"I Can't Cry Anymore"

By GAVIN SCOTT DAVIS INLET

It was almost a routine night for native constable Simeon Tsnakapesh as he patrolled the streets of Davis Inlet, a ramshackle village of about 500 Innu Indians on Labrador's north-east coast. Alerted by a neighbor's complaint, he tracked a group of noisy youths to an abandoned wooden shack near the ice- locked government wharf. Prying open the door, the cop found a horrifying scene: six youths, ages 12 to 14, sniffing deadly gasoline fumes from green garbage bags on the floor of the unheated building. "You couldn't hear nothing but the wheeze from the bags," relates Tsnakapesh. "Two of them were pretty well passed out completely."

By the time addictions counselor Bill Partridge got to the shack minutes later, all hell was breaking loose. "The kids were screaming insults, throwing themselves around at the walls," recounts Partridge. "They said they wanted to die. They were all suicidal." The local Innu Council immediately chartered a plane to take the youngsters, under police escort, to a group home near Goose Bay, 186 miles to the south. Later, three more gasoline-sniffing youths were evacuated to await transfer to another native rehabilitation center.

Self-destruction is virtually a civic preoccupation at Davis Inlet: when Partridge, 38, a former policeman from Halifax, Nova Scotia, arrived two years ago, he found himself involved in suicide intervention at a rate of four cases a month. "Every adult in the community has contemplated suicide," he says. "Every second person has attempted it in one form or another." Nearly one-quarter of the population tried in the past year alone. Partridge also found that 95% of the adult population suffer from alcoholism, and estimates that of 360 children, more than 10% are "problem sniffers" of gasoline.

Shocking as they are, the statistics are at risk of adding to the dehumanization that breeds the despair here and in other desolate native settlements dotting Canada's north. Life in Davis Inlet is an economic dead end. Only a handful of natives hold jobs at the post office, school and nursing station. There is no industry except the impatient wait for welfare checks, ranging from $237 to $316 a month per family. As many as 20 people live crammed into a single unpainted clapboard dwelling. None of the 67 houses administered by the local Innu Council have running water or sewerage. Uncollected garbage is strewn along rutted snowmobile paths that serve as de facto streets eight months of the year.

The calamity is rooted in poverty, but it is compounded by years of government neglect. Now numbering 1,500 in all, the Labrador Innu are subsidized by Ottawa but fall under the jurisdiction of Newfoundland's provincial government. Once proud hunters, trappers and fishers of Labrador's interior Barren Lands, the natives were relocated to their present home in 1967 with the promise of acceptable housing, running water and fishing boats, which have yet to appear. "The program made the people dependent on government," says Peter Penashue, president of the Innu Nation. "For kids growing up, there is no self-esteem, no pride in our culture."

"Every time we've talked to the federal and provincial governments, our words have fallen on deaf ears," insists George Rich, an Innu Nation vice president. Rich says he sniffed gas at 14 and went into alcohol rehabilitation after his common-law wife committed suicide at 16. Adds Katie Rich (no relation), the first woman chief of the five-person Innu band council: "Anything the government says no longer surprises me. It's got so I can't cry anymore."

The immediate hope is that federal money, finally earmarked last week, will help the nine children who have been evacuated get treatment for solvents abuse. Five others, accompanied by family members and interpreters, will follow them to a native-run facility in Alberta. The Innu band council will also seek a treatment center within the village itself. Beyond that, the people of Davis Inlet will take up a new government offer for eventual relocation on the Labrador mainland, probably at Sango, about 11 miles to the west, where there is an ample water supply and the possibility of jobs at a $23 million hydroelectric project. "There's really nothing worth saving here," says Chief Rich. "At least we would have a fresh start, at least at a place chosen by us."

Expectations have grown thin in a village that has suffered the starvation of hope. Both the federal and provincial governments are sending fact-finding missions to the settlement, now that the most recent tragedy has put a national spotlight on Davis Inlet. But official concern cannot easily lift the air of sadness and fatalism in the bedraggled village. Because of a budget crunch, Constable Tsnakapesh was laid off for a week along with the village's other cop. Tsnakapesh, 24, continued to take police calls, though. "I have no authority," he says, "but I've been where these kids are now. My parents were both drinkers and committed suicide. I was 13 when I pulled their bodies out of the water. Later I tried to commit suicide too, because I thought I had no life. It's still happening."