Someone ought to tell these reporters that this same story was done a bout a
month ago.
Anthony Pitt
Project Officer
Training and Workplace Reform
Human Resource Division
Aboriginal Hostels Limited
-----Original Message-----
From: Trudy Bray [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, 2 February 2001 10:51
To: news-clip
Subject: SMH - Frozen out
The Sydney Morning Herald
Frozen out
Date: 02/02/2001
The very remoteness of Canada's Innu people long protected
them from the ravages of progress. But in just a few generations,
writes Mike Fox, their destruction is now almost complete.
A young boy has his mouth and nose pressed into a plastic
bag. He breathes in, takes the bag away and his face breaks into a broad
grin.
He is one of a handful of children sniffing petrol in a
patch of forest in the middle of Sheshatshiu, a small community of about
1,200
native American Innu people, on the Labrador Coast of
Newfoundland on Canada's north-eastern edge.
Scenes like this have shocked Canadians in recent weeks with
the realisation that despite years of government aid and millions of
dollars,
the Innu have found it almost impossible to adapt to the
modern world. Their situation has depressingly familiar echoes of the plight
of
Australian Aborigines and other indigenous people around the
word.
The problem is not new, says Rita Rich: "It's been going on
for years and years." She and her husband are bringing up five children in a
small house in Sheshatshiu. She knows first hand what leads
children to sniffing. Both her parents were alcoholics, and she was
physically and sexually abused by them while they were drunk
every weekend.
"These children feel that the only way to forget these sort
of things is to go through gas-sniffing," she says. "I don't like to call
them gas
sniffers, it's not proper. It's not [their] fault the way
they are today. I would call them victims of our past."
The trauma of exposure to Europeans is still relatively
fresh for the Innu. The grandparents of today's petrol-sniffing children
were
children when the Innu were encouraged - some say forced -
to give up their traditional way of life to settle down in communities such
as
Sheshatshiu.
Until the 1950s the Innu were nomads, travelling hundreds of
kilometres as they hunted the caribou through forests where winter lasts
for up to eight months. Their survival depended on their
intimate relationship with the land, which they called Nutshimit. Skills
handed
down through the generations enabled them to survive using
only what they found.
But these skills counted for nothing in life in the village.
The leaders saw their traditions and beliefs belittled by Catholic
missionaries; in
schools children were taught about Western ways where their
traditional way of life was second best.
Discipline was harsh and many suffered physical and sexual
abuse at the hands of Catholic teachers and missionaries. "Our lives were
controlled by outside bodies," says the chief of
Sheshatshiu, Paul Rich (no relation to Rita ). "That's when our problems
started." Those
problems have been made worse through the exploitation of
their land by the rest of Canada - the Churchill Falls hydro-electric scheme
flooded thousands of hectares of fertile land and forest,
prime hunting areas for the Innu. They have not received any compensation,
nor
for the low-flying military aircraft from the nearby base at
Goose Bay which the Innu say disrupt the migratory patterns of the caribou.
With their way of life and self-respect destroyed, many
turned to alcohol as a way of coping - and the children of alcoholics found
glue-sniffing a cheaper high. Sniffing stolen petrol
siphoned out of cars or snowmobiles is even cheaper - the habit is highly
addictive and
its effects physically devastating. Several children have
died in fires resulting from a careless cigarette or match too close to
their petrol.
Colin Samson, a sociologist at St John's Memorial University
in Newfoundland, is just finishing a book, A way of life that does not exist
- the Ethnocide of the Innu. He says the Innu have lost all
sense of their own culture: "Their entire religious world view is based on
the
land, on Nutshimit. When they were coerced into settlement,
the confidence of the people drained out ... and many ... abandoned
themselves to drinking. Today's children watch television
and see a world of glamorous people doing things they don't see the Innu
doing, and they feel that's what the world values, and they
aren't involved, which leads to their current despair."
A few weeks ago, Paul Rich called on the Government to
intervene and use its powers to remove the petrol-sniffing children and get
them treatment, saying the situation was out of hand and the
community did not know how to look after the children.
Yet the community has a range of institutions trying to help
those with addiction problems. Over the past four years of Rich's
leadership,
the council has built a new youth addiction centre, a health
centre which includes room for an Innu self-help group for dealing with
addictions, and also a new office.
Sheshatshiu is also trying to help the children regain
something of the old way of life, which is in danger of disappearing
altogether. In a
camp of three canvas tents, deep in the Labrador wilderness
of pine forests, frozen lakes and snow, a few people from Sheshatshiu are
trying to live something of their traditional native
American culture.
