Media.Knet.Ca

From the Toronto Star

We don't `get' native despair - Conditions that led to the deaths of two little girls will persist until mainstream society acts

Marie Wadden - Feb 10, 2008

The two children, Kaydance and Santana Pauchay, who froze to death on the Yellow Quill reserve in Saskatchewan are not the first to die this horrible way on a First Nation reserve, Métis or Inuit community.

Every winter, someone dies in aboriginal communities from the same deadly combination: extreme cold and excessive alcohol consumption.

It happens when a drinker loses consciousness on the way to or from a party and is not missed until it is too late. I witnessed such a death once in Natuashish, Newfoundland and Labrador, when a woman in her 20s, named Deborah Rich, died this way.

My heart goes out to the Pauchay family and the people of Yellow Quill because I know these deaths will contribute another layer of guilt and despair to the community's internalization of its social problems, deepening the sense of helplessness and despair. Some mourners will turn back to alcohol and drugs to escape from reality. Others, a growing number, will not drink at all.

What's little known in Canada is that many aboriginal people have been taking responsibility for the addiction epidemic that came upon them when their losses grew too great to bear. A healthy and inspiring addiction recovery movement has been underway for more than three decades.

Today, a greater number of aboriginal people abstain completely from alcohol than other Canadians and many of them are helping family and friends do the same. Aboriginal communities just have more problem drinkers.

So, let's stop throwing stones at aboriginal communities for their drinking problems and try to figure out where the problem drinkers are coming from.

We're so busy blaming aboriginal addicts that we can't see how our personal actions and political policies contribute to the self-destructive behaviour that is creating so much misery. The same conditions that led to the deaths of the Pauchay girls will persist once the media attention ends because most Canadians just don't get it.

What we don't get is that racism is at the root of the problem.

Few non-aboriginal Canadians mix socially with aboriginals. For their part, most aboriginals have obediently stayed where we put them after we took away their land and resources. They come into our communities for services they can't get at home.

We've created ghettos for them in our cities. Their triumphs receive little mention in our media, but their tragedies get widely reported. The Indian and northern affairs department parcels out large amounts of money to support a bureaucracy that, in turn, doles out a myriad of social and economic programs that fail because so few aboriginals have a say in their creation. More money is not the answer, smarter spending is.

To quote a very wise First Nations man named Marcel Hardisty: "These are people problems."

People problems are the hardest to solve, particularly when you don't like the people you must solve them with. Sadly, the same indifference, dislike and racism we fling in their direction is felt by many aboriginals toward us, the people they call "mainstream society."

The way aboriginals have been marginalized has created so much distrust and hatred, it's hard to know where to start fixing things.

A start can be made in the next few weeks if Canadians get behind this country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Canada didn't go into this willingly, by the way. There'd be no such commission if there hadn't been the threat of a class-action lawsuit from 80,000 former students of Indian residential schools. The commission was mandated as part of the out-of-court settlement.

Successive government policies since the Gradual Civilization Act, passed in 1857, broke aboriginal societies by taking children away from their parents and trying to change or assimilate them.

What was accomplished? We created more aboriginal English and French speakers who became alienated from their families, communities and cultures. They also learned self-hatred. We created generations of addicts.

The truth and reconciliation process will only work if people from both sides of the divide take part. Public hearings will give aboriginal people an opportunity to tell their stories of hurt and pain. But who will be listening? If there is going to be reconciliation, those of us in "mainstream society" will have to listen with open hearts, no matter how fervently we may disagree or wish to ignore these truths.

Reconciliation can only be made if non-aboriginals are up to the task. I hope we will be. We need to begin healing this broken country. A country can't be whole when almost 3 per cent of its citizens, the true founding peoples, live in so much pain and hardship.

It's too late to save those beautiful little girls who froze to death in Saskatchewan. There is a chance, however, that we can prevent other deaths and help another generation avoid the lure of addiction.

Canada's truth and reconciliation process is supposed to last for five years – that's five years to begin picking up the pieces and supporting the addiction recovery movement that aboriginal people have, with little fanfare and encouragement from the rest of us, already set in motion.

Marie Wadden's series on Canadian public policy and aboriginal addiction is still on our website: http://thestar.com/specialSections/atkinson. Her book Where the Pavement Ends; Canada's Aboriginal Recovery Movement and the Urgent Need for Reconciliation (published by Douglas & McIntyre) will be in bookstores this May.