CANADIAN VILLAGE FIGHTS A CHILDREN'S ADDICTION

Tribal Effort Against Gas-Sniffing Shows Success, So Far

SHESHATSHIU, Newfoundland and Labrador -- The dark end of the graveyard
still calls him.

That is where Phillip believes his dead brother, Charles, told him to go
when he was sniffing the gasoline. That was before social workers
apprehended Phillip from the woods, put him on a bus and sent him to a
locked-door treatment facility for children who were addicted to
high-octane gas in plastic bags. There they were watched 24 hours, given
all the time in the world to sleep off the fumes.

Two years after the abduction, Phillip, the 13-year-old who was seen
nationwide with a green bag sealed to his lips, is back in his community,
in his father's house. He says he doesn't sniff gas anymore. But sometimes
he can still hear his dead brother, Charles, calling him, and he can still
remember the night when his brother burst into flames after a bag of
gasoline he was sniffing spilled near a candle. Charles ran toward him,
ablaze. But the fumes on Phillip were strong, and he ran away from his
brother because he didn't want to catch fire, too. Now, he is haunted.

Phillip was one of the youngest sniffers then, stumbling in and out of the
woods outside this hillside settlement of an aboriginal people in Canada's
north called Innu. He huddled with other sniffers, inhaling fumes to forget
problems. When the children began sniffing on the streets in broad
daylight, not running when tribal leaders glared at them, the community
knew it had a crisis. Chief Paul Rich made a public appeal to the
government to do whatever it took to help 39 children in the village known
to be sniffing gas.

The government did, and today the treatment program stands out as one of
the few success stories in the battle of Canada's aboriginal peoples
against some of the highest rates of substance abuse in the world.
Sheshatshiu is now known as the village that got its children off the
gasoline -- most of them, at least. Though the program was expensive, many
people hope it can serve as an example for other aboriginal communities
seeking to save their children.

Two years later, many of the children look better. Their lips have stopped
bleeding. They no longer have gasoline blisters cracking their faces. They
no longer stare with blank eyes. They no longer sleep in the woods holding
their bags of gasoline like pacifiers.

Still, many of the adults here wonder how long the success will last. In so
many other ways, this settlement overlooking the wilds of 85-mile-long Lake
Melville remains a center of despair, where people forced to end nomadic
wanderings a generation ago lead a stationary existence they cannot
understand. "We are the lost people," said Rich. "Thirty years ago, we
lived in tents without running water. When change came, we had to live
another culture. We weren't ready to live another culture."

Today, spouses still beat spouses in Sheshatshiu and guzzle smuggled
liquor. Children stand outside bingo halls, crying for their mommies.
Adults recall abuse by Catholic priests sent to "civilize" them. It's all
but impossible to find a job here. So, many people wonder, what will the
children who sniffed gas do now to cope with this life? How will Phillip
deal with those lingering images of his brother aflame?

Family Flashbacks

In Phillip's house, beige sheets are nailed to windows to create privacy.
Hanging from nails on wood-paneled walls are photos of children. One is a
blowup of Charles, bigger than life. There are two notes taped to the dead
boy's photo. "Charles I miss you Charles. From Georgina. You are an angel
now." There is no food in Phillip's house -- not an egg, not a bottle of
milk, not a microwaveable hamburger in a plastic bag, which is all Phillip
wants for dinner tonight.

Phillip is in a blue Adidas shirt. He is much taller now. When he was
sniffing the gas, he was able to talk about his brother. Now the words
choke him, so he doesn't say them. He slips out of the room when his father
begins to talk about Charles.

"When we talk about his brother, he gets flashbacks," says Lionel Riche,
46. "Phillip is doing all right now. Gradually, he understands what
happened to him two years ago when he was on gas."

Riche is sitting at a table. He admits that he still drinks, and this may
be a reason why Phillip sniffed. He says he and his wife plan to get
treatment, perhaps in a few days, perhaps in the new year. Phillip peeks
out of a bedroom. But his father is still talking about the night Charles
burned. Phillip closes the door.

"I felt very sad when my son was caught on fire," Riche said. "When he was
playing with matches, I wasn't there when he caught on fire. I heard
somebody knock on the door. They said Charles is on fire. We chased the
ambulance. We never caught the ambulance. We went to the hospital. I said
look what happened to you. You burn yourself. He said, 'Dad, you were
right. I shouldn't be sniffing.' He was sent to St. John's. He stayed in
St. John's. He died in St. John's." Jolted Into Action

Charles's death was not the catalyst for the community's cry for help. What
brought action was local adults suddenly realizing that they were no longer
shocked at seeing children sniffing gas on the streets.

Lyla Andrew, social health programs coordinator for the Sheshatshiu Band
Council, the tribal government body, remembers the day. "We were having an
interagency meeting," Andrew recalled. "The Band Council program director
of [the] treatment center was on her way to the meeting. She had been
stopped and told some kids were sniffing in the woods. It was beginning to
be more common. The children were walking around with bags in hands, and
they weren't trying to hide. She went into the woods. There were children
sniffing. One was a child of 5."

That was the jolt.

Council people started making calls: Where can the children go? Using gas
this way was not illegal, so there were no judicial means to deal with the
issue. And "nobody wanted to make criminals of the kids," Andrew said.

They called the social services office, run by the province of Newfoundland
and Labrador, and voiced a radical demand. "We expect you to apprehend
these children," Andrew said. "We made a list of kids. Take them into care.
The band knew there would be some angry parents who felt we were going over
their heads."

The provincial government answered that it did not have the resources to
take on so many troubled children. They would need 24-hour supervision,
therapy and care-giving. So the Band Council began calling agencies of the
federal government.

