And now:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (S.I.S.I.S.) writes:
INNU NEED HEALTH CENTRE - DOCUMENTS
March 15, 1999, Canadian Press, by Beth Gorman
[S.I.S.I.S. note: The following mainstream news article may contain biased
or distorted information and may be missing pertinent facts and/or context.
It is provided for reference only.]
OTTAWA (CP) - The Innu of Davis Inlet will probably repeat tragedies
like suicide, addiction and abuse at their new community unless they get
the healing centre they've been requesting for six years, say federal
documents. Notes prepared for Indian Affairs Minister Jane Stewart last
August say Innu on the small isolated Labrador island need major help and
Ottawa should pay most of the bill.
Yet no centre has been created and a regional department head said
bureaucrats are frustrated by the villages problems.
The Innu are due to move to Sango Bay on the mainland in two years, an
$85-million project offering room to expand, better access to hunting
grounds and escape from a sad past.
"The lack of a health centre and-or healing program is a pressure that
cannot be ignored," says one memo written by Intergovernmental Affairs
officials and obtained under the Access to Information Act. "By improving
the housing and sanitary conditions at Davis Inlet and developing a healing
centre for the treatment of social problems, the community will be...
avoiding transference of existing problems to the new community. "If the
community does not take these steps, there is an extremely high chance that
the social problems will be transferred to (Sango Bay) and the physical
conditions of the new housing and infrastructure will deteriorate very
rapidly."
Clarence MacLennan, acting regional manager for Indian Affairs, said
there's been no decision but bureaucrats are unimpressed with poor results
from government money for limited health services, especially since Ottawa
agreed to the pricey move. "Here's one of the best things that happened to
the community in years and things have got worse," said MacLennan. "It's
really hard to agree to a treatment centre when the money going in now
doesn't do much good."
He said the Innu promised Ottawa prior to signing a 1996 relocation
agreement that they'd solve their social problems before they moved.
"Either that was overly optimistic on everybody's part or they just weren't
ready and they so much wanted that community to be constructed that they
were ready to give any assurance."
Davis Inlet made headlines around the world in 1993 when six kids whod
been sniffing gas were captured on video in a -40-degree shack, screaming
they wanted to die. Shortly after, aboriginal leaders requested a
wilderness centre to treat addictions and social problems. It was never
approved.
Progress in Davis has been slow, painful and frustrating. Most teens
sent away for treatment resumed sniffing when they returned to troubled
families. Some parents in the 560-member community are still drinking and
abusing their kids, many of whom respond by going on gasoline-induced
rampages.
Local leaders are overwhelmed with those problems and others like
rundown, unheated, overcrowded houses with no running water or sewers. In a
letter last June to Health Canada, a former Davis Inlet chief asked for
immediate treatment to complement existing medical services like
detoxification. "Graduates from existing programs are returned to families
where others have major problems and the support is next to non-existent,"
wrote Simeon Tshakapesh. "We need a facility that can place individuals
striving to overcome problems in a supportive environment with the rest of
the family." Tshakapesh estimated costs at two or three times less per
person than current programs that aren't working.
Davis Chief Mark Nui said the community has repeatedly stressed that
moving to Sango is just a partial solution to problems that developed after
provincial and Catholic officials coaxed the nomadic Innu to the island in
the 1960s with unfulfilled promises of services like water and heat.
"Healing wont only come by houses," said Nui. "It must come by a treatment
centre. The government says it understands this to be the case. Yet year
after year and meeting after meeting, they continue to deny our demands."
Health Canada said in December its building a five-bed solvent treatment
centre for native youth in Labrador that will open in April 2000.
The problems in Davis, considered one of the poorest places in Canada,
are mirrored in other native communities grappling with forced moves, sex
abuse at residential schools, inadequate housing and joblessness.
Stewart released a report card in January of progress with First
Nations. She acknowledged aboriginal communities still lag far behind in
social, economic and health concerns.
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SOVEREIGNTY IS THE ANSWER - CANADA IS THE PROBLEM
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S.I.S.I.S. Settlers In Support of Indigenous Sovereignty
P.O. Box 8673, Victoria, "B.C." "Canada" V8X 3S2
EMAIL : <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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