By Matthew Smith
LA LOCHE, Saskatchewan (Reuters) - Residents of the remote Canadian town of La Loche, having softened frozen cemetery ground with bonfires, prepared to bury their loved ones as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau travelled on Friday to the site of Canada's worst mass shooting in a decade.
Trudeau's visit comes a week after a shooter killed four people and wounded seven at a home and high school and a day before funerals were to begin in the isolated aboriginal Saskatchewan town, which has been plagued by violence and poverty for decades.
Trudeau, elected in October, has pledged to repair relations with Canada's 1.4 million aboriginals, who make up 5 percent of the population but are disproportionately victims of violent crime, addiction and incarceration.
A 17-year-old boy has been charged in the shootings. Local media said the teen had been taunted about his large ears, and during the shooting spree dared people to tease him about his ears, sparing students who had been kind to him.
Two brothers and two teachers were killed in the shooting.
Trudeau has promised a "nation-to-nation relationship" with Canada's aboriginals and his visit to La Loche is expected to focus on both the immediate and longer-term needs of the impoverished towns and communities like it.
He was scheduled to meet privately with community leaders and families of the victims.
In a note on the Dene high school's Facebook page, staff wrote they missed the students while the school remained closed.
"We are supporting each other so we can help support you. We will be back. We will rebuild. We will get better together," the post read.
La Loche is not an aboriginal reserve but one is nearby. Its population of 2,600 is about 90 percent Metis and Dene, and the Dene language is widely spoken in addition to English.
Guns are widely available in rural and aboriginal communities where hunting and trapping is common, although gun violence in Canada is rare compared to the United States.
The shooting has sparked a national debate about how to improve living conditions in communities like La Loche, where suicide, addiction, and unemployment rates are high, despite nearby oil and resource exploration projects.
"If we really want to end the violence and depravation that plagues Canada?s remote aboriginal communities, we need to help them (aboriginals) leave these communities, forever," Scott Gilmore, a former diplomat, wrote this week in news magazine Maclean's.
(Reporting by Andrea Hopkins; Editing by Bill Trott)
