Canada: Indigenous populations face a chronic lack of clean drinking water

Published on : 02/01/2022 – 18:15Modified : 02/04/2022 – 18:39

Brennen McGuire (@slapppps) lives in the territory Tyendinaga Mohawk in Ontario. His videos show the murky, brown or even black water coming out of his taps. In this reserve, nearly 90 households are not yet connected to the new water treatment system and suffer from the same problem: the running water is unhealthy.

“I took a shower and saw black water coming out of the showerhead”

Yet, according to Brennen McGuire, this scourge is not known to all Canadians:

My goal is to raise awareness about the water crisis affecting indigenous communities, and I try to do it while having fun. I’m native, but I was raised in a very “colonized” home. So I didn’t really know about these issues. We don’t talk about it much at school. I’ve always been an activist, so I decided people needed to know about it.

I moved into the house I currently live in about a year and a half ago. I remember saying to my roommate, “The water doesn’t smell very good, and it doesn’t look very nice either.” I took a shower and saw black water coming out of the shower head. She then told me that the reserve had been under a long-term boil water advisory since 2008. [recommandation de faire bouillir l’eau du robinet pendant au moins une minute avant de la boire, NDLR].

Drinking water advisories

The Canadian government issues “drinking water advisories” to communities whose water is not safe to drink. The alerts are divided into three categories: boil water advisories – residents must boil water before consuming it -, prohibition to consume the water and prohibition to use the water. When these recommendations or prohibitions have been in effect for more than one year, they are considered “long-term advice”.

The Mohawk reserve of Tyendinaga is not the only aboriginal reserve to lack drinking water. As of January 2022, 36 long-term water advisories were in effect in 29 Indigenous communities across Canada. In some territories, water is contaminated by uranium, by bacteria such as E. coli, toxic heavy metals or parasites, leading to cases of skin diseases or gastrointestinal problems among the inhabitants.

Canadian government commitments

The difficulty of accessing water in First Nations communities dates back centuries, when French or British settlers pushed the indigenous communities in areas where the water supply was insufficient. The problem has persisted due to poor infrastructure and lack of funding and regulation for water management on Indigenous reserves.

In Canada, jurisdiction over water rests with the federal government, and laws dating back to colonial times prohibit Indigenous communities from managing their own water systems. The Canadian government pledged to make reparations, successfully lifting 127 long-term drinking water advisories since November 2015, when the current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, took office.

During his campaign in 2015, Justin Trudeau promised to put an end to the lack of drinking water in First Nations communities in five years. If progress has been made, dozens of indigenous reserves still do not have access to it, while the problem has been going on for decades. The 374 residents of Neskantaga First Nation in Ontario have lived without clean water since 1995. Residents of Shoal Lake 40 finally had access to clean water in September 2021, after spending 24 years under the blow. a drinking water advisory.

“We are lucky to be able to buy drinking water at an affordable price”

Brennen McGuire hopes her home will be hooked up to a new, recently government-funded water system in Mohawk Territory within three years. In the meantime, you have to adapt daily to the lack of water:

We are privileged in that we use water from our taps to wash our hands and shower. To make sure it is not contaminated, we add bleach to it. Unfortunately, it has effects on the skin…. And that makes the water definitely undrinkable. But to make sure we can shower, do the dishes, and do all the things normal people can do, we need to put bleach in our filtration system.

We are fortunate to be able to buy water at an affordable price [potable]. We have several drinking water stations where we can fill containers.

“There are people who are thirsty, and who do not have access to water”

Not all indigenous communities are close to towns or water treatment facilities. Some Indigenous reserves are only accessible by plane, which makes it even more difficult to bring water:

There are reserves in northern Canada that are only accessible by air. For the inhabitants, the resources are very expensive: a pack of 20 bottles of water can cost between 40 and 90 dollars [28 et 63 euros], it’s absurd. We should make these products affordable for them, but also find a solution so that they don’t have to buy water.

People are thirsty and have no access to water. It’s terrifying to find yourself in this situation. I think it really affects the mental health of a lot of people. There is a feeling that the government does not care about our people.

Prior to colonization, Aboriginal peoples distributed water equally. These were resources that we had in abundance. Then colonization happened and all of a sudden our fresh water resources, our forests…this nature was polluted and destroyed. The best thing for the future is to restore our lakes and forests, and show more care for Mother Earth.

In December 2021, the Canadian government pledged nearly $8 billion (about $7 billion) to end water quality issues in dozens of Indigenous communities. This agreement was reached with leaders from several First Nations communities, who filed class action lawsuits seeking damages after decades of poor water quality.

This agreement also provides for the government to replace existing water laws in order to create more equitable management of drinking water systems in Aboriginal communities.