lot of evidence about what is happening for Youth and substance use.”

Mary Teegee, Executive Director of Carrier Sekani Family Services in “Prince George,” agreed that the reported decrease in Youth deaths shouldn’t be taken at face value.

“The coroner may be saying that, but it’s definitely not something we’re seeing,” said Teegee. “In fact, we’re seeing younger and younger ones accessing our services.”

The crucial age for initiation of hard drug use is 15. And it makes sense. As well as sex and growth hormones to contend with, teenagers are fighting their first battles with stress hormones like cortisol.

Add to that an unstable childhood ping-ponging between homes and — as Takananew described — the pain of not feeling loved or wanted. It’s not difficult to understand how 73 per cent of Youth dying from toxic drugs are somehow involved in the child welfare system.

Of course, Teegee acknowledged there are very valid reasons why children enter the system, such as abuse or severe neglect.

But in many cases, said Teegee, who is Gitxsan and Carrier from Takla Lake First Nation, children are placed into care because of “a broken provincial system” that enforces Western culture as the status quo.

According to the 2019 First Nations/Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect, a First Nations child is 17.2 times more likely to be placed in foster care than a non-Indigenous child.

“These non-nuclear families look different than, say, a non-Indigenous mother that bakes cookies every day and doesn’t have to work,” said Teegee.

Without colonial imposition, many First Nations societies act as their own child protection systems — such as matriarchal structures in “B.C.” where a wilp (house group) includes relatives beyond just parents.

The federal government is increasingly acknowledging this, with recent agreements transferring jurisdiction of child and family services away from provinces to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples.

“My nieces and nephews aren’t just my nieces and nephews,” said Teegee. “They’re like my daughters and sons.”

“So you take that [child] who was embedded in their community, their clan, who have the right to their land and their ways of being truly reflected, and then you put them into a totally foreign system, a foreign family, that trauma in itself is going to lead to them self-medicating.”

Kora DeBeck, a research scientist at the BCCDC and principal investigator for the At-Risk Youth Study (ARYS), agreed.

“A huge risk factor for developing dependence with substances is related to childhood and intergenerational trauma,” she said. “These are very systemic, societal problems, not individual failings of specific families or specific individuals.”

Takakenew was self-medicating through illicit substances when she gave birth to both of her daughters, who are two years apart.

She spent her first two years as a mother fighting the MCFD, but when she became pregnant with her second child, she knew she wouldn’t be able to support herself and her two children. She decided to enter them into an open adoption.

“I think that a lot of the time, people don’t get the help that they need, and they’re forced to do something they don’t want to,” said Takakenew. “Who wants to go and have their family taken from them? And how do we get back from that? We don’t.”

Toxicological testing confirms that illicit fentanyl continues to drive deaths caused by toxic drugs. In 2023, fentanyl was by far the most regularly detected substance, appearing in more than 85 per cent of test results conducted, according to the coroner’s report.

In contrast, the presence of “safer-supply” medications such as hydromorphone, the most commonly prescribed opiate, was detected in 3 per cent of tests.

In March 2020, “British Columbia” became the first jurisdiction globally to launch a province-wide safer-supply policy that allows a limited number of individuals at high risk of overdose to receive pharmaceutical-grade opioids free of charge prescribed by a physician or nurse.

The program has reached about 5,000 people across the province, despite there being estimates of 100,000 people that would identify as having opioid-use disorder.

“Safer supply has been a very small intervention,” said DeBeck, an assistant professor at the School of Public Policy at Simon Fraser University.

According to data collected from Vancouver Coastal Health, the majority of people dying from opiates do not fit the criteria for either having an opioid dependence issue or not using opiates daily. Therefore, they wouldn’t have qualified for prescribed opioid safer-supply, or many opioid public addiction treatment programs, such as detox.

“The current model does not reach any recreational users who we know are dying of overdoses at awful rates,” said DeBeck.

A recent study published by the British Medical Journal reported that people who were receiving prescribed safe supplies were significantly less likely to die from a fatal overdose.

