As Long as the Grass Shall Grow and the Rivers Flow

A lot of kids growing up on the reserve learn early on that water is the "blood of Mother Earth". It helps create, sustain, and nurture life. Women are tasked with guarding this precious element, since they carry life themselves. Water drives upwards the life we see on the land around us. This land defines who we are - or who we once were. A people that roamed vast hills, guided through dense forest, and navigated intricate waterways. This careful understanding and coexistance cultivated a vital and fruitful relationship between people and the earth - and all of the earth's elements.

But now these people are facing a horrible fate in the most giving element of them all. Water is making them sick. It's even killing them. It was a shocking, tragic horror in a southern Ontario town many years ago, but it's been a harsh, constant reality in northern communities since they've been forced to settle there over the past century.

Fortunately, tragedy was narrowly avoided in Kashechewan, the small Cree community in the James Bay basin. In a timely move the federal government moved in as soon as it good to evacuate threatened residents and treat what water they could. But only after significant pressure. No one died - what a PR disaster that would have been for the governing body that stripped these people of their lifestyle in the first place; forcing them into a stationary death sentence in the remote north.

There are many reasons for the Kashechewan water crisis, and many of them are internal. Poorly trained plant workers. A badly maintained facility. But this problem goes much deeper - it really stems from the arcane and inhumane fundamentals of Canada's reserve system. The original idea was to round them up, tie them down, and hope that they eventually faded away. For Ottawa, it was more of an "out of sight, out of mind" solution. But the officials at the time underestimated the resilience and passion of these people to maintain, to overcome any adversity the earth - and fellow human beings - threw their way.

With their nomadic traditions long gone, health and social issues plague northern peoples. Shoddy infrastructure only amplifies these crises. And now the government has to fix that. What Canada's leaders neglected for so long is now haunting them, and it is solely their responsibility to make it better. It'll be expensive, but there is no price you can put on all the loss people in the north have suffered so far. Traditions, language, natural resources. Despair has led to the highest suicide rates in the world, and some of these families will never get their young ones back. No amount of money will fix that, but what work is done now will help prevent future tragedies.

The old life is gone, but clean water will help it flourish again, and lead to a brighter future for these communities' youth.

Posted by waub at November 15, 2005 10:05 PM