By Barry Stagg
October 1994
RENEGADE HILLBILLIES
Davis Inlet, Labrador has been in the headlines so often in September that it appears that big city editors have found a domestic alternative to the daily and expensive coverage of the pathetic situation in Rwanda. Both staff reporters and high browed columnists run around together seeking quotes from an always accommodating Innu population. It was hardly surprising that Globe and Mail columnist Michael Valpy returned from his summer long absence on the very day that the latest Davis Inlet story broke in the national press. Valpy had agonized like some secular high priest of Canadian morality in a previous visit. There are others now who joined the fray offering countless reasons why the squalor and decadence of this Innu community should somehow be distinguished from countless other examples of small isolated backwaters falling into the abyss of wretchedness.
Toronto media coverage is intense and for the most part expresses a tone of moral condemnation of Newfoundland government authorities seeking to enforce normal rules of conduct. Raised eyebrows and clucks of disapproval resound throughout the coverage.
What coverage could Newfoundlanders expect if Davis Inlet were a non-native community, say located in the Ottawa Valley, the Saskatchewan prairie or more significantly on the isolated portion of the south coast of Newfoundland? There are plenty of communities in these parts of Canada that can lay claim to isolation, to despair because of a failing economy and, from time to time, social breakdown. It is unlikely that much moral outrage would be generated toward authorities if they stepped into Grand Bruit or Francois on the South coast of Newfoundland and laid charges against parents whose unattended children had died in a house fire. What if these facts were coupled with allegations that these parents were absent from the home on a drinking binge when the fire consumed these helpless children? There is little doubt that moral outrage would be directed at the parents and none would be directed at the authorities charged with the responsibility of administering justice in these situations. What kind of column could be expected from Mr. Valpy in these circumstances? The answer is that no column would be expected from Mr. Valpy since there is little journalistic cachet in reporting such stories from these communities.
Every so often there are stories that are reported about small isolated communities here and there in Canada and the United States where awful things happen. Sometimes these things are incest, child abuse, sexual assault or drunkenness or some depraved combination of all of these ghastly horrors. Sometimes a story is reported about some misguided community leader in one of these small places who tries lamely and futilely to defend the community, usually striking a chord or two about how the intervention of the criminal justice system will destroy a traditional way of life. Almost without exception media reports will condemn the community and its leaders as mere renegade hillbillies simply too dim or compromised to see the raw obscenity of the situation. That is the press coverage expected and that is the press coverage received in these situations.
Why then is the Davis Inlet coverage so different from what would be expected in these circumstances? Why are government authorities questioned and second guessed when they seek to ensure that abuse and neglect of children does not go uninvestigated and unpunished? Why is petty vandalism by children elevated to some form of profound cultural statement when it would be deplored at full volume if the same thing happened in the public housing of Regent Park in Toronto. These are questions asked of newspaper editors, of television and radio editors and columnists and commentators both in print and across the television and radio spectrums. Newfoundland itself is often conveniently labelled as a Canadian backwater by the national press. It becomes lazily convenient to trumpet this stereotype when the Newfoundland government comes into confrontation with a stubborn Innu community. Questions of where the inhabitants of Davis Inlet look for their day to day sustenance are ignored by the press. Reasonable questions as to who draws upon the public purse in Davis Inlet are ignored. Instead stories abound about the Innu desire to return to traditional hunting and gathering. Little coverage is given to the consequences of this for children's education and health. Questions about the need for the delivery of welfare cheques to nomadic bush camps are never asked.
The best quote heard from the combatants in the latest dispute between Newfoundland and the Innu came from Newfoundland Attorney General Ed Roberts in an exchange on CBC Newsworld with Peter Penashue, President of the Innu Nation. This is Mr. Roberts' comment:
"Mr. Penashue and his colleagues are quite willing to look to the government of Canada and the government of Newfoundland and Labrador for financial assistance. They're quite willing to take the benefits of being Canadians. They must also take the responsibility of being Canadians - and that means we're subject to the rule of law."
Sometimes the criminal law is so inconveniently democratic for those who feel themselves above it. In the end the law applies to all.