“It shows that [safer supply] is having the expected and hoped-for impact on reducing overdose deaths, but it’s such a small intervention in its implementation that we’re not able to see anything on a population level because people who are at risk for an overdose are not essentially able to access the program.”

In March, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and “Alberta” Premier Danielle Smith criticized “British Columbia’s” safer-supply program after RCMP officers seized “thousands of prescription drug pills, some diverted from the province’s safe supply program” during two local investigations, according to CBC.

But Premier David Eby urged the prescription drugs seized were essentially not part of the safer-supply program.

DeBeck said diversion — the illegal distribution of prescribed drugs — is neither good nor bad. “Diversion happens when people’s needs aren’t being met in other ways,” she explained.

When it comes to prescribed safer supply and diversion, DeBeck said there are two schools of thought. One is that the diversion of a regulated drug where the content is traceable to a person who would otherwise be using unregulated street drugs is “from a public health perspective — a good thing,” said DeBeck.

“So even if it’s technically diverted, as long as it’s replacing toxic street drugs, that’s good,” she said.

“What we wouldn’t want is to have people who would not otherwise use drugs start using drugs.” However, DeBeck said that data collected from 2020 onwards doesn’t show this.

The BCCDC also reports that there’s been no increase in opiate dependence among young people. According to a new study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, one-quarter of deaths among young Canadians in 2021 were opioid-related.

Illicit street drugs are “extremely easily available,” said DeBeck. “Preventing, or at least delaying the onset of substance use is an important public health goal, but if kids do experiment with drugs, from a health and safety perspective, it would be better if they used diverted hydromorphone than unregulated toxic street fentanyl.”

One study that DeBeck was involved with shows that the less support young people aging out of the child welfare system receive, such as financial, independent living and educational support, the more likely they are to use drugs on a daily basis and become homeless.

The MCFD recently announced it had expanded eligibility for support programs for Youth leaving provincial care, including financial and housing support.

“Strengthening Abilities and Journeys of Empowerment program, or SAJE, means supports are available to thousands more young adults,” said a press release earlier this month.

“SAJE now includes young adults from any legal care status, including those in kinship care, and those who have spent 24 or more cumulative months in care, even if they are no longer in care when they turn 19. It also includes those who were adopted or permanently placed while in care and those in comparable statuses under Indigenous law.”

Recently, the province also contributed $7 million to a detox centre specifically for Indigenous Youth on “Vancouver Island” in response to the toxic drug crisis.

But Teegee said that for children in foster care, there has never been enough drug prevention support or services provided by the province.

“It’s just a horrific cycle,” said Teegee. “Not enough money to take care of the kids that are removed. Not enough money to actually deal with their mental health issues.”

Teegee said that because of the opioid crisis, society is “just reacting, reacting, reacting.” A concerted effort is needed to focus on and invest in prevention, she said.

“It’s more than just ensuring there’s enough Naloxone kits,” Teegee added.

In an attempt to address mental health and substance misuse, Teegee, along with the Indigenous child and family services directors from Our Children Our Way, have developed Culture is Healing, a framework for service providers and decision-makers about mental wellness.

The framework recommends a provincial cross-ministry working group and a Youth-led task force to develop an integrated approach to Indigenous child and Youth mental wellness.

“Rather than the ministries working in silos, you have to have the MCFD, the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions all come together, pool resources, and come up with a comprehensive strategy,” said Teegee.

Teegee wants to see the provincial government follow the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal orders regarding ending discriminatory funding.

“Our children and youth living off-reserve should be afforded the same services and preventative services that we’re able to provide in the community,” she said.

“There has to be a commitment by the provincial government to have substantive equality off-reserve,” said Teegee. “The province ought to be following what the federal government is doing, and that is to concentrate on prevention.”

At present, 75 per cent of First Nations children in the child welfare system are living off-reserve. At the same time, the poverty rate in “British Columbia” is rising.

“There’s a lot of factors that suggest there’s going to be an increase in children going into care,” said Teegee, who cited inflation, lack of housing, and minimal investments from the MCFD as structural drivers perpetuating the fragility of families.

For Takakenew, her training as a social worker means she can help Indigenous Youth with similar situations to hers. And finding answers about her birth family has been a key step to understanding and accepting herself.

