News

There isn't a lot to do on the Yellow Quill First Nation reserve where Christopher Pauchay lost his two infant daughters last January during a drunken stumble into a subzero night.

Paid work is limited. The local lake, where one might swim or boat or fish, is an 11-kilometre-long sewage pit. And there is a decided lack of man-made entertainment - no movie theatre or bowling alley.

Infuse the boredom with the social and psychological issues that returned with former inmates of residential schools and it's easy to see why booze is a regular option for a quarter of the 1,000 people who live on this isolated reserve 2½ hours east of Saskatoon.

Beer, wine and whisky are readily available at the back of the pharmacy in the hamlet of Rose Valley, just a 15-minute drive down the highway.

That has prompted some members of the community to complain that a depressingly dismal quality of life at Yellow Quill shows no sign of change, even after the shock of finding 15-month-old Santana and her three-year-old sister Kaydence dead in the snow.

But along with the unemployment, the substance abuse, the occasional allegations of band corruption and the community's enduring grief at the loss of two little girls, Leonard Pasanipiness sees hope.

"I'm sorry to hear that some people can't see the changes that have been happening," Mr. Pasanipiness, community health director, said this week after Mr. Pauchay pleaded guilty to criminal negligence in the deaths of his daughters.

"There is still visible abuse going on and that's where people focus and say things haven't changed. But when you take a closer look at it, things are happening - slowly."

Mr. Pasanipiness and others here are leery of allowing reporters to venture onto the reserve. It's too easy, they say, to take a one-day snapshot and see Yellow Quill for all its negatives. It's too easy to assume that the life led by Christopher Pauchay on the day of his tragic walk mirrors the lives of his neighbours.

"It reinforces the stereotype of the drunken Indian," said Raj Hathiramani, the reserve's psychologist. "And that's not helping us."

In fact, Mr. Pasanipiness said, the deaths of the two little girls has resulted in some positive changes in the community. "I think it pulled us together and the result is that good things are coming out," he said.

Youth camps and family camps were organized this summer to help people cope with what had happened. "It gave families the chance to grieve in the healingness of nature," Dr. Hathiramani said.

But even before the traumatic loss, many people at Yellow Quill realized things needed to change and were working to make improvements.

One group has been actively trying to lure economic development to the reserve, a sprawling wooded area of unpaved roads and cookie-cutter houses.

Others have organized events to alleviate the doldrums. Dry dances, where no alcohol is served, are well attended. There are programs like a 4-H club for young people. And there has been an effort to bring young people and elders together to preserve the band's Saulteaux language, culture and traditions.

As bad as things may seem in a place where a drunken father can lose two babies in the snow, conditions have improved remarkably since the very dark days of the 1950s and 1960s, when the reserve's children were taken away to residential schools, he said.

While 25 per cent of the reserve's members today are regular consumers of alcohol, 75 per cent are not. Compare that statistic to the residential school period when 100 per cent of the reserve's adults were drinkers, Mr. Pasanipiness said. The stories of boozing and violence during that period are legion, he said.

The construction on the reserve of a school that has classes from junior grades through high school has been a major step, Mr. Pasanipiness said.

Dale Ahenakew, the school's principal, boasts that its cultural programs have boosted enrolment from 168 three years ago to 226 today. Kids who were being bused off reserve are opting to stay at Yellow Quill.

Which is not to say that the reserve is no longer dealing with a host of problems, Mr. Pasanipiness said.

"People still very much rely on their government handout to get our business done where we should be concentrating on our own economic development," he said.

And there are still social ills of the sort that beset Mr. Pauchay on that night last January when two innocent lives were lost. But to suggest that there is nothing positive happening on the reserve is "false," Mr. Pasanipiness said. For Yellow Quill, he said, progress comes in "baby steps."