Fort Resolution (Oct 02/06) - Fort Resolution wants its elders now living in senior care facilities in other communities to be returned home.

However, residents say the four-bed Our Great Elders Facility has been left empty for months and they are worried it may be closed or converted to some other use by the territorial government.

Chief Robert Sayine of Deninu Ku'e First Nation and elder Mary Pierrot stand outside Our Great Elders Facility in Fort Resolution on Sept. 22. - Pail Bickford/NNSL photo

Eight or nine Fort Resolution elders live at facilities in Yellowknife, Hay River and Fort Smith.

The elders want to come back home, said Chief Robert Sayine of Deninu Ku'e First Nation (DKFN).

"The problem is they're sending our elders out of the community to die," Sayine said.

The Department of Health and Social Services is taking elders to other communities because Our Great Elders Facility does not offer the level of care, such as a nurse, available elsewhere.

A delegation from Fort Resolution met Health and Social Services Minister Michael Miltenberger in Yellowknife on Sept. 26 to discuss the facility and ask for a higher level of care so some of the elders can return home.

Sayine said the minister made no commitments, but the chief hopes there will be a reply sometime this week.

Miltenberger could not be reached for comment.

Mae Sayine said her father, 87-year-old Pascal Beaulieu, was the last to be moved out of Our Great Elders Facility in April to Yellowknife.

"I really want my dad to come back," she said, noting he cries when she talks to him on the telephone. "It really hurts me."

Our Great Elders Facility is designed to offer independent living with meals, personal care and medicine dispensing support to seniors. Staff offers 24-hour support, seven days a week.

The staff also delivers homecare services, foot care and palliative care primarily to community seniors.

Chief Sayine said three permanent, two casual and three part-time employees work at the facility.

Six one-bedroom satellite houses for seniors are adjacent to Our Great Elders Facility. Those houses - known locally as the cluster -- are full.

"They always had people there," Sayine said.

Mary Pierrot, 72, said she wants to have the option of moving into the facility in the future and doesn't want it closed.

"I don't want to go to Yellowknife or Hay River," she said. "I want to stay here."

In Fort Resolution, people speak Chipewyan and friends and relatives could visit elders, she said.

Pierrot noted that last year, when she was ill, she wanted to move into the facility, but was refused.

Louis Balsillie, the DKFN sub-chief, said allowing the elders to die alone in Yellowknife or Hay River amounts to abuse by the territorial government.

Balsillie explained that, in the 1990s, the community used to run Our Great Elders Facility under a local board.

However, he noted the community lost its own health board several years ago and became part of the Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority.

Balsillie said that was when use of Our Great Elders Facility started to decline.