Flowers on My Grave: How an Ojibwa Boy's Death Helped Break the Silence on Child Abuse

John Steckley teaches in the Human Studies Program at Humber College in
Toronto.

Lester Desjarlais was born to a Cree father and a Saulteaux mother.
Abused and tossed from home to home, as well as from agency to agency,
he committed suicide at the age of 13. Ruth Teichroeb, an award-winning
reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press and a well-known commentator on
CBC’s Morningside, first heard about Lester’s suicide in 1991, when
an inquest was being held on the matter. She took what easily could have
been “just another Indian statistic” and made of it a book that
should be required reading for anyone—Native or non-Native—who works
with Native kids.

Teichroeb manages to avoid an all-too-easy condemnation of Lester’s
mother, or of the Dakota Ojibway Child and Family Services (OCFS) agency
(the first Native-run mandated child welfare agency in Canada), although
both seriously failed Lester.

Teichroeb ably demonstrates that the interference of the band chief in
the running of the OCFS is one reason for Lester’s death, and that a
child abuser can wrap himself in the flag of Native heritage to protect
himself. Conflict of interest and phony patriotism know no ethnic
boundaries. The author takes her analysis one step further by showing
that those Natives who victimized Lester are themselves
victims—victims of the residential schools, of the “Sixties Scoop”
of thousands of Native children from their families, and of provincial
officials who seem only too happy to let fledging Native organizations
fall flat on their faces.

Most of the material is presented with journalistic flare. Particularly
dramatic is the account of the inquest. It is only when she digresses
from the main story and presents too many details that Teichroeb’s
text bogs down.