Drinking and Healing: Reflections on the Lost Autonomy of the Innu

Abstract

Heavy drinking has been a feature of the village lives of the Innu people of Labrador ever since they were coerced to abandon permanent nomadic hunting in the 1950s and 1960s, when the government-built villages of Sheshatshiu and Davis Inlet (or Utshimassits) were created. The process of sedentarization has accompanied a removal of the people from the hunting life in the interior of Labrador (known as the country or nutshimit), incurring a serious loss of meaning, purpose and autonomy. To combat heavy drinking, the Canadian authorities have imported into the Innu villages both pan-Native healing organizations and their own social services and criminal justice institutions. The Innu, through their political body, the Innu Nation, have also developed Healing Services. In these reflections, which are derived from my work with the Innu since 1994, I examine various approaches to healing and look at the experiences of some Innu with drinking. Paradoxically, although drinking is very often destructive, it can also be a form of emotional sharing, protest against assimilation and power to drinkers.