By Sarah Auger

Sarah gave this talk at at Community Conversations: Drug Policy Alternatives for Alberta, on April 2, 2024.

On December 19, 2022, I received the call that would tear apart the very fabric of my being. It was a Monday morning, and I was home sick. My phone rang, I seen it was my dad. I picked it up and answered, “what’s up?”. He said, “Lakotah’s gone.” Even though I could hear my mom crying in the background and my dad had a sob in his throat, it didn’t register what he was telling me. I said, “What do you mean he’s gone? Where did he go?”. My dad, answered, “Lakotah is dead”. I fell to my knees, screaming, as my entire world crumbled around me. It didn’t register initially because we are not supposed to outlive our children. It is absolutely inconceivable until it happens to you.

The last 15 ½ months have seen me become what my friend, Petra, called an accidental advocate for drug policy reform. It has been a steep learning curve, one that I have been trying to navigate since losing my 31-yr-old son, Lakotah, to fentanyl on that horrific day.

Lakotah was a very curious, empathetic, kind, intelligent, and high-spirited child. He was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder at 4-yrs-old, with Oppositional Defiant Disorder at 9 years old, and then with Conduct Disorder at 14-ys-old. By the time he was 8, he was placed in a behavioural management classroom. He was eventually forced out of school at 15-yrs-old when he was declared 16 for the purposes of the Alberta School Act. On his 18th birthday, he broke down in tears and told me that he had been often been left in a closet size isolation room in his 4th grade classroom, sometimes for hours on end. He told me that sometimes they left him in there so long, he would have to urinate in a corner, not allowed to leave the isolation room. This was his first experience with being locked up.

He started exhibiting deep depressive episodes at an early age. The first time I took him to the emergency room for suicidal ideation was at 14-yrs-old. His emotional and mental state was eerily similar to his father, who completed suicide when Lakotah was 3-yrs-old. For years, I took him to counsellors, psychologists, therapists, psychiatrists. He could never find relief from his intrusive thoughts.

Extensive trauma and the mental health issues arising from that trauma led him to his initial drug of choice, alcohol, which he began using problematically from the time he was 16-yrs-old. Lakotah was a binge drinker. He did not drink every day, and would often have long periods of time between these binges. He was an occasional drug user at this time, as well, preferring mostly weed.

This all changed after the first time he was arrested and incarcerated when he was 24-yrs-old. He was held in the Edmonton Remand Centre for 4 or 5 months that first time. When he came out into the community, he had changed. He had become hardened, and his addictions became further entrenched. After this first time in remand, he started using on a more regular basis. Jail was a significant traumatic event in his life.

Lakotah cycled in and out of remand and provincial jail for 5 years, spending much of his time in isolation. He was released for the last time from jail in March 2020. He wanted to change his life. He told me this. Together, we got him an apartment after I agreed to co-sign his lease. It gave him the security and independence to start to rebuild his life. By the next year, he had found employment working a camp job. He was working towards rebuilding his relationship with his daughter, after being gone for much of her young life while he was incarcerated.

Lakotah wanted to live. He wanted to see his daughter grow up. He wanted to marry the very lovely woman he had met in 2021.

He had been drinking and using off and on during this time, bingeing every 2-3 months, but always returning to a more stable state after his binge, continuing to work on himself.

Over the years, Lakotah had expressed a desire to go to treatment a few times, but whenever I called to inquire about a treatment bed, I was told the wait could be anywhere from 1-3 months.

2 months before his death, he was evicted from his apartment for non-payment of rent. I had been helping him keep afloat and stay housed by getting into significant debt myself, and the money had run out on his end and on mine. For 2 months, he was abstinent and lived with me, while we tried to get him on his feet again. One night of drinking at the beginning of December 2022 led to an arrest, and after he was released the same day, he spiraled, ending up first on the street, and then in a hotel room, where my parents, his grandparents, found him. It took 12 days from that night of drinking to his death. His tolerance level was down. The riskiest time for a person to succumb to death due to a toxic drug supply is in the first 2-3 weeks after a period of sobriety.

Which leads me to the after effects of the loss of my son on my entire family. Specifically, after Lakotah died, one family member, who was also a heavy drinker, and a recreational drug user, started drinking and using more heavily. He had been employed at the same place for two decades, and when his alcohol and drug use became more problematic, his workplace forced him into treatment if he wanted to keep his job. Within 3 weeks of leaving treatment, we lost him too. He was 42 years old. The ripple effect of Lakotah’s death on my family has been immense, and we are still struggling with putting the pieces back together.

