Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
For 10 days every summer, a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people launch their canoes each morning after a Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address and continue on their journey down the Grand River in southern Ontario. The annual Two Row on the Grand is not just any paddling trip — it's an enactment of the Two Row Wampum treaty, an agreement made more than 400 years ago between the Haudenosaunee people and Dutch settlers.
The cost of extending water and sewer services to the future site of CentrePort South has risen by nearly $13 million in three years. A City of Winnipeg estimate in 2020 guessed the project would cost $61 million, with the Manitoba government announcing last year it would cover up to $40 million. Reasons for the increase include inflation in the construction industry, and the need to reroute a main feeder line due to an Indigenous burial mound, according to a report to the finance committee on Friday.
Welcome to the first stop on the journey of the story of plastic in Canada: the Athabasca region in Northern Alberta. The Athabasca has been home to Indigenous people since time immemorial and part of Treaty 8, originally signed in 1899. This is the territory of Cree, Déne and Métis nations who live and work in a beautiful and bountiful place. A place that also happens to be on the frontlines of one of the most destructive large-scale industrial projects in the world…the Alberta tar sands.
"The Dene people are committed to good relations with our land, water, plants, and animals," N'dilo Yellowknives Dene First Nation Chief Fred Sangris said in a statement. "The participation of Yellowknives Dene businesses in remediating the former Giant Mine site fits within these values. It offers increased opportunities for skills-building to our young people that they can take with them as they build their careers."
The B.C. government has announced what it says is significant funding to help protect the province's freshwater supply in partnership with Indigenous people. On Monday, Nathan Cullen, B.C.'s minister of water, land and resource stewardship, said $100 million is being invested in a watershed security fund co-managed by the B.C.-First Nations Water Table (BCFNWT), which includes members from the government and B.C. First Nations.
Indigenous leaders in Manitoba are calling on the federal government to do more to respect the basic human rights of Indigenous people living in Canada after the group Human Rights Watch released their 2022 report on issues affecting human rights and Indigenous people. Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization headquartered in New York City that conducts research and advocacy on human rights.
Here’s your weekly update with what you need to know about the global and ecological crises and the steps leaders in B.C. and around the world are taking for the week of Nov. 14 to Nov. 20, 2022. COP27 goes into overtime as Canada continues to face criticism on oil and gas stance, UN climate talks poised for deal creating disaster fund, Indigenous people an ‘afterthought’ as world leaders gather to confront climate change, As climate change progresses, trees in cities struggle The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned for a decade that wildfires, drought, severe weather, such as B.C.’s deadly heat dome last June, and flooding would become more frequent and more intense because of the climate crisis.
Daniel T'seleie, who is with the Keepers of Water, and Indigenous Climate Action, both Indigenous-led organisation focusing on climate change action, said climate change solutions on the agenda for COP27, like carbon trading, don't address what really needs to be done. "The only way to stop climate change," he said, "is to stop the extraction and use of fossil fuels. If that's not the flagship then we're not going to stop the climate crisis."
For an Anishinaabe woman, water is life — and water had taken life away. “It was very emotional for me. I guess you can say I was a little bit angry at the water.” Then she realized that part of her healing journey must include this. She would organize Shining Water Paddle to bring prayers, offerings, blessings and songs to the water. They would honour the spirits, remember the ancestors and seek their guidance to protect this precious resource, this essence of First Nations peoples. It was time to make their voices heard — and for her to heal, too.
Before the liturgy, making the Sign of the Cross towards the four cardinal points — according to indigenous custom — the pope blessed a bowl of the lake’s water, which was brought up to a small wooden structure, shaped like a teepee, overlooking the lake. The pope, after spending a moment in prayer sitting at the water's edge in his wheelchair, later sprinkled the crowds with the blessed water.
Lack of access to clean drinking water and low-quality health care have had a direct impact of Indigenous people’s vulnerability to COVID-19, according to a B.C. expert. Kimberly Huyser, an associate professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia, has been studying Indigenous people’s health in relation to the pandemic since it began. She said it wasn’t the specific virus that interested her, but rather the way it highlighted how health care often fails Indigenous people in North America.
Nunavut communities have seen a five-year high of water advisories in 2021, without counting Iqaluit’s ongoing water emergency. As of Friday, about a month before the year’s end, 14 water advisories had been issued in seven communities outside of the capital city this year, more than tripling the four advisories issued in 2017. Nunavut’s MP Lori Idlout spoke about the lack of clean water in Indigenous communities across Canada on Thursday. “We Indigenous people can no longer be discounted or written off in hopes that we disappear,” she said in Inuktitut in the House of Commons. “I know I have to keep repeating ‘clean water for all indigenous communities,'” Idlout said. “This is not the first time and I will repeat it again.”
A plan to improve water services to Indigenous communities has lost a little current. The proposal is to dedicate 0.2 per cent of Barrie’s water/sewer revenue next year toward Water First and its efforts to improve water services in First Nations communities. The plan would cost about $100,000, or about $1.77 for the average Barrie household in 2022. It was to be part of 2022 budget talks next week, but that will have to wait. While city staff have started consulting local First Nations groups about the donation, those talks haven’t finished at this time. Water First, a Creemore-based non-government organization (NGO), has a program to train young Indigenous people from reserves to become certified in operating a water plant through a 15-month paid apprenticeship, which is where the $100,000 would be spent.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says no excuse is acceptable for the Liberals’ failure to deliver on their 2015 promise to lift all drinking water advisories in First Nations communities. Speaking to reporters in Sioux Lookout, about 230 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., Singh said he is not dismissing that it’s hard to reach rural communities, but Canada’s wealth and technology are sufficient enough to lift all remaining drinking advisories.
In light of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Canada Day message urging us to reflect on our relationship with Canada’s Indigenous people, I’ve been reflecting on why his government can’t get clean water to every Indigenous reserve in Canada, despite spending $24.5 billion on Indigenous issues this year. The lack of clean water on reserves means the people living on them have far higher rates of infections and disease than other Canadians.
About 100 million litres of fresh water flows west to the city of Winnipeg every day but the struggling Indigenous people who live on the shores of Shoal Lake say no benefits have ever flowed east to them. Compensation is decades overdue, they say, and they're now hoping favourable developments in their $500-million lawsuit against the city and the province of Ontario will tilt the odds their way.
Indigenous people in Manitoba are highlighting the significant role clean water plays in society today — practically and culturally — in honour of World Water Day. The United Nations declared March 22 as World Water Day since 1993. It's a day to focus on the importance of fresh water, and advocating for sustainable development and bringing clean drinking water to more people.
Ottawa has once again delayed the completion of much-needed work on designing and building water construction plants in communities with long-term drinking water advisories but has recommitted to providing clean drinking water across the country. “It’s frustrating,” says Kenora MP Eric Melillo. “The government made a lot of promises to Canadians and Indigenous people across this country that they were going to end all long-term boil-water drinking water advisories.”
Nova Scotia MP Lenore Zann wants environmental racism — when injustices related to the environment disproportionately impact people of colour and Indigenous groups — addressed in a new bill she’s put forth for debate in the House of Commons. Zann’s Bill C-320 looks to establish a strategy in Canada that would explore the correlation between race, socioeconomic status, and environmental risks, as well as the link between dangerous conditions and bad health in communities where Indigenous groups and people of colour live, CBC reported.
