NATIVE CANADIAN CHILDREN HIGH ON FUMES FUEL FIGHT OVER FEDERAL HEALTH SPENDING

In the remote northern Labrador community of Davis Inlet, scores of
children skip school to spend the day sniffing gasoline from garbage bags.

Canadian TV-news viewers lately have been watching children as young as six
getting high on the fumes, which can cause brain damage. Community leaders
say about half of Davis Inlet's young are now hooked. Substance abuse in
the tiny community, whose 600 members belong to the Innu tribe, has become
a national scandal, with public pressure growing to rescue the children of
Davis Inlet and Sheshatshiu, Labrador's other Innu community.

But first there is a cultural and political battle to be fought.

The Innu have delayed sending the youngsters for detoxification treatment;
government officials have been negotiating with them since before Christmas
to get as many as 100 children into treatment. The community's leaders
insist on Innu-run substance-abuse programs. Government officials say they
will no longer write blank checks for Innu programs that don't work.

"We want to make sure what's done has a reasonable chance of success," says
Al Garman, the Ministry of Health official responsible for Indian health in
Atlantic Canada, of the treatment options.

The government's tougher stance comes at a time when Ottawa in general is
increasingly sensitive to charges that it is spending money on Canada's
700,000 Indians without adequate controls. Last fall, for instance, the
federal government stopped funding a Manitoba native treatment center to
investigate newspaper reports that the center's staff took a Caribbean
cruise, allegedly with taxpayer funds. While Indians push for increased
self-government, "the pendulum's come back a little" toward more government
oversight, a Ministry of Indian Affairs spokesman says.

Since 1993, the federal government has spent 2.5 million Canadian dollars
(US$1.67 million) on Davis Inlet's substance-abuse programs, Mr. Garman
says, or C$4,167 a head. That is in addition to the C$3 million Davis Inlet
receives annually in social assistance and other programs, its principal
means of support. Sheshatshiu, population 1,200, receives C$7 million a
year plus treatment funding.

In the past, Davis Inlet substance-abuse treatment has largely involved
trips into the wilderness with parents, elders and trained Innu counselors
to learn about the native culture. The Innu say they want to control the
children's treatment to make sure it works. "If you don't understand our
history, you can't treat us," says Peter Penashue, tribal council chief for
the Innu of Sheshatshiu. The treatment programs also create jobs in an area
where most people don't have one. Mr. Garman says the continuing addiction
suggests that such programs haven't succeeded.

There are about 2,000 Innu in Labrador and 14,000 in Quebec, where Innu
leaders say children don't typically sniff gas mainly because they have
easier access to street drugs, such as the hallucinogen PCP. The sum of
16,000 largely accounts for Canada's Innu, a tribe of American Indians in
Quebec and Newfoundland, who say they have been scarred by substance abuse
since the government forced them to give up their nomadic way of life in
the 1950s and 1960s and subsequent hydroelectric developments flooded their
hunting grounds.

The Innu say their children sniff to escape the harsh realities of their
young lives: widespread alcoholism among parents, dilapidated homes with no
running water, and a suicide rate 13 times the national average.

Davis Inlet refuses to send most of its 80 to 100 addicted children for
treatment until government negotiators agree to let Innu counselors, rather
than outside professionals, control the children's long-term treatment. Mr.
Garman says the government wants a board of medical professionals,
appointed by his department, to design a long-term treatment plan for the
children and their families to follow once the children complete a
medically supervised detox program.

The Davis Inlet Innu relented a bit Tuesday, sending 16 of the community's
most seriously addicted children to St. John's, Newfoundland, for detox.
Government officials are still negotiating to get the remaining children
into treatment. Sheshatshiu leaders last month sent 19 children, ranging in
age from six to 18 years old, for medical treatment at a Newfoundland
military base. But the leaders there also demand control over the long-term
treatment.

The Davis Inlet substance-abuse program will cost little compared with a
local program that has attracted far less attention. The government is now
spending C$110 million to move the entire Davis Inlet community to a new
site eight miles away on the Labrador mainland. Decades ago, government
officials forced the Innu onto an island they never wanted to call home in
the first place. The decrepit community needed large infrastructure
investments in any event, and the new location provides better access to
hunting.

To be sure, the new site offers no real hope of economic self-sufficiency
in the modern world. But it will have running water and a sewage system.
And the Innu are negotiating for a skating rink. They hope their children
will find it more diverting than sniffing gas.