Dene High School Shooting in La Loche

There has been a shooting at Dene High School in La Louche in Saskatchewan, Canada. 

The Shooting

Four people were killed and an alleged shooter was arrested Friday, January 22, 2016, after gunfire erupted at a school in a small town in northern Saskatchewan, Chief Superintendent Maureen Levy of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Friday night.

Levy said authorities received a call about 1 p.m. Friday saying a weapon had been discharged at La Loche Community School in La Loche. Officers went to the school and at 1:47 p.m. arrested a suspect and seized his weapon.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier addressed the nation, saying, "Obviously this is every parent's worst nightmare" and calling it "a terrible, tragic day."

Clearwater River Dene Nation Chief Teddy Clark described the shooting as devastating in an interview with The Star Phoenix.

"Both Clearwater and La Loche, a lot of people are in shock. This is something that you only see on TV most of the time," The Star Phoenix.

The Victims

Teacher Marie Janvier, 23, was confirmed as one of the victims. Her father, Kevin, is the mayor of La Loche.

“He shot two of his brothers at his home and made his way to the school,” said her father Kevin Janvier, adding that Marie was his only child. “I’m just so sad.”

Janvier’s family said they could not believe that Marie had been killed.

“Her smile will light up the room on the darkest day,” said Sandie Janvier in a Facebook message, calling her the “sweetest caring person … We lost a loving sister today.”

Four people were killed by an alleged teenaged shooter Friday in La Loche: (Clockwise from top left): Teacher's assistant Marie Janvier, 21; Teacher Adam Wood, 35; brothers Drayden Fontaine, 13 and Dayne Fontaine, 17. (Source: Facebook)

School shootings are a form of murder-suicides

In my book, The Copycat Effect, I examine the background we see in school shootings in a subsection entitled “Murders as Suicides, Suicides as Murders."

Sigmund Freud conceptualized suicide as the “murder of one’s self.”

Karl Menninger, author of Man Against Himself (1938), wrote, “Is it hard for the reader to believe that suicides are sometimes committed to forestall the committing of murder? There is no doubt of it. Nor is there any doubt of it. Nor is there any doubt that murder is sometimes committed to avert suicide."

La Loche Background

The school provides a prekindergarten to 12th grade education and houses about 900 students in two buildings, the school's Facebook page says. The town has about 2,600 people.

La Loche is a northern village in northwest Saskatchewan. It is located at the end of Highway 155 on the eastern shore of Lac La Loche [literally, lake of the lake] in Canada's boreal forest. La Loche had a population of 2,611 in 2011 and is within the Northern Saskatchewan Administration District. The Dene High School hockey team are the Lakers.

Also known as the Athapaskan peoples, the Dene Nation is a political organization that covers a large geographical area — from present day Alaska to the southern-most tip of North America. The Dene Nation has existed for over 30,000 years, with one language and many dialects: Gwich’in; Sahtu; Deh Cho; Tlicho; and, Akaitcho. 

Chipewyan ethnonym Dënesųłiné, is the language spoken by the Chipewyan people of northwestern Canada. It is categorized as part of the Northern Athabaskan language family. Dënesųłiné has nearly 12,000 speakers in Canada, mostly in Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba and the Northwest Territories, but only has official status in the Northwest Territories alongside 8 other aboriginal languages: Cree, Dogrib, Gwich’in, Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, Inuvialuktun, North Slavey and South Slavey.

Most Chipewyan people now use Dene and Dënesųłiné to refer to themselves and their language, respectively. The Saskatchewan communities of Fond-du-Lac, Black Lake, Wollaston Lake and La Loche are a few.

The students at the school are bilingual, speaking English and Denesuline.

A Town With A Bleak History

The annual suicide rate in the Keewatin Yatthe Regional Health Authority is the highest of any health authority in Saskatchewan. The area, which includes La Loche, Buffalo Narrows, Ile a la Crosse and other communities in the province’s northwest, averaged 43.4 suicide deaths per 100,000 people between 2008 and 2012. That’s more than triple the average annual provincial rate of 12.7 suicide deaths per 100,000. The average annual suicide rates in the Saskatoon and Regina Qu’Appelle health authorities were 10.2 and 11.5 per 100,000 people respectively for the same time frame.

