Creation:  It’s obvious the Innu were created to live close to the land, Nitassinan.    Spend time with them and you will see love, humility, and the simple pleasure of the earth.  They have a gentleness that shows they have relied on things natural, not manufactured.  A local writer says the culture was described by the first missionaries as  “completely focussed on the well being of children.”

Fall:  When the British government ceded Nitassinan to Canada in 1949,  Innu were left in a political vacuum.   Without consultation, without a war, they lost all rights to the self-government they had thrived under.   Imagine the dynamics that unfold when a federal officer arrives to sign up Innu for baby bonus cheques, and within months a self-sustaining people evolve to depend on federal revenue.   Imagine the loss of identity when a truancy officer informs a father that if he continues to take his children onto the trap lines they will be taken from him, and he will be arrested.  Imagine the despair when the militarization of Nitassinan takes place.  NATO countries use the region as a testing ground, with over 7500 flights thundering 150 feet above the tops of  trees each April to October.  This is a great offence to the Innu, whose core value is respect.   Which brings us to one of the saddest chapters of  the Innu fall;  a trio of alleged pedophiles in this community has devastated almost all hope that Christianity may offer healing.  There are more than a dozen cases pending against a Catholic priest, a teaching monk, and a teacher who has since committed suicide since these sins have been exposed.

Sheshatshui elder Mary May Osborne welcomed me to her home because I wanted to hear how Christianity had been harmful to her people.   She had so trusted her faith that while she was training in St. John’s for her work as an addictions counsellor, she had given a house key to her teenage son’s teacher so he could check on his well being.

A sexual assault occurred, and her son Clarence became one more victim that Mary May was to discover in her family line of abuse at the hands of uncles, priests and teachers.   The only immediate family member Mary May can point to that has not been abused is her four-year-old granddaughter Shania.   A child she raises because Clarence committed suicide a year ago this July.

Redemption:   Why then would Mary May be another healer who asked me to pray?   Because, to borrow a phrase from Zen instruction, she has pursued not the teacher, but the source.  She has moved past all religious stumbling brought by colonial intervention and is a woman of deep meditation on who she describes as “God, the Creator.”

Her own healing from alcoholism was cemented when she sat with each of her children and asked, “How has my drinking hurt you?”  It is within this context of family that redemption will take place for an alcoholism rate that Mary May says now affects over 70 percent of families in the village.

Which brings me back to the Michelle sisters and our intimate visit in their tent.  Bridgett and Mary Ann believe their sobriety has a source named Jesus and they teach that to their children.  Their sister Helen married Charlie Andrews, and the only treatment centre for gas sniffing Innu youth is named in his memory.  He’s remembered as the first man to fight for sobriety in Sheshatshui, and Helen says he did so because of his discovery of Jesus.  Were Charlie alive today, Helen says he would want the youth to know Jesus.

Such faith is not the only redemption quality being named in the recovery of the Innu, but among some of hope, it is clearly an Innu value.  They have shed the sins of the church and gone right to the source.  These are the people who have gently asked for just one gift for their people – prayer.   To the millions of Canadians who describe themselves as Christians, this Christmas we owe Innu that long overdue gift.  They trust the care of the Creator to heal them much more than they trust us.