A few days later, a team of social workers drove to Sheshatshiu. They
enticed 23 children -- those thought to be most addicted -- one by one into
a bus with promises of pizza in Goose Bay, a town about 20 miles away.
Waving goodbye as if they were going to an amusement park, the children
were driven to Goose Bay and put into a makeshift treatment facility
hurriedly created in a military barracks.

The children did get their pizza. "After that, they say we spend one
night," said Phillip. "But I spent over a year there." Dealing With a Crisis

Staff members were quickly hired. Some were Innu living in Goose Bay. They
had a huge job on their hands -- to feed and house the children, watch over
them day and night, and somehow break their craving for gasoline fumes. "We
felt like we were inventing the wheel," Andrew said.

The children were given new jackets, boots and pants. They played cards and
other games in the barracks. Social workers tried to create a nurturing
atmosphere to combat the common problems they found in the children's
backgrounds: exposure to chronic alcoholism and domestic violence; sexual,
physical and emotional abuse; trauma caused by exposure to suicides; simple
neglect.

As the gasoline started to wear off, the children became more active. A man
sat by the door, so some children tried to escape out the windows. "It
required a lot of manpower to make sure they stayed inside," Andrew said.

But as the children stayed away longer from the gasoline, their normal,
healthy spirits started to emerge, and workers realized they could not keep
23 children inside forever. Special houses were established in Goose Bay,
each taking four or five children. Most of the houses were equipped with
computers for schoolwork. The children were still watched around the clock,
even when they went to play hockey or swim.

Social workers were realizing that to keep the children gas-free, their
parents had to change their ways, too. "Initially, you want to be mad at
the parents," said Andrew. "Yet, we know [they] suffered, too. It's not
because they don't love their kids. They are dealing with their own trauma
of sexual abuse by priests and as children seeing their parents humiliated.
That was the harder part."

The Band Council pushed the government for more money and started taking
the children's families to an old fishing lodge for retreats. These
included lots of talking and sharing of stories, as well as reviving Innu
customs that have largely died out, such as hunting, in the belief that
bringing them back might help mental health.

When the children were ready to leave Goose Bay, after staying as long as a
year, they sometimes returned to parents who, for the first time in a long
time, were sober. Other children went to foster parents who were paid not
to work outside the home but to take care of the children and keep them
away from gas.

Phillip won't say much about his year of rehab. But he does say that when
he returned to Sheshatshiu, he was different: "I didn't feel like going
back to gas sniffing." Lingering Effects

There is a clear difference in the community now. Two years ago, the
children walked the streets like ghosts with plastic bags sealed around
their mouths. They smiled for the cameras that put their images all over
Canada and much of the world. "Hasta la vista, baby!" Pien Jack used to shout.

But now he is quiet, as if the gas took away his words. Two years ago, Pien
Jack was 12, and his nose was running, his tennis shoes were untied, saliva
was dripping from his mouth, and he was stumbling around.

Today, he is taller, his baby fat is gone and he is shy, running to his
room rather than talk about what saved him from the gas.

His uncle, Jerome Jack, 40, talks for him. "He was over at [the] treatment
program for youth for four or five months. Pien learned about his own
culture and how to stabilize his own life. And how to identify himself as
an Innu." Pien, Jerome Jack is saying, felt abandoned by his parents. "Pien
wanted his mother to stop drinking."

When Pien does talk, the words are often unsettling. "A lot of kids still
sniff now," he said. "I don't know where."

In the settlement's school, Ann Hurley, the Innu vice principal, sits
behind her desk and talks of the trouble the sniffers created. "Some used
to run around the school and run outside in the trees," Hurley said. "They
used to hang around, hang around the school, hang around throwing rocks at
the windows."

But when the children were sent off, the school cracked down, too. "When we
could smell gas on the child's clothing, we contacted the parents and sent
them home. . . . When parents are drinking, you know how it is, the kids
don't sleep. There is no food at home. That is why some were having problems."

Hurley says she hasn't had to send anyone home in quite a while. But she
can see the effects of the gas on the children now, even after the smell
has gone. "They are really slow at learning." Hard Habit to Break

Irene Penunsi is one of the failed ones. She still roams the streets,
moving in and out of the woods, in and out of jail. People point at her and
say she is influencing the younger people. Penunsi wears her hair in two
braids. She is a mother, of a 9-month-old girl who has been taken away from
her.

For Penunsi, who started sniffing when she was 14, it's a hard habit to
break. When she is not sniffing, the demons are bigger. "I see things like
killing myself," she said.

Two years ago, people found her in the woods, in such a state that she was
rushed to the hospital. "My feet were frozen," she recalled. "I couldn't
walk on my feet. They were washing my feet. I feel the pain on my feet. I
felt like it was burning."

She was in the hospital two or three days, then was taken to the barracks.
"I stayed two weeks," she said. "I didn't like to sleep there. It was boring."

But she didn't want to stay. And because she was an adult, she didn't have
to. She returned to Sheshatshiu and went to a women's shelter. "I was
gas-sniffing, and two girls were watching me, looking after me. I stayed in
the shelter one month, and they released me. I came home. I started
sniffing the gas."

She promises she is going to treatment soon. "A family program," she said.
Now that she's a mother, "I want to give it [sniffing] up." She wants her
daughter back. "I have to go to the court again."

She recalls losing the child. She was walking down the street one day. "A
social worker said I was gas-sniffing, and the social worker came up to me
and said she would take my baby away. I got really mad. I told the social
worker lots of people [are] drinking and you don't take the baby away. But
I'm not drinking. I'm just sniffing. She said you should drink."

Penunsi said that after they took her baby, "I started sniffing again. I
hardly remember what happened. I lost my memory from sniffing gas. I'm
trying really hard to remember, but I can't."