This First Nation lost a 10-year-old girl to suicide. The community is speaking out about it

WARNING: This story contains references to suicide.

Always smiling, always joking, always asking curious questions.

This is how Jenayah Skunk's family described her at her funeral earlier this month in Mishkeegogamang First Nation.

Jenayah died by suicide late last month, according to her family and community. She was 10 years old.

The Ojibway community in northwestern Ontario has never experienced a suicide of someone so young, said Mishkeegogamang Chief Merle Loon, who is related to Jenayah.

"We're still in shock," he said.

Jenayah's mother, Jamie Skunk, told Loon she doesn't want any other child to experience this, which is why she consented to him speaking with CBC News about her daughter's death.

"'We shouldn't be losing our kids this way,'" Loon said, quoting Skunk.

Loon spent more than 20 years with the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service (NAPS), the largest First Nations police force in Canada. When he started at NAPS, he didn't see much suicide in the region's First Nations, but the numbers keep rising.

The Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority (SLFNHA) serves 33 First Nations across northwestern Ontario, including Mishkeegogamang.

The organization has tracked 624 suicides in its communities since the mid-1980s, said Janet Gordon, SLFNHA's vice-president of community health.

"The high percentage of those are youth," Gordon said.

The unnatural death rate for SLFNHA communities is more than triple the provincial average. Meanwhile, people aged 15 to 19 made up nearly 40 per cent of hospitalizations for mental health and substance use in those communities between 2011 and 2021, according to its latest Mental Health and Substance Use Report.

Since Jenayah's death, Loon said, several partners have been providing crisis services in the community.