Davis Inlet still home to despair

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It's been one year since the world first saw videotape of Innu children in the remote village of Davis Inlet high on gasoline fumes screaming about a secret suicide pact.

And since then the community's situation has grown worse, Chief Katie Rich said. The suicide rate is three times higher, vandalism is rampant and Innu leaders are no closer to moving the village to the mainland than they were at this time last year.

Rich met with Indian Affairs and justice ministry officials Jan. 8 to discuss the village's relocation and policing situations. Negotiations to move the community from its current island location to the mainland have been going on a full year, but the village is no closer to their preferred site at Sango Bay, 15 kilometres away, she said.

Rich said she and Innu Nation President Peter Penashue met with Indian Affairs Minister Ron Irwin Dec. 22, at which time the minister promised to move the beleaguered community of 500 to the mainland.

But Indian Affairs spokesman Brad Morse reported that Irwin only said he supported the idea and that the minister will not go to Cabinet to ask for the needed funds until he has an idea of how much it could cost.

"He doesn't have the money in his pocket, he doesn't have the money in his department," Morse said.

The department also has to undertake an environmental impact assessment of the Sango Bay site before it can approve the move, he said.

Newfoundland Premier Clyde Wells has long opposed the Sango Bay site, saying it would only move the Innu's social problems to a new location. Irwin has also said the proposed site needs further study.

But relocating the village is one of several problems facing the community. Last week, Rich reported that 17 of the 18 children airlifted to an addiction treatment centre in Alberta for solvent addiction therapy have returned to their old gasoline-sniffing habits.

Half a dozen youths, some as young as four, were discovered last January high on gasoline fumes and screaming about a suicide pact by tribal police. A total of 18 children were flown to Poundmaker's Lodge near Edmonton, Alberta Last February. Health and Welfare Canada picked up the $1.7 million price tag for the six months of solvent addiction treatment and sexual assault therapy.

Counsellors from the Nechi Institute also travelled to the village, 330 kilometres north of Goose Bay, to start an addiction counselling program for adults.

Since then, many of the adults in the community have stopped drinking, Rich said. But the children are not receiving the help they need. Before Christmas, only about six of the 18 were sniffing.

The attempted suicide rate has also jumped over the past year from 4.5 to 12.5 per month and crime is on the rise.

Twelve Innu prisoners who escaped from police custody during a demonstration against Provincial Court Justice Robert Hyslop in December had to be arrested at the chief's request in the New Year.

A small contingent of RCMP arrived in the community Jan. 3 and arrested the 12.

Several Innu leaders, including Rich, presented Hyslop with a letter condemning his court hearings in the village and asked him to leave.

The six adults escaped police custody a few hours later when a group of 150 Innu surrounded the RCMP's patrol cabin following Hyslop's departure from the village.

Rich had said the RCMP gave the six men the option of walking out to the community's airfield in shackles accompanied by police or peacefully making their own way.

The men chose to leave peacefully and when they emerged from the building, the gathered crowd surrounded them and "took them home," she said.

But a vandalism spree over the Christmas holidays forced Rich to call in the RCMP and arrest the group again.

Some of the 12 who escaped police custody are among the vandals, she said.

Recalling the RCMP to the community was also one of the conditions that provincial officials required before they would return to the relocation talks, Rich said.

But now he police are back in the village, the province is demanding that the judge and court be allowed to return as well.

But that is unacceptable, Rich said.

The relocation negotiations with the province are now being conducted through the Innu Nation.