MONEY WON'T SOLVE PROBLEMS

Hobbema As A Community Needs To Find A Solution To Gangs

Of any reserve in Canada, the Samson Cree Nation is a prime example
of how money can't solve social problems.

The reserve, where 23-month-old Asia Saddleback was shot in the
stomach when a gang bullet blasted into the kitchen wall, is one of
the wealthiest in Canada. It sits atop a vast oil reserve that has
netted Samson residents hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties.
Samson Oil and Gas is a wholly aboriginal-owned company headquartered
in Hobbema, whose mandate is "enhancing the wealth of its
shareholder, Samson Cree Nation, and providing employment and
opportunity to First Nations in the oil and gas sector." Among the
reserve's investments, further generating community wealth, is St.
Eugene's resort complex with golf and a casino in Cranbrook, B.C. The
Nation's economic development department's goal is to "promote and
facilitate the development of a strong and diversified economic and
tourism base in our community."

Yet, the drug trade is flourishing, in part because of Hobbema's
position as a route for drug supplies to Fort McMurray, and the area
gang count is 13 -- this is with a combined population among four
neighbouring reserves of just 12,000 people. Drive-by shootings like
the one that left Asia with a bullet lodged permanently in her
abdomen are commonplace. Two-thirds of calls to the Hobbema RCMP come
from the Samson reserve.

Something is lacking here, and it's not money. What's missing is what
money can't buy -- a sense of community and individual purpose.
Because of the band's oil wealth, it's been customary for kids to
receive payouts from trust funds to the tune of tens of thousands of
dollars on their 18th birthdays. That's money they never had to work
for. There's no reason or incentive for them to work or pursue an
education, when the drug trade is so lucrative, when their trust
funds are brimming with money and when they come from homes where
high rates of alcoholism make their parents poor role models.

The RCMP can vow to step up policing, Indian Affairs can offer to
help and Chief Marvin Yellowbird can declare the band council is
"dedicated to the reduction of gang activity." But unless individuals
work toward change in their own lives, nothing will be accomplished.
There are models for change all around -- for one, there's the
example set by Chief Clarence Louie of the thriving Osoyoos band in
B.C., whose ground rule is that band members must be at work or at
school; doing nothing is unacceptable.

Last year, Bryce Montour, then a Grade 8 student at Hobbema's
Ermineskin Junior-Senior High School, wrote in a letter to the Herald
about the social problems he sees around him: "The worst is the
gangs; the gangs are killing each other. People are dying because of
this; there are drive-bys, and people are drinking and driving."
Classmate George Saddleback wrote: "(Our people) abuse themselves
with gang violence and drug abuse."

Out of the mouths of babes comes the impetus for change; the cry
needs to be taken up by the entire community, one individual at a
time, until it becomes a roar.