Addiction, suicide return to Innu village

Dec. 13, 2005. 05:02 AM
MARIE WADDEN
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

NATUASHISH, Labrador—Last Friday, another body was added to the graveyard in this small town on the northeast coast of Labrador. Debbie Rich was 25 and froze to death after passing out drunk in the snow. Her funeral was held in the school gymnasium because there's no church here yet.

The town — with a population of 700 — is only three years old, created from scratch to house the residents of Davis Inlet whose addiction problems generated international attention and were an embarrassment for the Canadian government.

There are only six graves in the tiny graveyard: Five belong to young people who died while drunk; three of them killed themselves. A fourth, like Debbie Rich, died from exposure to the cold. Darren Pokue, the 18-year-old son of the town's chief, ran into the bush when he was drunk and his body was found months later. It's not known if he intended to harm himself.

Rich, the troubled mother of three children, didn't buy her alcohol legally. Alcoholism has created many severe social problems among Canada's last nomadic people — the Mushua Innu who lived in tents until 1967 — that the community is supposed to be "dry." But that's only the surface, beneath there's a thriving black market for booze and no one seems to know how to stop it.

Twelve years ago, a native police constable in Davis Inlet released a videotape showing children high on gasoline threatening to kill themselves. Rich might have been one of them. She was a 13-year-old solvent abuser at that time. Television crews from around the world rushed to the town and showed its tumbledown shacks and garbage-strewn streets.

Now the optics are better.

The natural beauty of the place is striking. Thick stands of tall black spruce trees shelter houses that are set in a valley. On fine winter days, adults dangle fishing lines below the surface of a large ice-covered lake while children play hockey. At home, townspeople eat the arctic char, salmon or caribou they have fished or hunted themselves.

Everything is brand new, with an infrastructure that would be the envy of any reserve in Canada.

Drunks aren't as common a sight on the streets of Natuashish as they were in Davis Inlet. Drinking takes place in designated "party" houses and the drunks emerge only when all the liquor has been consumed. Sometimes people disappear for days.

Often the early morning quiet is shattered by the sound of someone knocking on a neighbour's door. Doors will only be opened once it's determined that the person outside has sobered up.

Families may find it harder to keep their doors closed after Rich died in the cold. She had been partying and never made it home.

The people selling alcohol are non drinkers. Only they hold down jobs and can afford the cost of a flight to the nearest liquor store, 275 kilometres south in Goose Bay. If you're a heavy drinker in Natuashish (and it's black or white here — either total abstinence or drunkenness), you depend on others to supply the fix. While there's no law preventing people from bringing in a drink for themselves, the sale of alcohol is not permitted.

"The bootleggers are what we call dry drunks," one of Rich's cousins, Joyce Rich says. "They don't care how they're hurting people."

Ron Snow, who manages the government-owned liquor store in Goose Bay, knows how liquor is getting into the town. "Distillers are using plastic instead of glass these days," he says pointing to the rows and rows of whiskey bottles that line his shelves.

"I guess that makes it easy for people to hide it in their suitcases. We sell a lot of flasks and 60-ounce bottles of hard liquor here."

`I can't imagine bringing the suffering I went through on anyone else.'

Kathleen Benuen, health services director

Selling smuggled alcohol is lucrative. A hip flask of whiskey sells for $50; 1.8 litre bottles are $350 to $800 when supplies are low. Beer is much harder to hide in luggage so it's not brought in. Hard liquor is a quicker way to inebriation, but more dangerous. It was for Rich.

Sebastian Piwas is frequently seen on flights between Goose Bay and Natuashish and rumoured to be a bootlegger. But while Piwas admits he used to sell liquor, he says he doesn't do it anymore. "I just did it when I was laid off from my job. That was six months ago," he said.

George Gregoire works for Natuashish's band council and also frequently flies to Goose Bay. He says he used to bring in alcohol for sale but he doesn't do it anymore because while he and his wife Charlotte are now sober, their children are not. The Gregoires must now raise their grandchildren.

Kathleen Benuen, director of Health Services in Natuashish, finds it repugnant that some non-drinkers are willing to profit from the self-destructive practices of relatives and friends. Every single person in Natuashish suffers from searing personal pain as the result of an alcohol-related family tragedy.

"I've been sober for 12 years now," Benuen says. "I can't imagine bringing the suffering I went through on anyone else."

Sgt. Grant Smith of the RCMP detachment in Natuashish says there's nothing he can do about the illegal sale of alcohol. If bootleg liquor is discovered, charges won't be laid because a few years ago someone was acquitted after successfully arguing a large quantity of alcohol found in a suitcase was for personal use. Smith says the band council needs to pass a bylaw making it illegal to bring in any alcohol at all. The bylaw has been promised for some time now.

But Joyce Rich is not optimistic anything will be done. She says the band council rarely holds public meetings and the chief and councillors spend most of their time outside the community, fuelling rumours they are involved in the illicit trade.

Chief Simon Pokue denies allegations that he or any elected member of council is bootlegging liquor although some bring it in for personal use. Pokue is fighting his own demons and admits he's not an abstainer, although he has tried to quit drinking.

The very first grave dug in Natuashish belongs to Pokue's son, the young man who got lost in the bush.

Pokue was undergoing grief counselling and addiction treatment at the Poundmakers Lodge in Alberta last year when all hell broke loose in town following press reports that $3 million was missing from community funds. Pokue cut short his treatment to deal with the mess and says he's been off and on the bottle ever since.

The last band council meeting in Natuashish was held in April. It was so fractious Pokue hasn't called one since. He knows people are waiting for the bylaw but wants to hold a referendum first. In a referendum in Davis Inlet seven years ago, 60 per cent of the townspeople supported a ban.

Pokue believes many addicts will not be able to go "cold turkey" if alcohol suddenly disappears. He says he can go months without a drink himself but not everyone can. Do bans work? Pokue says the band council was supposed to find out on a visit to Old Crow, a reserve in Yukon, where there is an alcohol ban, but there was no money.

Ironically, not far from Natuashish, there is a community where alcohol is banned but it's not a community rife with alcoholics. Employees at INCO's Voisey's Bay mine site are routinely searched for alcohol and drugs when they fly into the campsite. Infractions result in job loss.

It seems to be easier to protect mine property from the ravages of alcohol abuse than people.

There is a glimmer of light in this story. It comes from the proud abstainers of Natuashish who hope reform will come, one person at a time. But they want the bottles taken away first. And while they wait for the ban there's hope that the addition of yet another young body to the new graveyard will bring sober second thought to the bootleggers.

Marie Wadden is this year's Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy. She is researching a series of articles on Canada's success rate in lowering addiction levels in aborIginal communities.