Fear may put kids on right track

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To head off the growing number of youth suicides and crimes attributed to alcohol and drug abuse at the Louis Bull Reserve, education officials there are planning an exercise they hope will put a little fear in their children's hearts.

It worked so well last school season, they intend on making it a regular practice.

"It's had a real impact so far," notes reserve education director Helen Bull. "We wanted to stop all these problems before they got out of hand - before there wasn't any way to stop them."

The effects of last spring's Scared Straight program, modelled after a similar campaign in the U.S., are only now being detected. Bull said, "We're already working

on starting another program for this fall. We've got contracts ready to go."

As part of last May's Education Week, Louis Bull education counsellors took

15 students on a five-day field trip around Alberta to give them a first-hand view of the problems, alcohol and drug abuse can cause.

This was no ordinary excursion.

First stop was the Calgary Medical Examiner's office where the students got a frightening look at the morgue - the final stop for many who have abused drugs once too often.

Tour co-ordinator Larry Daniels said the children needed to see what happens

after someone commits suicide or dies otherwise, often needlessly.

"This is the last stop," he said. "Once you die, that's it."

There are 1,064 members of the Louis Bull Band, 60 per cent of them under age 18, said Bull.

"We need to attack our problems somehow. We need to show them what would happen if they go too far," she said.

Bull said there will be trips this fall to Edmonton's Remand Centre and other Alberta jails where students see how convicted criminals are dealt with.

There will also be return visits to Red Deer centre for young offenders and the Alberta Hospital in Ponoka for a seminar on suicide, alcohol and drug abuse.

Louis Bull reserve is plagued mostly by petty crimes committed by youth, Bull said. But the most serious problem facing Hobbema kids is the growing rate of suicides and restlessness.

According to figures from the Nayo-Skan Human Resources Program, 16 per cent of suicides in Hobbema's four reserves involved people 15 to 24 years old and drugs and alcohol played a part in half the deaths between 1980 and 1988.

Nearly 130 of the 461 deaths which occurred on the four Hobbema reserves were related to drug and alcohol abuse.

Randy Meyer, program planner for the newly formed OH-PE-KI Community Network, helped develop the Scared Straight program at Louis Bull. The band's education department will sponsor smaller, less costly trips throughout the year to "bring awareness to the kids.

"We realized from the start that experiences like going to the morgue could be graphic for the kids. But they needed to be exposed to these things as part of the holistic approach to learning."