Gas sniffing, etc.

[Ed Weick]

I sent the following to Brian McAndrews and the list earlier today, but I don’t think it got through. So, again. Ed Hi Brian, One has to be a little careful in generalizing about gas sniffing and suicide. Some communities are notoriously dysfunctional while others are very much together and well able to cope with the kinds of transitions Western society has imposed on them. What seems most important is the degree of displacement from their own traditions that a people have sustained and how rapidly this happened. The Innu communities of Sheshatshui and Davis Inlet, Labrador, have had a lot of press about gas sniffing, perpetually drunk adults not looking after their kids, etc. However, what is usually not said is that these people have suffered enormous displacement during the past two generations or so. Ancestral lands, including burial grounds, were flooded by hydro development, people out on the land have been buzzed by military jets, and the communities the people were moved into were very badly located in terms of traditional harvesting areas. In some work I did in northern Saskatchewan about ten years ago, I ran into one community which was at least as bad, and again displacement over a relatively short period seems to have been a major part of the problem. If you want to know more about it, I've posted some field notes on the web at: http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636/north_saskatchewan.htm Why Native kids commit suicide at a relatively high rate is a bit of a mystery. They may do so for different reasons than kids who commit suicide in our society. We tend to see suicidal kids as being depressed to the point of seeing no other way out. That may well be the case with many Native kids, but there may be other motives as well. About twenty years ago, there was a rash of teenage suicides at Tuktoyaktuk in the Mackezie Delta, a place I was very familiar with at the time. From all I heard, these kids did not appear to be depressed and apparently behaved quite normally until, suddenly, they were gone. That the place was booming with oil and gas exploration may have been a factor, but I'm not sure of how one would make the connection. People speculated that peer emulation was a cause - if so and so could do it, so can I - but I think that is also reaching a bit. For whatever reason, six kids were gone within a matter of weeks. The media being what it is, one tends to hear much more about bad cases than good ones. However, there are many "together" Native communities in norrthern Canada in which people cope with day to day life and look after their kids as well as anybody else does. Many people have moved out of problem communities for the sake of their families. Yellowknife has a population of about 20,000, and includes some 5,000 Native people, many of whom have moved there from smaller communities to take government jobs and give their kids a better chance at life. Much the same thing has happened in other northern communities which offer a better chance - Whitehorse, Prince Albert, and Iqaluit, for example. Regards, Ed Ed Weick 577 Melbourne Ave. Ottawa, ON, K2A 1W7 Canada Phone (613) 728 4630 Fax (613) 728 9382 ----- Original Message ----- From: "mcandreb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Harry Pollard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 4:11 AM Subject: Re: MRI Studies Provide New Insight Into How Emotions Interfere With Staying Focused > > Ed wrote: > Probably, they > carried the genes of those who were not so smart and not so strong along > with them, and in the new conditions under which the Inuit and Dene now > live, kids who might not have survived before are surviving and > multiplying > now. > > Hi Ed, > And we also know that these kids are commiting suicide at an alarming > rate in the new conditions under which they now live. Sniffing gasoline > to get 'high' and escape the awfulness of their existence. > > Take care, > Brian