The silencing, and displacement of mainly Indigenous youth by Canada’s young offenders system(YOS) is illustrated in “Trace Young”, a Dene (Birch Narrows FN) youth who lived in Saskatoon, and is echoed by Elder Roland Duquette’s “parallel” shared experience in the Residential School system. Trauma inflicted on both the environment by extractive industry and mass systemic injustice are functions of oppressive settler-colonial social relations, and pose fundamental questions:
What is the difference between the way the Oil industry uses Mackenzie River water and the way Indigenous youth are used in the YOS? Do both systems make massive profits for others’ benefit? Facilitate mass extractions? Cause traumatic generational physical and mental health effects in affected communities? Can water be traumatized and confined? How much community tension surrounds recalcitrant tailings pond water?… recalcitrant youth in YOS? What would recalcitrant water or youth need to be safe to others? Do we perpetuate harm or embrace reconciliation as a pathway to healing in the water sector? Finally, can transparently constructed treatment wetlands’ passive and gentle cleansing heal and give oxygen, safe water, and nutrients back to the Northern Alberta Mackenzie watershed?