Davis Inlet kids won't be going home

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Fourteen Inuit children at a substance abuse treatment centre in Alberta will not be returned to their community in northern Labrador when they go home later this month.

The children from Davis Inlet will be sent to Sango Bay, the proposed site for the new village, said band Chief Katie Rich.

The children cannot be returned to the inlet because the temptation to start sniffing gasoline would be too strong, she said. The band wants to establish a camp at Sango Bay, 15 km from Davis Inlet, to act as a transition site before the children return home.

Last winter, 11 of the children, some as young as four, were found sniffing gasoline fumes and screamed that they wanted to die in an unheated and abandoned building in the remote village 330 km north of Goose Bay.

A total of 18 children were sent to Poundmaker's Lodge adolescent treatment centre near St. Paul, Alberta, last spring for four months of substance abuse therapy and sexual assault counseling.

When the children return to Labrador, the band plans to move them into six wood-and-canvas buildings at Sango, Rich said. The children will also be accompanied by 10 counsellors from Poundmaker's.