INNU CHIEF URGES FORCED TREATMENT

Wants Children Who Sniff Gas Taken Off Streets Of Community

SHESHATSHIU, Nfld. (CP) -- The chief of Labrador's largest Innu community
wants Newfoundland health officials to start pulling gas-sniffing children
off the streets of Sheshatshiu to ensure they get treatment.

Paul Rich, in a letter to the provincial government Wednesday, said the
drastic measure is needed because there are too many kids hooked on
inhaling gas fumes. Their parents don't know what else to do.

Peter Penashue, president of the Innu Nation, said there are at least 30
children sniffing gas on the streets of this central Labrador community,
which has only 1,200 residents.

"Gas sniffing has become a very serious problem in Sheshatshiu," he said.
"It seems to be getting out of hand."

Penashue has long complained his group and the police don't have the
authority to pick up these children and get them into treatment.

He has called for changes to provincial and federal legislation, but his
pleas have been ignored.

"The community really can't do anything because it doesn't have the legal
jurisdiction," Penashue said in an interview from Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Nfld.

"That authority rests with the province of Newfoundland and Labrador."

Penashue said the province has yet to exercise its power because officials
are worried about offending Innu parents.

"We're now encouraging them to take that responsibility," Penashue said.

The Innu communities in Labrador, which include about 1,800 people, have
been plagued by high suicide rates and solvent abuse for decades.

Last November, the London-based human rights group Survival International
released a report that showed the suicide rate in the Innu community of
Davis Inlet was 13 times higher than in the rest of Canada.

The non-profit group issued a statement last week saying the federal
government has ignored the report's recommendations.

Davis Inlet came to international attention in 1993 when six
solvent-sniffing teenagers barricaded themselves in a shack, intent on
killing themselves.

The resulting media focus on the community revealed shocking levels of
poverty and alcoholism.