Mike Krebs, Vancouver
The crisis on the Kashechewan native reserve in northern Ontario has once again placed the brutal social and living conditions of indigenous people in Canada onto the centre stage of politics. On October 14, Health Canada, the federal government's health department, alerted the residents of the reserve that their drinking water supply had tested positive for the deadly E. coli bacteria.
At the time, at least half of the 2000 residents were suffering numerous water-related illnesses, including diarrhea and painful stomach cramps, or they were suffering from horrific skin diseases such as scabies and impetigo caused by other contaminants in the water.
TV images and newspaper photos showing residents' bodies covered in rashes and scars made headline news across Canada, provoking shock and anger throughout the country. The minority Liberal Party government, already weakened by political scandal and unpopularity, was thrown onto the defensive and into a panicked response.
The mainstream capitalist media tried to frame the issue as one of "mismanagement" or a "confusion over jurisdiction" between the federal and provincial governments. But the crisis in Kashechewan is not new, and it is not limited to clean water.
With rare exceptions, similar or worse conditions prevail in every indigenous community within the borders of what is now Canada. They are a result of the suppression of the right of indigenous people to self-determination — a result of several centuries of British, French and Canadian colonialism, and in the most recent period, deepening neoliberal attacks by the federal government and employers.
What happened in Kashechewan?
Kashechewan is a reserve inhabited by James Bay Cree people and is located on the shore of James Bay in the province of Ontario. It is only accessible by boat or plane. The community has been on a boil-water advisory from Health Canada for more than two years, and numerous such advisories have been in place for decades. Since April of this year alone, the Canadian government had shipped at least C$250,000 worth of bottled water into Kashechewan.
According to Murray Trussler, a doctor who went to the reserve shortly after the E. coli contamination was discovered, the widespread presence of skin disease is largely due to a lack of clean bathing water. When shock levels of chlorine are fed into the water system in an attempt to kill the E. coli, this aggravates skin rashes and diseases.
The immediate cause of the water contamination is that the intake for the reserve's drinking water supply is 135 metres downstream from the community's sewage lagoon. Federal government officials refused to heed the community's concerns over the choice of location of the water treatment plant, built just over 10 years ago. Thus, even when the water treatment plant is fully functioning, the water supply intake is contaminated by sewage.
To further complicate matters, the tide from James Bay regularly pushes sewage back up the river from where it flows.
But the explanation of the tragedy doesn't stop there. The Kashechewan reserve was built on a flood plain on a spot chosen by the Canadian government at the beginning of the 20th century. The area where the houses of the reserve are now located was built in 1957. In both cases, the elders of the community insisted these were bad locations. Both times they were ignored.
Almost every spring, the reserve faces flooding problems, despite a large dike surrounding the community built by the federal government to "protect" it. In addition to contributing to the contamination of the water supply, this flooding has caused severe mould problems in almost every single house and building on the reserve.
The federal government (which has exclusive constitutional responsibility for providing services on Canada's native reserves) never provided adequate training for operating the reserve's water treatment plant. Numerous reports in the hands of both the federal and Ontario governments predicted that water contamination of Kashechewan was inevitable unless measures were taken to remedy the problem.
The contaminated water is only one of many problems facing the indigenous people of Kashechewan. Social problems are unavoidable as a result of the catastrophic economic situation on the reserve. Unemployment is as high as 87%, a legacy of an historic federal government policy that isolated indigenous people on remote reserves and denied us the opportunities for economic and social development. It was, in the final analysis, a policy of forced assimilation and cultural genocide.
Unemployment rates such as that of Kashechewan are common on virtually every one of the several hundred indigenous reserves in Canada. On average, unemployment and poverty rates in Canada are three times higher for indigenous people than for non-indigenous people.
More than 100 indigenous reserves within the borders of what is now called Canada are under boil water advisories from Health Canada. Fifty of these are within the province of Ontario.
