MNN. Oct. 30, 2005. Kashechewan, a remote northern Ontario Cree community of almost 2000 people has become an international scandal over reports of contaminated water. It’s called a “fly-in” community because there is no road in. One thousand people have been evacuated because of sicknesses created by contaminated water.

Ten years ago Indian Affairs designed a water treatment system where Hollow Creek joins the Albany River which drains into James Bay. James Bay is the southern part of Hudson’s Bay. This is where Keshachewan is located. The two are fresh water rivers flowing into the salt water bay. Fort Albany is a little way up the Albany River.

As they have done in so many other communities, Indian Affairs forgot about little details like health, safety and clean water. The Indian Affairs engineer built the water plant 135 meters downstream from a sewage lagoon. It flows right past the water intake pipe and sewage goes into the drinking water. He forgot about the tide that comes in and backs up the sewage into the drinking water. As a result the water pipe delivers deadly E-coli right into everybody’s kitchen tap.

Health Canada’s solution? Based on their expertise and experience, they told the people to just put more and more chlorine in the water, boil it and then drink it. Almost all have come down with severe skin infections and unknown sicknesses. Was this one of their weird twisted experiments, or what? You don’t need to be an Einstein to know what happened. It’s a disaster!

Last year Indian Affairs, which has never hesitated to throw good money after bad, paid $500,000 for an upgrade. But they forgot to move the intake pipe! In the last six months Indians Affairs has sent in $250,000 worth of bottled water. To try to fix the system the people tied a rope and a wood plank to hold the water plant together.

Lately they have been going to the Albany River and lugging back buckets of water to drink. Even this water is contaminated.

The young people want to revive the ancient custom of taking drinking water upstream before the sewage. They want to move further inland to higher ground. Keshachewan is built on a flood plain with a dike all the way around the community to stop the floods that come with the tides. It was Indian Affairs’ idea that Indians should spend the whole year at a seasonal camp on a flood plain. I wonder if they used the engineers that built New Orleans as consultants! The older people want to stay because they’ve become attached to the location.

Canada’s been sending aid all over the world. Now it’s revealed that the water in 70% of Indian communities is a health risk. It would cost Indian Affairs $1.4 billion to fix all their mistakes. Has Indian Affairs ever sued an engineering firm for incompetence? Or is this Plan B of the old genocide project? Dying race and all that! Tsk! Tsk! Or maybe it’s just a question of giving contracts to political hacks to pay off a few seedy debts, eh! Everybody is in the habit of blaming the “Injuns” for draining the public purse anyway. The whole mess is pretty damn shocking!!

“Kopy Kat Kanada”. Indian Affairs sent in the army and put up some tents. (I’m sure they’d rather go up there than to the Middle East.) In the meantime, Ontario shuffled 1000 to Cochrane, Sudbury and parts unknown. The elders are very upset about letting them leave as they may never come back. They’re getting residential school flashbacks. Everyone is haunted by horror stories about our youth adrift in the south. Indian Affairs works constantly at dissolving distinct Indigenous communities.

They think they can shove us into a non-native community and we can live like everybody else. This relocation strategy will dissolve the community. Relocation has been a disaster every time it’s been tried. Chief, council and everyone are trying to keep the community together. They feel it’s urgent to do something now.

Kashechewan is inundated with media. Almost everyone is getting cameras, microphones and reporters in their faces. It’s the news of the moment. They’ll all leave and no one will hear about Kashechewan again.

It’s another experiment. Move the Indians away from their original constitutional territory onto another Indigenous nation’s land. This separates them from their spiritual ties. Skylnick in her book “A Poison Stronger than Love” proved removals are a big “make work” project for Indian Affairs, who always say, “We’ll make the decisions for them”. The 1960’s experiment on relocating Indians all had to be reversed in the end. Some were relocated to Elliot Lake, the Menominees were terminated, the Innu were relocated to Davis Inlet. The common thread is that by such removals they lost their land and had to be reintegrated later. Indian Affairs never lets the people decide. They don’t intend to do what’s decent and good for the Indians.

Here’s another slant. What’s really going on here?

The North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA was the crowning glory of former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and his negotiator, Simon Riesman. They gave away Canadian water to the U.S.

In NAFTA Canada cannot withhold its water from the United States. Americans are depleting their fresh water resources and are demanding the right to get Canadian water. One idea was to divert all the rivers that flow into James Bay into the Great Lakes. Then send it to the Midwestern U.S. to irrigate land Americans have turned into a parched “dust bowl”.

Another plan was to build a dike separating James Bay and Hudson’s Bay. Then James Bay would be drained into the Hudson’s Bay. This would be filled up with fresh water from the rivers that flow north from the Canadian Shield. A huge reservoir would cover the whole area. This would be rerouted south to the U.S., or pumped into the Great Lakes and piped out.

The main U.S. concern is that the Mississippi is no longer viable. The population in California is over 40 million and it’s dry. They desperately need water. Canada has the most fresh water in the world. The U.S. wants it. The Indians are in the way.

To carry out this plan, all Indian communities on Hudson’s Bay and James Bay will have to be removed before the area is flooded. The Indians are basically in the way. They live on the mouths of all the rivers draining into James Bay. They want the northern indigenous communities to pay for the U.S. environmental catastrophe.

On top of all this, the U.S. is going to get Canada to build the structure which has been designed to make sure the U.S. gets all the benefits. In fact, they already probably have signed documents making it look the Indians consented. What they’ve forgotten is Sections 109 and 132 of the Canadian Constitution stipulates that the Indians have prior interests that supercede that of Canada and its provinces. They have to deal with us first. Hee haw!

There are 100 reserves that they say have contaminated waters. The Indians will all have to be removed. This experiment with the Kashechewan community is only the beginning.

Kahentinetha HornM
MNN Mohawk Nation News
MNN.mohawknationnews@gmail.com