Tragedy at the Yellow Quill Reserve

dancing-loon

House Member
Oct 8, 2007
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The wind has been hauling around my house for hours now... couldn't sleep.
Now I read about two little girls, 3 and 1 year old being lost in the cold.
They found the body of the older girl, but the one-year-old hasn,t been found yet.

The father was found yesterday morning with severe frostbite, couldn't talk until the afternoon. He asked about his two girls... if they were safe.
The temperature with the wind chill in Saskatchewan reached -50 C Tuesday -- prompting Humane Society officials to warn locals to keep their pets inside.
Why the man went outside with his little children is not yet known.

Read here the full story: http://tinyurl.com/22vomq

What a rough life it must be to live so isolated and in such cold temperatures!! Are Natives not allowed to move down here to Southern Ontario? Or Southern Alberta is not bad either.
Maybe we will find out what else goes with the story.
 

karrie

OogedyBoogedy
Jan 6, 2007
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Yellow Quill is already Southern Canada (as far as Canada on a whole goes). Being East of Saskatoon doesn't even put it in the Northern half of Saskatchewan. There are plenty of people who live much further North, in much more isolated areas, both First Nations and Caucasians. Where the weather patterns will end up (especially when we're talking wind chill) doesn't necessarily follow our preconceived notions of North being cold and South being warmer. It's often the warmer areas that are less prepared for, and less practical about, the severe extremes that winter can bring.

In the last two years, all of the major news stories I've heard regarding people dying in blizzards or freezing to death outside, seem to happen in the southern halves of the provinces.

 

Nuggler

kind and gentle
Feb 27, 2006
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Backwater, Ontario.
Just finished reading about this on CBC and local Sask. online papers.

Aside from someone saying they "have been crying for hours", nothing of substance has been revealed.

Something fishy here.
 

dancing-loon

House Member
Oct 8, 2007
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Here are more details and a photo:
Mr. Nippi went to visit the young mother and her family Wednesday, and found them, sad, angry and shocked, he said. And no one is talking about what happened the night the girls went missing. But one thing that bothers him, he said, "is that there's alcohol involved here."

On Wednesday, Mr. Pauchay's [father of girls) mother Pearl said her son had indeed been drinking, "and he must have blacked out. That's what he said when we went to visit him in the hospital."

Police say the girls and their father were at home around 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, he said. Sometime later, Mr. Pauchay left his home with both girls, wearing no coat and headed for a neighbour's house about 400 metres away.

To me, this boils down to a lot of underlying issues that have been a problem across First Nation communities."Those issues include chronic poverty, inadequate housing, a lack of employment opportunities, "rampant" alcoholism, drug abuse, inattention from federal and provincial governments, and the lingering impact of residential-school abuse that has culminated in generations of abuse in some families, he said.
Read more here: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=277594
 

missile

House Member
Dec 1, 2004
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Saint John N.B.
An ex alcoholic myself, I can understand doing a stupid thing like going for a walk without wearing proper clothing, but was never so drunk that I forced any of my children to accompany me. To me, this man was also an idiot!
 

jenn

Electoral Member
Jan 13, 2008
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I kept wondering... thru all this.. where was the mother... well seems they had a fight... as they had many where she stormed out and would be gone for sometimes days... the neighbour that awoke to him banging on her door had the only phone on that part of the reserve.
 

dancing-loon

House Member
Oct 8, 2007
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Alcohol-free Reserves!

Earlier I listened to a report on CBC. A Native spokes woman talked about pushing for an alcohol ban on Reserves. Apparently that is not so easily done, because it has to go through all the proper channels and then be o-kayed by the Minister of Indian Affairs (?)

I don't think that would go through... too many are hooked on booze and would protest and declare it as biased and racial motivated. If alcohol is banned, then for all across the whole country as well. That that won't happen a bird can tell you!

If these mentioned conditions are true, then I wonder why we Canadians want to fix the problems of poor Afghanis thousands of miles away, when we have an opportunity to do the same good right here in our very own country?

Does anyone care to comment, come up with ideas of what to do and how to solve the Natives' problems?

I'd say, let us fix our own problems first before we march out and meddle in other countries!!
 

dancing-loon

House Member
Oct 8, 2007
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An ex alcoholic myself, I can understand doing a stupid thing like going for a walk without wearing proper clothing, but was never so drunk that I forced any of my children to accompany me. To me, this man was also an idiot!
All drunks are idiots or at least behave like such!!
 

dancing-loon

House Member
Oct 8, 2007
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I kept wondering... thru all this.. where was the mother... well seems they had a fight... as they had many where she stormed out and would be gone for sometimes days... the neighbour that awoke to him banging on her door had the only phone on that part of the reserve.
I haven't found any concrete news about her yet. But look at the Christmas photo .... she looks like a kid herself!!
 

karrie

OogedyBoogedy
Jan 6, 2007
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Well, first of all, why one and not the other?

There are people who do work on the reservations in the capacities they're allowed to. There are people who help, government programs that help. But, you can't force people to take help, follow advice, or act in the manner the rest of the country expects.
 

jenn

Electoral Member
Jan 13, 2008
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Well, first of all, why one and not the other?

There are people who do work on the reservations in the capacities they're allowed to. There are people who help, government programs that help. But, you can't force people to take help, follow advice, or act in the manner the rest of the country expects.

yes you can... or you lose your children... plain and simple...mind you. 58% of the children in care in Alberta are Native..
 

jenn

Electoral Member
Jan 13, 2008
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yes I know....but there should be stricter enforcements upon a child being returned.. manditory drug and alcohol testings... parenting classes... respite.... work with them... don't just give them the tools and expect them to know how to use them...unfortunatly there is just not enough resourses for this...
 

dancing-loon

House Member
Oct 8, 2007
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yes you can... or you lose your children... plain and simple...mind you. 58% of the children in care in Alberta are Native..
Well, I don't know, ... how high is the Native population in Alberta?

The Natives are a displaced people, they can't or won't want to function in a structured society.
They seem to live just from day to day, ... lack the interest to plan ahead, plan for a better future for their children. I think there is still some deep-seated resentment, that's holding them back, causing the hopelessness.
I'm not in the know about the laws governing the Native Communities as a whole.
 

#juan

Hall of Fame Member
Aug 30, 2005
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Somehow this brings me back to the gas sniffing native kids in Labrador a few years ago. Just one more case where the parents were not doing their job. In Labrador the parents were playing bingo while the kids did what they wanted. In this case the only parent around takes a kid out in -50 weather with a t-shirt and a diaper. The kid would have have severe frostbite even if they had made it to the friend's house. This kind of drunken stupidity was going to hurt somebody sooner or later. Unfortunately, this time it killed the kids.
 

Unforgiven

Force majeure
May 28, 2007
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It's difficult to post to this thread without it sounding bigotted. I'm not sure if that is a personality flaw in myself or a sad state of affairs on reservations and Native culture as a whole.
 

jenn

Electoral Member
Jan 13, 2008
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I dunno...sometimes I think we are just more aware of the "WRONG" things the natives do do..and not any right things..
 

#juan

Hall of Fame Member
Aug 30, 2005
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It's difficult to post to this thread without it sounding bigotted. I'm not sure if that is a personality flaw in myself or a sad state of affairs on reservations and Native culture as a whole.

I know what you mean. But if it had been a white guy, we'd be demanding his head for this stupid behavior.....