Slowing the flood of booze into Ahousaht won’t be possible unless the remote community can enact effective bylaw enforcement, says the First Nation’s Tyee.
Tyee Ha’wilth Hasheukumiss, Richard George, addressed the prevalence of alcoholism in his community during a Nuu-chah-nulth Council of Ha’wiih Forum on Fisheries meeting Feb. 12. The toll of bootlegging has caused Ahousaht to “find ourselves in a worse position than we ever have been,” said Hasheukumiss.
He said that a gravesite that opened in Ahousaht’s on-reserve village of Maaqtusiis five years ago has been filling up – thanks in part to the tragic effects of binge drinking and alcoholism.
“One hundred and sixty-eight people have been in our new gravesite now,” said Hasheukumiss. “A lot of them are our youth that have passed way before their time.”
For years the Flores Island community has struggled with the flow of vodka that comes in by boat, which is then sold in Maaqtusiis by bootleggers at a hefty mark up. Over two decades ago Ahousaht passed a bylaw that prohibits alcohol from being brought into the remote community, but over the years enforcement has been a challenge, and binge drinking persisted.
A prohibition was enacted during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, as security at Ahousaht’s main dock confiscated incoming liquor. But some smuggling persisted, and vessels brought alcohol to other locations for it to taken into Maaqtusiis.
“We have bylaws in Ahousaht with a $1,000 fine for any liquor coming in,” said Hasheukumiss during the meeting in February. “Second offence was supposed to be six months jail term. That was implemented in 2012 by our nation, passed by 54 per cent.”
But the missing component to this remains any real enforcement, added the hereditary chief.
“It doesn’t matter how many bylaws we create, if we don’t have anybody to enforce it, those are for nothing,” he said. “We want to bring in an outside bylaw officer to enforce so there is no turning a blind eye, there is no nepotism, there is no shoving things under the rug anymore.”
The flow of alcohol into Ahousaht is often tied to safety and health concerns in the remote community. The Labour Day weekend last year brought a particularly trying period for the First Nations community when two unexpected deaths occurred in Maaqtusiis. One incident caused the death of 20-year-old Lennox Williams, the victim of a fatal stabbing that resulted in a second-degree murder charge. A publication ban remains in place for any court proceedings related to the accused.
“We have sexual assaults happening on a weekly basis, we have death now on our shoulders because we haven’t addressed the high concerns of the alcohol,” said Hasheukumiss.
More professional support needed
The Westcoast Community Resource Society has four staff who go to the village each week to support residents.
“Alcohol consumption, it reduces everyone’s ability to communicate properly,” said the society’s executive director, Laurie Hannah. “The messages that try to get across to set boundaries and to set consent are blurred. The cognition to really set those boundaries are muddied when there’s consumption.”
Further complicating the issue of sexual assault is how deeply interconnected many Ahousaht residents are. Hannah observed this when her team held a session for elders in Maaqtusiis.
“There is such a code of silence,” she said. “Even when women often come through and want to do a forensic or even press charges, those things get withdrawn because there’s so much pressure from family members.”
Ahousaht bootleggers often bring vodka into the village of approximately 1,000 residents, an item known locally as ‘Red Cap’. In an effort to slow the sale of booze in the First Nations community, in November Tofino’s government-run liquor store introduced a limit four bottles per customer if they are sold in plastic containers.
“It has come to our attention that there has been an increase in alcohol misuse and illegal resale leading to associated crime and public harm with spirits packaged in plastic bottles that are available for sale at the BCLIQUOR (BCL) store in Tofino,” stated the ministry at the time.
But this hasn’t made much of a difference, according to Tristan Godberson, an outreach worker with the Westcoast Community Resource Society. Godberson ventures to Ahousaht each week to work in the community’s schools with at-risk youth and to provide mental health support to adults.
“Unfortunately, like what we’ve seen with all different types of substances across the board, just penalization and restriction alone, you’re not even touching half of the issue,” he said. “If meaningful change is going to be made, what it really needs is more community supports in place, more support for individuals going through things, as well as their families.”
“We don’t have the supports in place when people want to stop drinking,” added Hannah, noting that the Tofino Hospital isn’t equipped to handle the issue. “We don’t have a sobering centre; the hospital can’t keep people in who are experiencing that.”
Last fall Ahousaht opened its new Wellness Centre, an investment that was built with a $2.5 million donation from a private, anonymous donor. The Wellness Centre opened its doors while the community was under a state of emergency after the Labour Day weekend. But with no committed funding from the provincial or federal governments, the facility has operated without professionally trained mental health and addictions workers.
Godberson finds that the tight-knit nature of Ahousaht provides strong support for those who are struggling, but more professional assistance with an understanding of the community’s dynamics is needed.
“There’s a huge need there for further supports for people,” said Godberson. “Alcohol is specifically worse there than in other communities just because of the remoteness of it. I think it has become quite ingrained in people’s lives.”
The issue isn’t new, and Hasheukumiss referenced a historic plea from a member to Ahousaht’s elected government.
“I read an address from the late Peter Webster 45 years ago to our chief and council in an emergency meeting back in June when two ladies got brutally beaten and almost put to death,” said the hereditary chief.
That same year the concern received considerable attention during a meeting of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, which was held in Port Alberni Sept. 14 and 15, 1979.
“The problem is not a minor one, it was mentioned that in the last 10 years in Ahousaht there have been 51 people lost in which alcohol has been a factor,” recounted a Ha-Shilth-Sa article from the time.
Lessons from the meal table
It was fitting that Hasheukumiss’ comments about alcohol concerns in Ahousaht came during a fisheries meeting, said Wickaninnish, Cliff Atleo. He is an Ahousaht elder and chair of the Nuu-chah-nulth Council of Ha’wiih Forum on Fisheries.
“I was born in an era when every nation was independent,” said Atleo, referencing a time when the fishery brought a widespread community involvement to Ahousaht. “The Indian agent was more of a pain than anything else. We built homes because we could, and that was very much tied to the aquatic resources.”
“We can no longer assume we don’t need healing. We’d be better off assuming that we all need healing,” continued Atleo. “Healing that has to do with trauma, healing that has to do with abuse, healing that has to do with just a way of life that was taken from us, where we used to be brought haʔuupčuu, every one of us was haʔuupčuu. That means we were well taught at the meal table.”
