Attawapiskat: A child with a facial rash from lack of clean water and sanitation.
Children living in un-insulated tents; families relying on buckets for toilets; elders living in sheds–these are some of the conditions witnessed by Timmins-James Bay MP Charlie Angus and MPP Gilles Bisson on a tour through Attawapiskat this month.
For almost two years, the Attawapiskat First Nation has been facing a severe housing shortage. As MP Charlie Angus recently witnessed first-hand, there are several families on the reserve who are living in makeshift shelters including uninsulated tents, converted garages, temporary trailers and deteriorating homes filled with Stachybotrys chartarum–a fungi more commonly known as black mold.
Some of the shelters have no heat, electricity, or plumbing of any kind. Some don’t even have toilets, so instead people are using plastic buckets, which they are dumping into nearby ditches.
With winter fast approaching, the housing shortage is turning into the kind of crisis that humanitarian aid groups would normally flock to in droves, if it was happening in Haiti or Darfur. But the Cree Fist Nation isn’t in Haiti, it’s in Canada. And Canada is basically doing nothing. In fact, these days the government seems more interested in spying on Cindy Blackstock and shutting down native healing centres than actually helping and working with Indigenous Peoples.
In response to the ongoing crisis, Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence recently declared a state of emergency, in which she pleaded for the government to step in and, if necessary, lead an emergency evacuation to ensure everyone’s health and safety. The government said no.
It probably came as no surprise to Chief Spence, given the way Canada has dealt with Attawapiskat in recent years. For instance, in 2009, another state of emergency was declared after INAC finally stepped in to clean up a 30,000 gallon oil spill from the 1970s. The mass of oil had accumulated directly beneath the community’s school grounds.
Some 30 years later, children at the school started getting sick, leaving Attawapiskat with no choice but to abandon the building. INAC responded by providing a new makeshift school a few metres away; but the actual clean up didn’t begin for another nine years.
In 2009, INAC demolished the old school and left an “open wound” at the center of the community, which it covered with a tarp.
Soon after that, community members started complaining of headaches, nausea, skin rashes, nosebleeds and chronic diarrhea. In the makeshift school, some children were said to be just “passing out”.
Canada did nothing. In fact, then-INAC Minster Chuck Strahl even went so far as to say that the whole situation was little more than a publicity stunt being propped up “on the backs of needy aboriginal people.”
This time around, the Canadian government appears to be acting a shade more reasonably, but only a shade. They recently promised to give the First Nation $500,000 to renovate 15 houses; but that’s it. Federal officials haven’t even bothered to visit the community. And who knows how long that will take for that fund to go through; never mind the fact that almost half of the houses on the reserve need renovations or are condemned.
In a frustrating twist, Attawapiskat happens to be in the shadow of the De Beers Victor Diamond Mine, which extracts about 600,000 carats per year.
Attawapiskat is getting an undisclosed amount of money from De Beers; however, Chief Spence says the bulk of that money goes directly into a trust fund which they can’t access for housing. Chief Spence is trying to renegotiate with De Beers, but those negotiations don’t appear to be going anywhere.
Sign a petition for Attawapiskat: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/633/264/546/
John Ahniwanika Schertow is an indigenous rights activist of Mohawk (Kanienkehaka) and mixed-European descent. For the past 8 years, he has served as the e... 
The Cree are one of the largest Indigenous Nations in North America, with a population of over 200,000 people.
In Canada, the major proportion of... 
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Really something has to be done for aboriginals This is neglect.They need empowerment instead of hand outs from Govt. This pure apertheid.
How can a so called ‘civilised’ land allow people to live in these sort of conditions and do nothing about it?
I am so shocked – this is not a life they have chosen – they have no choice!
Please help the Anishinabe of Attawapiskat, Ontario. We, Canadians help those in need when they are in crisis, why is this any different. What kind of message are we sending if we continue to ignore the dreadful plight of these First Nation Peoples. We don’t have to go across the world to discover poverty and third world conditions, its here in the far north. Please help them.
This is no crisis. These people choose to live there and should be thankful for what they have.
Enough spending my tax money on the so called ‘needy’.
No toilet, no running water – and who the heck is going to finance this in a fly only community ?
Just because these people are living within the geographical area of Ontario does not mean they are entitled to the same previlages as the rest of us. How about I take my family to the middle of nowhere on Baffin island and demand cable TV to be ran to my house !
Guess what if you are not happy with where you live, you move. If you dont, well, life is all about choices and they made their.
Honestly, sapper, you should really take the time to get to know the situation–and the circumstances that led to it–instead of just throwing out wild claims that only serve to show us how ignorant you are.
Honestly sapper, did you even pay attention in school.
Take a history class.
We didn’t choose to live on the James Bay Coast, we were told to live there by the Canadian Government when the treaties were signed.
Your ignorance is shocking, and a disgrace to Canada.
Every single person living within Canada’s boarders are entitled to the same privileges.
The sad thing, Cedar, is how many more Canadians think just like him. Most Canadians have never really had the chance to learn anything about Indigenous Peoples or Canada’s responsibilities to us. Instead, they end up drawing their own understanding based on cheap movies, bad reporting, gossip and whatever the government says. They usually don’t realize it, but that understanding is usually quite racist.
When we get right down to it, Canada has a fiduciary responsibility to First Nations which are legally, socially, culturally and politically distinct from Canada.
As separate and distinct bodies, we have certain rights to ensure our survival and well-being, such as the rights enshrined by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Canada is responsible for holding those rights inviolate while fulfilling its treaty obligations and its own mandate as defined by the Indian Act. Part of that mandate includes providing First Nations like Attiwapiskat with the funding it needs for basic services and infrastructure like housing.
And this isn’t an act of charity, to be clear. Yes, Canada destroyed our economies, stole our children, and broke our traditional governments; but even so, we signed treaties with Canada to retain what culture and land we had left and to live peacefully alongside Canada as so called domestic-dependent nations. We may not have realized the long-term ramifications of this twisted Indigenous Nation-Nation State relationship, but that’s only because we couldn’t conceive that Canada would continue its course to obliterate us.
Canada has been on the same missions since confederation to do just that – to erase the “indian problem” by getting rid of the “indians” any way it can.
Attiwapiskat is one example. Canada and Ontario could have worked with the community in the same way that it would work with any non-native town facing a similar situation (the sewage backup which led to the current housing crisis, and the massive oil spill) But it didn’t do that. Instead, Canada decided to enact a subtle form of martial law in Attiwapiskat, taking over the community without any kind of democratic process. It’s the sort of thing most Canadians would expect to hear some crazy regime doing in some far away country, but not here. Well, Canada does it every chance it gets. Barriere Lake is another example.There are more.
Perhaps this also serves as a bit of a reality check for us. After all, the Attiwapiskat Band Council has done EVERYTHING that Canada has expected them to do, to the letter of Canadian law. Look what it got them.
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the truth of the effects of mines to aboriginal people and others must be the first statement,and clear information to deliver to the communities. Maybe if people truly understood the information and effects that will become a daily part of their livelihood, they would not be so willing to agree to mines or potential mines in their communities. the future looks bleak, the dysfunctions will begin to grow at a high rate in and for these communities. We really can’t live without money, but there are other ways to deal and create revenue resources. As the leaders continue to go in blindly or for greed we will continue to be in the path of this slow death or quick death to Away of Life, going down the drain, how sad and scary
only a small thought but by no means a serious thought or thoughts.