4 Fort Simpson deaths blamed on alcohol, residential school cash

Last Updated: Monday, January 21, 2008 | 2:02 PM CT

CBC News

Four people in Fort Simpson, N.W.T., have died in the past month in incidents that residents and aboriginal leaders attribute to alcohol abuse combined with residential school compensation money flowing into the community.

Residents in the village of 1,200 are coming to terms with the four deaths, which have taken place since Dec. 20.

Most recently, 57-year-old Ernest Michel was found frozen to death Thursday. RCMP said Michel had been drinking prior to leaving his sister's house late Wednesday night,  and he had walked in the opposite direction from his home.

On Friday, the community's chief and council held an emergency meeting with RCMP to discuss ways to prevent further deaths.

Council decided to create a citizen's patrol that will drive around the community to look for people in distress, Chief Keyna Norwegian told CBC News.

The council will also work with police to crack down on bootleggers who are bringing alcohol into the community.

"Losing lives from alcohol is just something we just don't want to accept," Norwegian said Friday.

"The community is a community that has limited restrictions on the sale of alcohol at the liquor store, but yet there seems to be an 'x' amount of alcohol available any time of the day."

Norwegian said she does not believe tightening those restrictions — or banning alcohol altogether — will work, as she worries people will drive more than 300 kilometres to Hay River to buy alcohol, or even resort to drinking solvents and other harmful products.

4 had history of alcohol abuse

On Jan. 14, RCMP found the body of a 44-year-old woman in a home. Police have not said much, but residents believed the woman had been drinking at the time.

Norwegian said all four residents who died in the past month had a history of alcohol abuse and had received thousands of dollars in compensation from the federal government for the time they had spent in residential schools.

"We all knew that when the residential money was coming, it may be a burden for a lot of people and this is just a prime example," she said.

"But to have deaths is something that we just never wanted to see happen."

Resident Arnold Hope, who knew Michel well, said the influx of compensation cheques has led to out-of-control drinking.

"There's so much money out there that it's just the start of things to come," Hope warned.

"I hate like heck to be pessimistic, but I think we're going to see a few more deaths before things smarten up."

Hope added that the deaths have overshadowed the benefits of the long-awaited $1.9-billion residential school settlement, which the federal government started paying out to former students across Canada in September.

"We all know there's an awful lot of money in the territories right now because of the residential school money," he said.

"You try to put a positive spin on it and say that the majority of the people that are getting the money are doing well, but it just takes a few of our people to do what just happened over the course of the last month to just override all the good that this money has done."