What you won't hear from the indigenous leadership in Thunder Bay is this: Give us the resources to properly care for our youth. Provide us with funding to build student housing and accommodation on our own indigenous lands adjacent to the city, and fund us with resources to provide support and counselling services for hundreds of native youth living far from their homes on isolation reserves, living now in Thunder Bay with zero parental oversight and control. Give us ownership of the problem and we will demonstrate how to properly repair this broken paradigm: teens living hundreds of kilometres away from their families, many who arrive in need of support, and many others who arrive to live with limited parental involvement and unlimited opportunities to drift into temptations afforded through drugs and alcohol. 

First Nations leaders are correct to ponder the safety of indigenous youth in Thunder Bay. The opportunity is there for them to step up and take ownership of the problem.