As a plane flies into Attawapiskat it passes over this frozen river. Temperatures in the winter regularly dip to minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit.
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In This Town, a Staggering Number of People Attempt Suicide
In light of a spate of suicide attempts in the First Nations town Attawapiskat, we revisit photographs from 2012 that show difficult living conditions.
Attawapiskat in Ontario, Canada, is in a state of emergency after 11 of its residents attempted suicide in one day. But this crisis isn’t a complete surprise to the people of Attawapiskat. Since September, more than 100 people have attempted suicide. It’s a problem without a pattern—those suffering are young and old, male and female.
When a similar series of suicide attempts happened in 2012, French Canadian photographer Renaud Philippe noticed something missing from the media coverage.
“There was nothing that made me understand who these people were, nothing that made me understand what was life in this community,” he says. “The media was just focused on news. So I wanted to go to figure out what is