La Loche is more than seven hours northwest of the nearest major city, Saskatoon. It is a community with high levels of unemployment and addiction to drugs and alcohol and a reputation as a tough town. In 2011, two Mounties were forced to barricade themselves into the local health clinic when a mob attacked them after incorrectly assuming that the officers had beaten a man who had been injured in an all-terrain vehicle accident. A police truck was also burned, and an ambulance badly damaged. When La Loche appears in the provincial news media, it is usually in connection with violence or drug arrests.

But looming over the town, whose residents are predominately Dene Indians, are sporadic waves of suicides, including one last year. Eighteen people, most of them young, killed themselves from August 2005 to January 2010 in La Loche, which has a population of about 2,600....

Laurence Thompson, a sociologist in Saskatoon who has worked with the native friendship council in La Loche for several years, said that while the town’s lakeside setting in the boreal forest was spectacular, its poverty was immediately apparent. Despite being the hub for nearby communities with a combined population of about 4,000 people, La Loche has no sit-down restaurants, no banks, no movie theaters, not even a coffee shop. The nearest Tim Hortons restaurant, a Canadian staple, is about 60 miles away. ~
"La Loche, the Canadian Town Where 4 Were Killed, Has a Bleak History," New York Times

Other Indian, Native, and First Nations shootings

The Red Lake shootings (see #8 here) involved two incidents on March 21, 2005 that occurred in two places on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Red Lake, Minnesota. Jeffrey James Weise was born to an unmarried Ojibwe couple from the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Red Lake, Minnesota. Weise killed his his grandfather and his grandfather's companion before going to the reservation high school, where he murdered seven more people and wounded five others. He then died by suicide.

A school shooting took place at Marysville-Pilchuck High School (MPHS) - 30 miles north of Seattle - on October 24, 2014. Four students were killed, and the shooter, another student, died by suicide. Jaylen Fryberg, 15, the killer, was a member of the Tulalip Tribes.

Tabloid Prez 2016

The tabloids seem to be competing with each other for most comedic but biting politically-related headlines during this presidential cycle. Whereas the traditional definition of tabloid journalism is of a style of journalism that tends to emphasize topics such as sensational crime stories, astrology, ufology, celebrity gossip, sports scandals, and junk food news, the current media have loved mostly the Trump, as their source. The following examples reflect what political news has become during the race for the White House for 2016.

The UK newspapers have gotten involved.

But the American press has been routinely editorial in their headlines.

Some critiques of Trump have been fact-based, but of little effect.

Ted Cruz has not been immune.

Of course, in the past, the tabloids have been the source of political commentary of the alien kind. I have not seen that this cycle, yet.

69 in 16

David Robert Jones, known as David Bowie, was born on 8 January 1947, and died on 10 January 2016.

Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman was born on 21 February 1946, and died on 14 January 2016.

David Bowie and Alan Rickman died within four days of each other.

They both died at the same age - 69.

They both died of cancer. Astrological sign for Cancer: 69.

Both were English.

David Bowie's final music video was named Lazarus.

Alan Rickman played Dr. Lazarus in Galaxy Quest.

Their births and deaths occurred in chronological order:

David Bowie was born in January.
Alan Rickman was born in February.

The next English cultural giant who may die perhaps will have been born in March. 

Elton John, perchance?

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There were hints before the end of 2015.

Riley Lee Martin was an American self-described alien contactee, author, and radio host. Martin was the author of the book The Coming of Tan, which describes his life and his alleged alien abduction. He was an irregular guest on The Howard Stern Show.

Born: May 9, 1946.

Died: December 22, 2015.

Ian Fraser Kilmister was born on 24 December 1945, and four days after his 69th birthday, he died of cancer on 28 December 2015.  Known as Lemmy, he was an English musician, singer and songwriter who founded and fronted the rock band Motörhead. His music was one of the foundations of the heavy metal genre. He was known for his distinctive appearance, his many hats, and his distinctive gravelly voice. Alongside his music career, he also had many minor roles in film and television.

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Some notes from the unusual sources, as well as via Chris S and more hints from the Kitchen Sync thinkers.