Government responsible for Innu troubles

Page 5

Tansi, ahnee and hello. The first real story about the United Nations' International Year of Indigenous People has emerged. Untypically, it's not a touching success story meant to garner praise, lift spirits and conceal the truth of global indigenous reality. Rather it's a full-fledged technicolor nightmare about a small Labrador Innu community called Davis Inlet.

While mainstream Canada and the world gasp in horror over the attempted suicide of six Innu children via gasoline inhalation, the real criminals are escaping again. While the federal ministry of health ballyhoos its initiatives towards a resolution to the horrors of Davis Inlet, the real perpetrators sit smugly back and await the passing of the storm.

The health people are sending substance abuse workers into the community as part of a team including solvent abuse experts from the Assembly of First Nations and the Labrador government. Meanwhile, the Department of Indian Affairs' decision to move the Innu yet again is still not addressing the problems they face.

It's the old sleight-of-hand game all over again. As aboriginal people, hand games are an entertainment art of our cultures, but this political legerdemain is far from culturally invigorating. It's genocide.

Because the basis of the Davis Inlet tragedy and the responsibility for its creation belongs in the Prime Minister's office and the Department of Indian Affairs. It was they who made the decision to uproot the original community and move it to its present location under the guise of improved service delivery.

It was they who acted against the wishes of the people and moved them.

They who chose to ignore the spiritual connections the Innu had with their homeland,

the vitalizing proximity to the home of their culture. They who chose to ignore the philosophical, physical and intellectual sustenance which also comes from that connection.

It's an old tale of woe really. In my home of northwestern Ontario they came and moved the Ojibway community of Grassy Narrows. Canada and the world were shocked in 1983 when the first horror stories emerged from there, stories exactly like those coming out of Davis Inlet. And despite a well documented book about the tragedy, a host of prime time news features and tremendous outcry from aboriginal people themselves, nothing much changed.

Once the noise died down, the government pumped a few obligatory dollars into the community and then calmly slunk away to more pressing business. Never was there anything like an official apology for having moved the community in the first place nor any real programs devoted to its long-term revitalization.

Geography is the only difference between Grassy Narrows and Davis Inlet. There is, perhaps, in governmental eyes, some kind of salvation in geography because up to this point there hasn't been much said about similar cases across the country. But then, when you work with smoke and mirrors the audience misses the application of the trick.

But we know. Every aboriginal nation knows the impact of being uprooted and moved against our wills. We've been forced to move to cities or leave our traditional lands for reservations and have that vital connection to ourselves severed by someone else's geography.

And the government knows. They've been listening to us long enough to understand the culturally sustaining influences that come from proximity to our lands.

The real history of Canada is splattered with evidence of the harm that comes with forced removal. Splattered with a people's blood, tears, sweat and vomit.

When you continue to act in ways which you know contribute to the demise

of a people, that's genocide. It doesn't have to be the rape and plunder of the past to qualify. It exists in the refusal of those who know to take responsibility for their actions. The reticence of both the Prime Minister's Office and the Department of Northern Development betrays their cheap magic act with the ministry of health as the lovely assistantwho diverts our attention.

So welcome to the International Year of Indigenous People. Welcome to the realities aboriginal people endure. Welcome to the perpetuation of myth and genocide,

the mechanics of destruction.

And say a prayer for Davis Inlet. And maybe, while you're at it, say a little prayer for yourselves because obviously when a government can justify one gross violation it can justify others. And when it can shirk its responsibility once it will do it again. Just ask the people of Grassy Narrows...and pray for Davis Inlet. Until next time, Meegwetch.