Visitors learn how to help

Page 13

It was a long haul - 92 hours of driving approximately 6,000 km one way. On their journey, said Bruce Chief, he had "good thoughts of how they'd be friendly."

In their first encounter with local people at Sheshatshiu on Dec. 1, however, "I didn't feel welcome," he admitted. Chief was part of the seven-member Whitestone project delegation who left Edmonton for Labrador on Nov. 27.

But Sheshatsiu's chief, Paul Rich, and council proved to be understanding and greeted them warmly.

The Whitestone group were on a mission to offer support to the 1,200 member Innu community whose health crisis had been front page news last November with an "epidemic" outbreak of solvent-sniffing among their youth.

The trip was also meant to be an educational experience for the Whitestone members. The Whitestone project is "a resource of people and information dedicated to community development for Aboriginal youth. It is funded by the Urban Multi-purpose Aboriginal Youth Centre program (UMAYC)," according to Shane Lafond, a project facilitator.

On their first night in Sheshatsiu, the group met with Grade 7 to 9 students at the school gym, said Whitestone's other facilitator, Marcel Pelletier. He added that UMAYC is federally funded through Canadian Heritage and that the trip was paid for from UMAYC's retreat budget.

They had discussions with Sheshatshiu about ways they could help and they participated in volleyball, floor hockey and basketball, which helped them cement a positive relationship with the community.

As Darren Sowan from Edmonton explained, their first and second nights of gym activity were "one of the big ice-breakers."

Melissa Grandbois, originally from Cold Lake, expressed the "good" feelings she had after talking with 12- and 13-year-olds at the newly constructed local treatment centre. She, too, was critical of mainstream news reports and said, "you didn't see kids all over the place sniffing gas in plastic bags."

Sowan was critical as well of news reports that he said blew the situation out of proportion. "It wasn't out of control . . . not chronic," he stated. Much of it, he suggested, "is just kids testing it."

The reports were also an exaggeration to Fred Half. "I went with the concept that the papers were correct," he admitted. But, he too wound up coming away with a different opinion.

[Editor's note: When the Whitestone group visited Sheshatsiu, nearly two dozen of the most critically affected solvent abusers had already been removed to treatment centres at the request of the community.]

When the group led a clean-up campaign of a popular treed area used by sniffers, they were joined by other youth and community members who expressed their "disgust" with the situation of sniffers.

Pelletier explained that a lot of the sniffing is because local people are grieving, and that grieving is so common that it's difficult to simply correct the situation overnight. The reality, he explained, is that the community is "in a constant state of grieving." A lot of it, he adds, "is due to depression, hallucinations, violence and suicides."

Lafond said "the people have no knowledge of who they are because their history is not passed down," and there's no input by Elders.

As well, according to Harvey Bernard from Goodfish Lake, "the kids and adults don't understand each other and people miss loving each other."

The community has said it will maintain contacts with Whitestone after they leave.

Before they departed for Alberta and home, the Whitestone group claimed a small "personal" stone as a keepsake from the shores of the Northwest River, received an Innu doll from the chief and council, and extended an invitation to Sheshatshiu people to visit them in Edmonton.