A 2001 study by the Canadian government found that almost 75% of the water systems on reserves posed a threat to drinking water. The Kwicksutaineuk reserve, for example, located on Gilford Island off the coast of British Columbia, has lived with a boil water advisory for nine years straight, and every single house on the reserve has been condemned because of mould problems.
Systematically oppressed minority
A report published by the Canadian Population Health Collective in 2004, titled Improving the Health of Canadians, gives a general idea of what type of life an indigenous person born in Canada can expect. According to the report:
- At least one-third of indigenous people live in homes that do not meet the most basic government standards of acceptability.
- Average life expectancy for indigenous people is 10 years less than that of the Canadian average.
- Indigenous children die at three times the rate of non-indigenous children, and are more likely to be born with severe birth defects and conditions like fetal alcohol syndrome.
- The suicide rate of indigenous people is six times higher than the Canada-wide average.
- Tuberculosis rates are 16 times higher in indigenous communities than the rest of the population, and HIV and AIDS infection is growing fastest among indigenous people.
For indigenous people, who comprise roughly 4% of the 31.4 million people living in Canada, such statistics are more than representations or symbols. They are everyday reality. Humiliation, theft of dignity, and frustration at being forced to survive in such conditions in what is one of the wealthiest First-World countries in the world — these are the realities of life for indigenous people in Canada.
The problems of water quality in Kashechewan, including the original locations of the reserve and of its water treatment system, are not a matter of "oversight" or "engineering mistakes". They are a result of the colonial relationship that exists between indigenous people and the Canadian government.
The indigenous people living in what is now Kashechewan were forced to live there as a part of the process of the Canadian government occupying Cree territory, destroying their traditional economies, and forcing them onto reservations.
The government of the time explained, unconvincingly to the elders back in 1912, that the location was "great" because it was a traditional hunting ground. Considering, however, that by this time the Cree of the area had been squeezed out of their hunting and fur-trading economy by the Hudson's Bay Company monopoly in the area, this was pure nonsense.
Government response
One of the federal government's first responses to the crisis was a massive "emergency" airlift of over half the community to towns and cities throughout Ontario in order to receive medical care. Then it announced a plan to "rebuild" the entire reserve over the next 10 years, including over C$300 million in funding for new houses and expanded drug and alcohol counselling programs.
At best, these are temporary measures to cool things down until the widespread anger generated across Canada within indigenous communities and their supporters dies down. At worst, it is an attempt to yet again forcibly displace an indigenous community in an attempt to break its spirit.
Because of the inherently colonial and oppressive nature of the Canadian government, no "solution" that it puts forward for the water crisis in Kashechewan can truly be in the interest of the indigenous people living there.
The quick response of the Canadian government to the Kashechewan crisis (once it hit the news, that is) is a result of the fear by the Canadian ruling class of the fight of indigenous people for self-determination. Militant struggles in recent years — by Mohawk communities in Quebec in 1990, at Ipperwash, Ontario in 1995, Gustafsen Lake in British Columbia in 1996, and Burnt Church, New Brunswick in 2000 — serve as reminders to the rulers that their hegemony over land, resources and labour is perhaps but a fleeting condition.
Indigenous people have rights to our land that have never been ceded. These self-determination rights loom large for the Canadian ruling class because they challenge the very foundations of its legitimacy, and that of its nation-state.
The wealthy classes around the world are engaged in ever-sharper competition with each other as their economic order teeters on the edge of a sharp decline. They are fighting over access to markets, cheap labour and natural resources. They are also driven to attack the salaries, social conditions and democratic rights of the people in their own countries.
Canada's rulers are part and parcel of this declining order. They will continue to carry out fresh attacks against indigenous people. As a result, we cannot trust promises to improve the conditions of peoples living in conditions like those on Kashechewan and Natuashish, just as the residents of New Orleans are learning through bitter experience that US government promises to improve their shattered lives are worthless. The only improvements we can expect are those we fight for.
[Mike Krebs is a Native rights activist in Vancouver and member of the Canadian Auto Workers union (CAW).]
From Green Left Weekly, November 30, 2005.
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