They include a group of counsellors, and three of the
teenagers Canadians have grown used to seeing on their television screens in
recent
weeks, with plastic bags containing petrol pressed to their
mouths and a mad look in their eyes. Now they look like any other teenagers
on a camping trip, enjoying the snow after a day spent
inside weathering a blizzard with 100 km/h winds.
"The Innu always feel happier here in Nutshimit, out in the
bush," says Sebastian Nuna, a grizzled grandfather who knows about
substance abuse. He was an alcoholic when he was younger,
but he managed to dry out, mostly for the sake of his children. Before
setting up this camp, he was a counsellor in the community's
addiction centre. His wife Christine is a counsellor in the Group Home, a
youth centre dealing with young offenders.
And the teenagers at the camp seem happy enough, clowning
around in the snow, but don't like being asked about what they do there, or
what it's like. But everyone in Sheshatshiu knows the
children long to go back to their homes and be with their parents, even
though they
may be alcoholics, unwilling or unable to look after their
children.
But the passage of time makes it increasingly difficult for
the Innu to retain their old ways. Nuna, who is also leader of the treatment
camp, can barely remember when his family lived as nomads,
following the caribou, and moving to the starkly beautiful fishing camp of
Sheshatshiu or Davis Inlet for the long summer days when the
flies in the interior were too bothersome. "We never had the problems we
see now when we were living in the bush," he said. "We are
trying to help our kids understand the Innu way - hunting, fishing and
everything."
In the corner of one of the tents, Nuna's elderly mother is
weaving a snowshoe, a lattice of string on a finely carved wooden frame. But
Christine admits that none of the teenagers is learning her
skills, preferring to listen to dance music on a small cassette player.
Nuna takes them hunting for partridge or porcupine, two of
the original staples of the Innu. But the camp is mostly stocked by regular
trips back to Goose Bay. He never lived the nomadic life as
an adult for any length of time, and those elders who did are now old and
cowed by the changes they have seen.
Efforts to keep the traditional ways by teaching the young
seem destined to be frustrated by the reality of life in the village, where
their
parents as often as not will still be drinking.
A short drive around the couple of hundred of houses in the
village underlines the tragedy affecting this community. There are crosses
and memorials on half a dozen or so vacant plots, marking
houses which burnt down in fires that were started as a result of drinking
or
petrol sniffing.
Basile Penashue, who gave up heavy drinking to ensure a
settled life for his three children, can sit in his kitchen and point in
three
directions to houses where people, often close relatives,
took their own lives.
According to Survival International, Sheshatshiu and its
sister community of Davis Inlet have the world's highest suicide rate. The
Innu
are 14 times more likely to take their own lives than the
average Canadian. Everyone in the village has a relative or close friend who
committed suicide, or died from substance abuse.
In October last year, a family of five died in a fire which
started while the parents were drinking and the children slept upstairs. The
parents escaped, but their three children and the
grandparents were killed.
It was the final straw for the village doctor, Jane
McGillivray, who is now on sick leave after 16 years treating people in the
community.
While accepting there are long-term reasons for the despair
among the Innu, she believes the people have to do something to solve the
problem.
"The children who are gas-sniffing and the children who have
many other serious problems are abandoned and neglected children. They
don't have parents generally looking out for them, making
sure they are fed, clothed and kept warm and cuddled and loved, and they
aren't children in whom their grandparents and parents are
actively making sure the traditions of the Innu, survival skills and
competency
out in the wood, are being passed on to them.
"The bottom line is that it's not a negotiable thing to not
parent your children."
But the complex causes of that lack of parenting are
difficult to deal with and so far there is little debate in Canada about how
to tackle
them.
As a result of Rich's cry for help, the Government is
starting discussions with the Innu about a family-centred treatment program
to
address the problems experienced by families as a whole, and
deal with them in an Innu way. The people in Sheshatshiu hope it will give
new direction to teenagers who find an escape only in a
plastic bag.
This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised
use, copying or mirroring is prohibited.
*************************************************************************
This posting is provided to the individual members of this
group without
permission from the copyright owner for purposes of
criticism, comment,
scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of
the Federal
copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without
permission of
the copyright owner, except for "fair use."
------------------------------------------------------
RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at
http://www.mail-archive.com/
To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body
of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce
This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission
from the
copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under
the "fair
use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further
without
permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use."
RecOzNet2 is archived for members @
http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/
