October 17, 2022
I walked into Costco wondering how long it would take to find “natural vanilla extract”. Kathy told me it costs upwards of $40 and is located with the spices. I searched all around the spices unsuccessfully and looked for someone working there to help me. I noticed a woman loading a flatbed trolley with boxes of goods and thought she may be a worker, but she proved to be a buyer for a grocery store in Iqaluit, near the arctic circle of Canada (Iqaluit is the capital of the Canadian Territory of Nunavut).
That encounter triggered my memory of the volunteer work I had done for the Innu tribe in Natuashish, at the north tip of Labrador and Newfoundland, in 2009.
After I retired from the government in 1995, I volunteered with the Canadian Executive Service Overseas (CESO). My first project was to assist the Mushuau Innu First Nation. We took a small single-engine Otter from Goose Bay, Labrador, to Natuashish, with two stops (a distance of 300 kilometers or 160 miles). The pilot opened the door for the half dozen passengers, including myself, to get in, and we took off. That is how my adventure began with the tribe.
The Mushuau Innu lived in Davis Inlet in Labrador until 2002, when they moved with government assistance ten miles away into Natuashish. In Davis Inlet, the tribe members abused drugs, and the children sniffed glue. This dire situation led to many requests for help, and when help was slow in coming, the tribe escalated their demands via protests to the United Nations. The resulting embarrassment for Canada led to moving the entire tribe into a newly designed community in Natuashish.
The new community was inland, with a population of under a thousand people, and there were no job opportunities except hunting and fishing in the surrounding lakes. The government built a few hundred houses and three miles of roadway. The only access year-round was by air, or by water, during the summer months. I, along with a small team of experts in different fields, would assist the tribal council with governing. My field was public works: roads, hydro, and water/sewer systems.
The tribe housed me in a trailer and advised me to lease a truck from one of the tribal councilors. They also told me to park it alongside the trailer in such a fashion that the gas-tank cap would be inches from the trailer wall so that nobody could siphon the gas out of the tank; either for their use or for sniffing, I thought.
They brought in all the food from the south; the climate and soil would not permit any agriculture. And we could eat at the central dining hall that typically provided prepackaged food. There were no vegetables, and even after one week, I found the food repetitious and boring.
The government built a repair garage and brought in qualified car mechanics to teach the Innu how to service the Ford 150s they brought in by ship during the summers. I helped them set up a financial system for charging for repairs so that the locals could earn some money. Trouble was that they spoke a local Innu language, and I needed a translator to develop simple forms in their language. Another problem was that they were not used to working in a nine-to-five Western economy depriving the garage of steady, continuous employment.
Each Innu received a mining royalty of CD$5000, in 2009, because they had ownership of the land on which the mining company was located. Besides, the Innu received free services from the RCMP (policing), Health and Welfare Canada (health provision), and the government also built a school (kindergarten to grade twelve). They recruited all the teachers from the South with an interpreter in every class. There was only one high school graduate in the entire community.
The motivation for work was low; why work when housing, schooling, healthcare, and policing are provided free and cash payments given to all residents by the mining company?
Alcoholism was still a problem (brought in by air) despite the council’s outlawing the use of alcohol in the community. I heard stories of men who used to beat the women who retaliated by beating the men when the latter were drunk.
And many Innu destroyed the houses that the government built for them by cutting down the walls for firewood. Nobody took pride in their homes, given freely to them; they wanted money from the government for cleaning up their yards.
The Innu lived by straddling two cultures. One was their fishing and hunting way of life, and the other was a Western culture with snowmobiles, trucks, guns, and modern homes, not being in either of these cultures fully.
The experience in Natuashish firmed up my opinion that the government should take away the subsidies. I believe that the government should assist with their assimilation into western culture. Let them be entrepreneurs and let them move to cities where jobs are more available. Some of the native tribes have done well economically.
These memories of mine snapped back vividly, talking with the buyer for the grocery store in Iqaluit. And she knew exactly where the vanilla extract was.
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