The United Conservative Party, have proposed “The Compassionate Intervention Act”, which will, in their words, allow a family member, doctor, or police officer to make a petition to family court for a treatment order when someone is a danger to themselves or others. The treatment order would require that person to engage in treatment for their addiction and drug use to save their life and protect the safety of the community.”

Meaning forced treatment and incarceration for people who use drugs. Forced treatment, like in the case of my family member, can be a death sentence.

If you think about it, though, it makes perfect sense.

Canada is a settler colonial state built on carceral logic

I’m going to read an explanation of carceral logic from the UpEnd website, which is an organization that works towards abolishing the carceral child welfare systems in play today.

At its simplest, carceral logic is the system of thinking that makes punitive systems possible. Built on the fear that there are a “terrible few” who have the pathology to cause harm to others, carceral logic draws absolutes: these “terrible few” are inherently and unwaveringly “dangerous,” all others are “innocents,” and the innocents must be protected from the dangerous. Carceral logic has responded to the presumed inevitability of danger in the same way – to keep “the innocent” safe, an authority must intervene and forcibly prevent the “terrible few” from enacting harm. Instead of thinking critically about what it means to co-create safety, carceral logic tells us that the only way we can be safe is by entrusting the state to punish those who have caused (or who are presumed to have the pathology to cause) harm. As a result, we see the proliferation of systems of surveillance, regulation, and punishment

Indigenous people have always been deemed unsafe, disposable, and undesirable. We have always been considered part of the “terrible few”

The statistics of Indigenous peoples’ incarceration rates in Canada are a stark reminder of the ongoing removal of Indigenous people from their territories. It is part of a continuing dispossession hinging on the settler colonial goal of full erasure of Indigenous presence from their own territories. I’m not going to offer up the statistics, but having worked as a prison educator, I can say that the overrepresentation of Indigenous people is grim.

Indigenous people, like my son, are carrying generations of trauma brought about through harmful practices, laws and policies, which I would argue are also carceral in nature. We have 2 big events that are most often referred to when talking about Indigenous peoples’ trauma: the Indian residential schools and the sixties scoop. The latter is somewhat of a misnomer because the apprehension of Indigenous children has continued unabated to this day.

Removing children from their home and placing them in residential schools rife with every kind of abuse imaginable is carceral logic

Removing children from loving families and subjecting them to a child welfare system that has done untold damage largely because of poverty is carceral logic

Forcing children out of school at age 15 is carceral logic

Placing children in an isolation closet is carceral logic

Removing people who use drugs and placing them in custody against their will in order to force treatment is carceral logic

As I said, it makes perfect colonial and carceral sense that the current governing party in Alberta would endorse forced treatment through their Compassionate Intervention Act.

As scholars Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang have stated, “Indigenous peoples must be erased, must be made into ghosts” (p. 6). The elimination of Indigenous people through assimilation and/or death/disappearance completes the settler state’s purpose to replace Indigenous peoples as rightful stewards of the land

I think about the new trauma that the children of people who have died from the toxic drug supply are going to carry throughout their lives. First Nations people in both Alberta and British Columbia are 7X more likely than anyone else to die from drug poisoning. Since 2016, First Nations people in Alberta’s life expectancy rate has dropped by 7 years, largely due to this crisis.

When I think about the children, I think about my beautiful granddaughter having to grow up without her father. I think about the thousands of children today who are having to grow up without their mothers or fathers. How is this significant trauma going to affect them?

When can we move forward with policies that reflect the actual crisis and save more children from having to lose their parents? Is the Government of Canada and the Government of Alberta going to have to issue yet another apology 40-50 years down the road, this time to a much wider swath of people?

Lakotah didn’t die from his addictions, not really. Given more time and information about what harm reduction is and what it can do to save a life, he might have reached his goals of getting married, watching his daughter grow up, becoming a small engine mechanic, and possibly having more children…his greatest wish. No, he didn’t die from his addictions. He died from an unregulated toxic illicit drug supply. He died from a fixable crisis. It is a fixable crisis, which can be addressed by embracing harm reduction measures and principles, in addition to treatment when it is wanted AND warranted, which is antithetical to settler colonial desires of Indigenous removal.

My son was addicted to alcohol and drugs. This is true. But he was so much more than his use. He was a generous and kind man, and a wonderful father. He was my everything. He should still be alive.

And this is for the moms…

Love is not tough

Protecting, caring for and loving your child is not enabling

Rock bottom can kill

Sarah Auger, citizen of Mikisew Cree First Nation, is a leader with Moms Stop the Harm and a board member of AAWEAR. She is also an Assistant Professor for the Indigenous Peoples Education & Aboriginal Teacher Education Program at University of Alberta. Sarah lost her son, Lakotah, to fentanyl poisoning in December 2022.