Davis Inlet chief "optimistic" about move to Sango Bay

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Ottawa may agree to move the poverty stricken community of Davis Inlet to their preferred site at Sango Bay,.

Inlet Chief Katie Rich said Feb. 16 that a meeting with Indian Affairs Minister Ron Irwin left her "very optimistic" about finally moving the community 15 kilometres to Sango Bay.

Although she would not give any details of her discussion with the minister, Rich said she was impressed with Irwin's willingness to discuss the issue at a gathering of Nova Scotia's chiefs in Halifax Feb. 12.

Irwin was scheduled at press time to meet with the Innu at the Inlet Feb. 26 and 27 and present the federal government's offer to relocate and upgrade services to the village.

That offer is a counter-proposal to the Innu's seven-point plan, which was presented to Ottawa and the province of Newfoundland in February 1993.

That document called for the relocation of the village to a mainland site, drug and solvent abuse therapy for some of the village's 500 members and recognition of the Innu's right to self-determination.

Davis Inlet came to international attention in January 1993, after tribal police discovered and videotaped a group of youths who were high on gasoline fumes and screaming about suicide.

A total of 17 children were airlifted to a treatment centre in Alberta. Since their return last fall, all but one has returned to sniffing gasoline.

The village, located 330 kilometres north of Goose Bay, is currently without proper housing and water services. A single well serves the entire community and raw sewage is dumped out of buckets and left to rot in the streets.

Daniel Ashini, a spokesman for the Mushuau Innu Nation, said Rich and other members of the Innu Nation were examining the government's offer last week in advance of the minister's visit.

Some of the wording in the two-page document was not to the Innu's liking, he said. For one thing, there was no commitment to funding.

The Innu also require guarantees to relocate the community, and have basic services like water, sewage and a proper airstrip included in the agreement.

"We have to ensure that the wording is to our satisfaction," Ashini said. "We cannot have the government coming in and telling us what is good for us. We have to ensure that existing problems are not moved to the new community."

Negotiations with Ottawa to move the village to the mainland have been dragged out and strained at the best of times, he said. Innu leaders have accused the federal government of stalling on their decision for the last 12 months.

Talks between the Natives and the province of Newfoundland collapsed altogether last spring after Premier Clyde Wells refused to consider the Sango Bay site.

The Innu would only be moving their social problems to that site if allowed to go, he said.