And now:[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: From: "chris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Ottawa wants Labrador Innu to kill themselves Monday, November 08, 1999 Ottawa wants Labrador Innu to kill themselves, lobby group says Policies cause highest suicide rate: report Stewart Bell National Post The Innu of Labrador have the world's highest suicide rate, claims a report to be released today by a British aboriginal rights organization that blames ''racist government policies'' for the deaths in "Canada's Tibet." Canadians may find it far-fetched to compare Canada with occupied Tibet, where Chinese security forces have engaged in a brutal crackdown, but the report claims Ottawa is trying to wipe out the "troublesome minority" of Innu to gain access to Labrador's land and resources. "They do not need to be shot -- they are killing themselves, at a rate unsurpassed anywhere in the world," says Canada's Tibet, the killing of the Innu, a report to be released in the U.K. by the group Survival for Tribal Peoples. "The Canadian government bears responsibility for this outrage but does nothing to avoid it -- indeed, its actions are calculated to bring about exactly these conditions." But the claim that the Innu have the world's highest suicide rate is based on just eight self-induced deaths since 1990 in Davis Inlet -- one a year. The figure, however, is proportionally high because the town has a population of only 500. A spokeswoman for Survival said yesterday Jean-Pierre Ashini, one of the Innu who had travelled to the U.K. for the report's release, had to return home because his son had committed suicide. The plight of the Innu came to national attention in 1992 when six children were killed in a house fire while their parents were out drinking. The following year, children were videotaped sniffing gasoline and shouting they wanted to die. The report is being distributed in North America by the Canadian Environmental Defence Fund, which includes among its honorary board members David Suzuki, the CBC host, and authors June Callwood and Farley Mowat. The group behind the report is the same organization that hung a banner reading "Canada: Let the Innu Live" on Nelson's Column outside the Canadian High Commission in London in July, 1998. "In the tundra of the Labrador peninsula, a tragedy is being played out," says the report. "An indigenous people suffers the highest suicide rate on Earth as one of the world's most powerful nations occupies their land, takes their resources and seems hell-bent on transforming them into Euro-Canadians." The only way for Canada to "salvage" its international reputation is to stop all development on land claimed by the Innu, change land-claims policy to let natives keep their traditional lands and let the Innu run their own lives, it says. The report concludes with a plea for donations to be sent to the organization in London. There are about 1,600 Innu in two Labrador communities, Davis Inlet and Sheshatshiu. The Labrador Innu are currently negotiating a land claim and suing the federal and Newfoundland governments over the Voisey's Bay nickel project. This isn't the first time European activists have tried to link Canada to troubles in other countries. Earlier in the decade, a "Brazil of the North" campaign was launched by anti-logging protesters. Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