In “British Columbia,” birth parents and adults who were adopted as children can access identifying information about each other under the Adoption Act. Two years ago, Takakenew requested her adoption records.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to read,” said Takakenew. “I couldn’t actually read all of it at first.”

Born prematurely in 1982 at “Edmonton” hospital, Eva, born Henrietta Takakenew, was two pounds and three ounces, born at 20 weeks and diagnosed with fetal alcohol spectrum syndrome. Her mom, Violet Rose, self-medicated using alcohol and heroin to dull the pain of her trauma as a residential “school” survivor.

As a baby, Henrietta lived with her grandma in “Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.” But when social workers visited, they allegedly decided that her grandma — also named Eva — was too old to look after a baby. She was in her 60s at the time. She lived until she was 91 years old.

Henrietta was placed into foster care with visiting rights for Violet Rose. During a visit, Violet Rose “kidnapped” Henrietta.

The next record was documented 18 months later at the Balmoral Hotel in “Vancouver’s” Downtown Eastside. Henrietta was left for three days on her own with drug paraphernalia scattered around her.

“And that’s how they found me,” she said.

Violet Rose fought to get Henrietta back during the following two foster placements. But after missing a crucial court date, the judge decided Henrietta was adoptable and immediately signed her off for a closed adoption.

At two years old, Henrietta became Eva, after her grandma, with a new set of white parents in “Surrey.”

“She prayed about me forever,” said Takakenew about her adopted mom. “She used to tell me all the time how she loved me long before she got to meet me.”

Takakenew says she and her adopted mom are like best friends.

“I know there’s a lot of controversy among Indigenous people about how we’re losing our culture, but I always felt just like me,” said Takakenew.

Six years later, in June 1988, Violet Rose descended from the second-floor window of The Balmoral Hotel. She died as a result of her injuries at St. Paul’s Hospital. The death certificate calls her passing “accidental” and points to the idea she was suffering from alcohol withdrawal (Delirium Tremens).

The report also notes that Violet Rose expressed, after the “fall,” she was “trying to escape the ‘men with knives that were trying to kill her.” According to the certificate, there were no witnesses.

Takakenew says memories return to her in her dreams of living at The Balmoral of her mom. She talks to her mom whenever she walks by the building, which is only one block away from her own single-room occupancy.

“On the day that she died, which was June 21, there’s always an owl that follows me somewhere. I still think she’s here with me, guiding my life.”

Learning her history pulled Takakenew towards a new centre of gravity — one that is heavy and deeply sad. However, knowing her mom and how she fought for her offers her resolve she’s never had before. She was wanted and loved. “She tried her best,” she said.

Five years into her sobriety, Takakenew hesitated to reconnect with her Piyesiw-Awasis family in “Saskatchewan.”

“My aunt really wants me to come out and see her,” said Takakenew. “I really want to go, and I really don’t want to go at the same time.”

She’s worried about what life on reserve might be like, about not fitting in, about being too much of a city kid to cope.

“I think the culture shock of it all would be too much for me.”

At the same time, she remembers what it felt like to see her sister and brother for the first time.

“Seeing people that were like me,” she pauses to reflect, “Yeah, it was really cool,” she says she and her brother have the same humour.

“We think the same things are funny, and we act the same way,” she smiles as she pulls up a photo of her and her sister together for the first time.

“See! She looks exactly like me.”

After the overwhelming amount she has learned about her family and childhood in the last four years, Takakenew feels compelled to find out the truth about what happened to her mom the day that she died. She already has a few leads.

“Am I strong enough to actually go through that? I don’t know. Would [the Vancouver Police Department] actually take me seriously?”

At least today, Takakenew can fit herself into a lineage of peoples who, through traditional adoption protocols, were able to strengthen bonds between nations, as Pitikwahanapiwiyin did after choosing to stay with his adopted father at Blackfoot Crossing after a battle between Cree and Siksika (Blackfoot), before returning to his people.

“Chief Poundmaker fought for peace,” she says. “That’s all we want. I have that in my blood.”

Amy Romer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, IndigiNews