HELP FOR THE LABRADOR INNU

BRANTFORD -- Can a child say anything more horrific than the words: "I want
to die." They came out of the mouth of a 16-year-old Innu girl in the
remote Labrador community of Sheshatshiu, who was reflecting on her
addiction to gas sniffing, the same addiction that led to the death of her
11-year-old brother.

Recently, at the request of community leaders, the Newfoundland government
started rounding up 12 gas-sniffing Innu children in order to take them
away from the community to a secure centre where they could be treated for
their addiction.

Since then, the newspapers and TV screens have been filled with pictures
showing these youngsters staggering down the street, mouth and noses inside
gas-filled garbage bags. Sadly, this is not a new phenomenon; their parents
sniffed gas when they were young, and so do did some grandparents. Some of
those who survived the teenage experimentation with gas sniffing eventually
moved on to alcohol, setting up a cycle of addiction that flows from
generation to generation.

Past attempts at helping usually involved taking addicted teens out of the
community, sending them off to a treatment centre - sometimes thousands of
miles away - and then returning them home again. Predictably, many of the
teens fell back into their old habits within months.

There's a simple explanation why that would happen. Life in some of these
Innu communities in Labrador can be, to borrow a phrase, nasty, brutish and
short.

Just a generation ago, many of these people still lived traditional lives,
hunting and fishing for sustenance. Since then there has been a move into
towns and villages, but these communities of 500 to 1,500 people are
characterized by dilapidated houses, undersized schools, a shortage of
social services, no entertainment facilities and powerless local government.

In brief, it's an environment best suited to breeding hopelessness.

The Innu leaders have been after the provincial and federal governments to
help by providing more local treatment centres, more Innu-designed programs
and more authority to run services and institutions.

The timing may be fortuitous, but the appeals have finally worked. On
Sunday, on the eve of a federal election, Prime Minister Chretien met with
a group of Innu, including some of the teens, who described for him in
graphic detail their bleak lives and their fears about the future.

Later, former Newfoundland premier Brian Tobin - now a cabinet minister and
candidate in Monday's election - announced a program to spend "millions" to
help the communities, including money for a new detox centre.

And, notably, he announced that the Innu would be brought under the terms
of the Indian Act. That provides them with subsidies and tax breaks but,
more importantly, gives them a great measure of control over the
administration of their own community. They could, for example, ban gas
sniffing which is not illegal in Canada.

Anybody who has ever had an addiction knows that the road to recovery
starts with taking control over your own life. That's precisely what the
leaders of Labrador's Innu communities want.

But kicking an addiction also requires the intervention of skilled helpers,
and that's where we in the rest of Canada come into the picture.

It may take a generation to break the cycle. It won't be easy but it must
be done. In our country, which we often hear called the best in the world,
human misery of this kind simply can't be allowed to persist.