Canada's Indigenous services minister said a combination of better addictions treatment, remote medical technology, funding for travel companions, training for midwifery and cultural sensitivity and a shift to Indigenous delivery models can help to address some of the tragic health outcomes.

Leah was 17 when she first flew to Montreal, in early fall of 2002, and she was scared of heights. As the plane lifted above Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, she kept her eyes on her ten-month-old daughter, Katie. She had never had a bird’s-eye view of her town, built along the Koksoak River, but she couldn’t bear to look down.

When she graduated in June of this year, Patricia Deveaux won a Governor General’s Academic Medal for having the highest grades in her high-school class. Meanwhile, she had long since learned the ropes in the world of work, having talked her way into a job at a local hotel when she was 13. “She was always the one I looked up to,” says her 16-year-old sister, Lissa.

Siasi Tullaugak died sometime before dawn on Aug. 29. By the time the sun rose, her body was hanging from a porch in downtown Montreal, half a block from Saint Catherine Street. Her feet dangled only a foot or two above the sidewalk.