Gas-sniffers highlight
Innu pain

Wanted: help that is pro-active, concrete, creative and continuing.

DOUG KOOP
CW Editor
— Sheshatshiu, Labrador —

With images of gas-sniffing children dancing in their heads, Canadians once again heard a desperate appeal from Innu leaders in Sheshatshiu and Davis Inlet, who pleaded for help in a crisis that threatens to overwhelm the fragile infrastructure of the Labrador communities.

The immediate crisis is the number of children, some as young as six, who are sniffing gasoline and must be relocated for their addictions to be treated. The communities have no detoxification facilities.

But the problems go much deeper. Living conditions in the isolated settlements are often poor and there is little meaningful employment for residents. Alcohol abuse and family dysfunction are widespread. It is not longer possible for the traditional Innu way of life to continue, and nothing wholesome has arrived to replace it.

“This is an emergency hour in the history of Canadian native children,” says Mohawk evangelist Ross Maracle. “The shame of our silence concerning the suicide epidemic and substance abuse can no longer be hidden. In the history of a people denigrated and demoralized, there comes a time when their cup of pain is full and runs over.”

Destructive cycle

Maracle insists that “to do nothing is reprehensible,” and that a “concerted effort to stop the dying” is the only appropriate response to “the cycle of self-destruction” engulfing the Innu children of Labrador. “We must respond with resolution, intercession, finances and social action,” he says.

To that end Maracle has organized a humanitarian mission he says will be “pro-active, concrete, creative and continuing.” The first stage is a December 6-8 “friendship and fact-finding” visit to Sheshatshiu with several qualified native counsellors, including Mavis Etienne of the Addictions Centre in Kanesatake, Quebec.

He intends to follow this up just before Christmas with an airlift of gifts and toiletries for children in the Labrador community. Maracle, host of the Spirit Alive television program, told CW he will have two teams of children’s workers conduct day camps in the communities and will “empower native children to do their own
documentary.”

He says the initiatives have elicited “a tremendous groundswell of interest from native professionals” across Canada, and he intends to convene a gathering of such professionals to identify and implement longer-range solutions.

More than gas-sniffing

While the media reporting highlights the bad stuff, there’s more to Sheshatshiu than gas-sniffing and social breakdown, says Tom Snowdon, Eastern Canada director for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). “There are many responsible people there. But the incidence of dysfunction is high enough that it overshadows and overwhelms.

“In fact,” he continues, “the current chief and administration have done many good things. There is a new road system. Some of the houses upgraded. This problem, which is not new, is overwhelming the resources that they have.”

MCC workers Bill and Pam Stevenson, who live in nearby Happy Valley, have spent a lot of time in Sheshatshiu and gained a lot of trust over past two years. Innu chief Paul Rich of Sheshatshiu has asked Bill, a former elementary school principal, to set up and oversee a fund to handle and provide full accountability for the donations that are pouring into the community as a result the recent publicity, reports Snowdon.

Pam, a social worker and former Anglican priest, conducted a four-week family treatment program in the wilderness last summer with four families who were looking for help with problems related to alcoholism and gas-sniffing. Three of the four families are doing extremely well and one reasonably well.

MCC recently pledged $100,000 toward an estimated $500,000 needed for an Innu owned and operated retreat centre in the area.

Help for people whose traditional way of life has been totally upended in the past 40 years must be sustained over the long haul, says Snowdon. “The media has a very short term focus. What we really need is long term involvement with people. We have to walk with people in community. If short term press exposure leads to long term community, that’s good.”

A young Innu gas sniffer in Davis Inlet, Labrador.

Bruce Hildebrand/MCC Canada