The Ineptitude of Bureaucratic Aid

It's enough to melt the heart of even the most hardened cynic. The sight of two small children, barely out of infancy, a little boy and a little girl, inadequately dressed for a harsh winter, shivering in the cold, eyes puzzled and pleading. This was a photograph accompanying a news story out of Kabul, Afghanistan relating the horrible poverty and truly hopeless condition of an ethnic group, called Kuchis, Afghanistan's nomads.

In fear, desperation and extreme deprivation in a country wracked by wartime stresses, they have migrated to the large cities of the country, living in squatters' shacks, with no amenities, no social agencies aiding them, where the parents scavenge on Kabul's garbage dumps for salvageable materials to sell for sums insufficient to feed and clothe their starving children.

In these shacks there is no heat, and night temperatures drop as low as -25C. When children become ill in these circumstances, they waste away and they die. Because they cannot be classified as internally displaced, and represent instead the category of "economic migrants", despite that they're homeless and persecuted, they receive no social winter aid entitlements.

In striving to fend for themselves, they watch helplessly as their children die, one after another. Because they are penniless, they cannot even afford burial fees in cemeteries, and instead bury their children in holes they dig under the snow and ice, beside drainage ditches.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees will not render assistance for they are considered to be the responsibility of the Afghan government. These people have fallen through the holes in the Afghan government social safety net and there is no one to plead for them.

Their own pleading to government offices and those of the United Nations have garnered them nothing. For UNHCR assistance, applicants must first be able to prove that they own land, and then under their shelter program, they are given housing materials. But the Kuchis don't own land and they're disqualified.

Children go about bare-legged in the cold, shivering, not knowing any other kind of life; suffering. One such child suffered from Tuberculosis, one of his hands swollen from an untreated infection. "We tried to get him treated last year but the medicine cost us $40, so we couldn't buy any more", said his father.

"It's the worst life one could live", said the father. "A big family, no money, no land. Cold. Hunger. We are living in a grave here."

And juxtaposed to that tragic story, one of two little aboriginal girls, aged one-and-a-half and three. Living on the Yellow Quill First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan. Tiny Santana Pauchay and her sister Kaydance Pauchay, were found frozen to death between their parents' house and that of a a neighbour in the dead of winter.

Their father, Christopher Pauchay, looked after his little girls. But he was drunk, took them out into a frigid snow storm, clad only in diapers and tee-shirts. It is being assumed that he was on his way with them to his sister's house nearby. It is assumed that the three-year-old walked, bare-foot behind him, as he carried her baby sister. It is assumed that the older child quickly succumbed to the cold and fell behind. It is assumed her father fell, losing hold of the baby, and she too succumbed to the cold.

Hours later he regained consciousness, and suffering severe frostbite, knocked on the door of a neighbour. Emergency medical workers removed him to hospital; he was delerious, and drunk. Hours later he asked about the whereabouts of his children. Here are two stories of grim misfortune. One, circumstances without hope because of geography, war, government ineptitude.

The other, circumstances resulting from surrender to a psychic sinkhole of dependency, impoverishment of the spirit of proud independence. Both represent instances of complications of poverty, but one cannot truly stand beside the other; this designation of poverty is one of stark degrees. Everything is relative, including poverty.

In the Canadian story it is the tale of people choosing to succumb to mind-numbing boredom, abdicating parental responsibilities for the transitory relief of drugs and alcohol, leaving children to observe, emulate and fend for themselves, while their chiefs look away, absolve themselves of their responsibility of authority, clamouring for additional funding to solve the dilemma that a hand-out lifestyle has created.

Handouts to reserves materially disproportionately benefiting a connected few, giving no hand-up to those who need it. Representing failure by any human yardstick of need. The tragedy of wasted lives wedded to the capricious fiction of First Nations' heritage and traditional life on the land destroys, it does not empower.

Well, this is an outline representative of some reserves, of some leaders of some reserves, and certainly not all. The abandonment of responsibility in this instance can be read in the young man's mother, Pearl Pauchay, explaining that her son had been drinking "and he must have blacked out". As though this is reasonable explanation. Period. Inebriation cited as exculpatory reasoning.

But the grand-uncle of the children's mother feels and thinks otherwise: "I cannot comprehend how a person can take children out of a home (in the cold)", he said. "To me, this boils down to a lot of underlying issues that have been a problem across First Nation communities." He did not mean only inadequate housing, lack of opportunities for employment, but the easy availability of alcohol and the choices inherent in its use.

In another troubled community, Kashechewan, in northern Ontario, its deputy chief explained that despite an embargo on liquor in the reserve, attempts to keep it dry failed, thanks to the industry of bootleggers. The Yellow Quill reserve, in recognition of their problem with alcohol, and despite a split in opinion on band council initiated a bylaw to ban alcohol. Unfortunately the last step, to cement its authority in registering the bylaw with the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs was forgotten.

A failure to carry through on the part of the reserve; worse, a failure of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs to find some other workable instrument of acceptance of the majority band decision. For despite the disappointment in Kashechewan in their attempts to forestall unbridled alcohol consumption thanks to the speedy intervention of band bootleggers, other reserves have enjoyed greater success.

Fort McPherson in the Northwest Territory upholds a strict proscription on the amount of alcohol its members are permitted to bring into their hamlet, and the sale and service of alcohol is prohibited. The chief administrative officer of the settlement considers their program a success. "It's not going to stop an alcoholic from finding liquor in any way, shape or form. What it is going to do is make it less accessible and it gives law-enforcement a tool", she said.

And the results are there in stark contrast to the failures experienced elsewhere. Alcohol restrictions have improved respect and enforcement of other bylaws. There has been a surge in school attendance, since parents are now sufficiently sober to take their parental responsibilities more seriously. The local RCMP detachment reports a dramatic drop in mischief, disturbances and disorderly conduct.

Best of all, the incidence of domestic disputes and violent incidents are on the decline. Alter societal guidelines and expectations and you change societal norms.

Compare that to what deputy Chief Philip Goodwin of Kashechewan describes: "There are family problems when people drink. The parents spend all their money on their bootlegger and then they can't feed the children and when that happens they come crying to my office that they don't have food for the children."

Everything is relative. Opportunities in one geography, while a long way from meeting aboriginal populations' needs, would be a godsend for other aboriginals in another geography. And that's life, isn't it?