Thunderheart Tshakapesh dreamed of being a musician.
His guitar brought him comfort — a feeling he desperately lacked during the 20 months he spent in the care of the province, thousands of kilometres from home.
Thunderheart entered the system at the age of 14. His parents had grown increasingly worried about gas sniffing and suicidal ideation. In the remote community of Natuashish, they didn’t know where else to turn but to Newfoundland and Labrador’s child welfare department.
“They knew that they had to do this, but weren’t necessarily sold on that it was the right thing to do,” lawyer James Maher told a public inquiry in April. “This is often a decision that is made out of crisis and desperation.”
Less than two years later, Thunderheart would be dead and his family would be left wondering how everything went so wrong.
His death — and his family’s push for answers — was a driving force behind the public inquiry into the treatment and experiences of Innu children and youth in the child protection system.
The final report into his death is private. However, final submissions given by each of the six cases probed by the inquiry are public.
Thunderheart first expressed suicidal ideation at the age of 10.
Gas sniffing followed soon after, but Maher said aside from some counselling, there was little evidence in his file of any meaningful intervention.
Four years later, after going to the government for help, Thunderheart was moved outside the province for treatment at Ranch Ehrlo in Saskatchewan and Hope Valley in Grand Falls-Windsor.
Neither facility was equipped to provide Thunderheart with culturally appropriate services, Maher said. This was a common theme throughout each of the six death investigations — children far from home, removed from their culture and stripped of their language.
“Innu children who were [at Hope Valley], like Thunderheart, they were not permitted to speak their language on the floor, apparently for safety reasons,” Maher told the inquiry commissioners in his closing submissions. “The comment that runs throughout some of the reports is that these placements were physically safe, but they were not culturally safe.”
While at Ranch Ehrlo, Thunderheart wrote home to his parents on social media.
“I’m so homesick,” he said. “I’m losing my language here. I don’t want to be a white boy. I want to be an Innu boy.”
Maher also spoke about an incident while Thunderheart was at Ranch Ehrlo where he was injured by a staff member.
He said the exact circumstances were “murky,” but incident reports showed it involved a situation where staff were trying to settle Thunderheart as he was acting out. He wanted to go to his room to get his guitar, but a staff member physically stopped him.
Maher said Thunderheart fell backwards and hit his head. He had to be taken to the hospital.
“At worst, this incident can be described as an assault causing bodily harm,” Maher told the inquiry. “At best, it could be described as a restraint gone wrong.”
Maher said staff created a critical incident report and sent it to a social worker in Natuashish. The worker was on the last day of their fly-in-fly-out rotation, and didn’t see it for another two weeks.
Records show the family didn’t find out about the incident until almost a month after it happened.
Thunderheart’s family said he was never the same after he aged out of care and came back from Ranch Ehrlo at 16.
He didn’t enjoy music in the same way. His interests had changed. “He was not the same boy,” Maher told the inquiry.
Thunderheart also came home without an aftercare plan — another common theme throughout the six death investigations. His family felt helpless.
“On the 18th of January, 2017, he turned 16,” Maher said. “Nothing happens. There is no plan. No services. No support. The file is closed, and tragically, he takes his own life.”
‘They killed my son’: Innu leader calls for child services inquiry following son’s suicide
Thunderheart Tshakapesh died by suicide in the woods near Natuashish on May 24, 2017.
“He could play music, was able to speak both languages and was a very comical youth who loved to dance like Michael Jackson,” his obituary reads. “Thunderheart was on his way to recording his CD as young as 16 years old.”
His father, Simeon Tshakapesh — a former grand chief of Innu Nation — was vocal in calling on the provincial and federal governments to take action following his son’s death.
“My son went into the care of the then Child, Youth and Family Services of the Newfoundland and Labrador government two years ago and it has ended with him taking his own life,” he told CBC News in 2017. “[CYFS] failed my son just as it is failing many other Indigenous youth.”
The Tshakapesh family played a pivotal role in the province calling for a public inquiry in 2017, though it did not get underway until 2022.
The federal government passed Bill C-92 in 2019, which affirmed the rights of Indigenous communities to have jurisdiction over child protection.
Work is underway to overhaul the child protection system in Labrador, though a truly Innu-led system remains a long way away.
In the meantime, strategies have shifted — the inquiry heard there’s been an 82 per cent reduction in the number of Innu kids being sent outside the province for care since 2018-2019.
The inquiry commissioners are expected to make their final report in the fall, which will contain recommendations on how the child protection system should be structured moving forward.
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