Audiotur Con-Aid

Six men at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary committed suicide between November 1972 and June 1973. In an article published in the Star Phoenix, Stan Falconer of the John Howard Society of Saskatchewan points out that four of the six men were in segregation when they committed suicide while two were in strip cells in the prison hospital; being held in these areas meant that the men were assumed to be under almost constant surveillance. Although the internal investigation that followed included two prisoners, they were not given free access to files, and the final report was not made public. An anonymous prisoner writing in the outside-produced Saskatoon publication Transition stated that Con-Aid was necessary to save lives because the penitentiary service wasn’t fulfilling its obligation to do so. The 1976 sit-in following the deaths of Robert Chicksi, Allan Moran, and Herman Peterson must be understood in this larger context. The Native Brotherhood organization and its Newscall worked to advocate for mental health resources that aligned with cultural beliefs, traditions, and values within the inherently isolating and dehumanizing prison environment. That the most common problem requiring response from Con-Aid was “intangible . . . . emotional response to the [e]nvironment rather than a specific, solvable situation” is an indictment of that dehumanizing environment.  
 

Read by Arron Naytowhow