Freezing death of two girls shines light on Sask. reserve in disarray
REGINA - The freezing deaths of two young girls has shone a harsh light on a "bankrupt" Saskatchewan reserve with a litany of social problems and a leadership at war with itself.
"I think we are going to need some help," Chief Robert Whitehead of the Yellow Quill First Nation said in a telephone interview Thursday. "The situation we are in, it's a sad situation."
As police continued to investigate the deaths of three-year-old Kaydance Pauchay and her one-year-old sister Santana in a snowy field early Tuesday morning, politicians, the community and its leaders were looking at the problems behind the tragedy.
The need for action was a common thread - what to do was more elusive.
Problems such as alcohol abuse, suicide, lack of housing and mould plague the community.
The band also has money troubles. In 1999 runaway deficits forced the federal government put the reserve under third-party management to maintain services for its residents. It's remained there since.
"Basically we are a bankrupt community," Whitehead said.
Adding to the issues is an internal power struggle between the chief and band councillors that both sides say is "toxic."
Whitehead said he was confronted Thursday by council members who are angry that the chief has been so publicly vocal about the reserve's problem in the wake of the girls' deaths.
"When you have an opposition in council, what they go around doing is, while I'm out there working trying to do this and trying to do that, trying to set something up for the people, my opposition has all the time in the world to be going around spreading gossip on the reserve," Whitehead said. "What do they have to hide?"
But band councillor Donna Poorman blames the chief for the problems, saying the situation has reach a point where the council isn't even meeting regularly anymore.
"He's just basically trying to run the reserve on his own forgetting about the rest of us leaders," Poorman said. "It's just not working."
Poorman said many of the problems on the reserve relate to drugs and alcohol and a cycle of abuse that stems from residential schools.
Faced with increasing suicide rates, the band recently tried to move ahead with a bylaw banning alcohol on the reserve, but the proper paperwork was never filed with the federal government.
Alcohol is said to be at the centre of this week's tragedy.
Police say they believe the girls' father, Christopher Pauchay, 25, left his home with the children in the wee hours of Tuesday morning when wind chills were in the -50C range.
He managed to make it to a neighbour's house suffering from frostbite and hypothermia. The two girls were found in the field wearing only T-shirts and diapers. Family members say Pauchay was drinking that night.
Whitehead said Thursday that he would still like to move ahead with the alcohol ban.
But federal Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl expressed doubt that such a ban would solve all the problems.
"It's very complex. Sometimes these communities have a multitude of issues they're dealing with. So just passing a bylaw doesn't make the world all right," Strahl said.
"It's