A familiar refrain.

Every once in a while an especially appalling situation comes to light; in 1993, it was gasoline-sniffing teenagers at Davis Inlet and Sheshatshiu, in 1980, it was E. coli in the water supply at Waskaganish (then called Rupert House), in 1970, it was mercury poisoning at Grassy Narrows. Each time one of these catastrophes hits the headlines there is a massive bout of political hand-wringing until the news cycle moves onto some other story

In 2005, many people were stunned to learn that E. coli contaminated the water supply at Kashechewan, a fly-in community about 450 kilometres north of Timmins, on the coast of James Bay. Once again, the news media trotted off to a remote community and reported on the terrible living conditions of the people. Some even pointed out that such conditions would not be tolerated in mainstream Canada.

Helen Connell wrote in the London Free Press. "Think back to Walkerton. Contaminated water took seven rives there in 2000 and left throngs more ill. A full-scale public inquiry, was held, but before it could complete its recommendations, governments were scrambling to fix not only Walkerton's problem but take steps to avoid it happening elsewhere. That's because Canadians view safe drinking water as a right--not a privilege."

The conditions at Kasheche wan--a result of the water treatment plant's intake pipe being located 135 metres downstream from a sewage lagoon--were so bad the Ontario government de dared a state of emergency and evacuated residents. It was estimated that 60 percent of the reserve's 1,900 Cree residents needed medical attention. Many were suffering from skin diseases worsened by heavily chlorinated water to kill bacteria. Others had gastroenteritis, and the hepatitis A virus.

But, Kashechewan's problems had been known about for a long time; nothing was done to correct them until they made the front page of newspapers across the country. In 2003, Ontario's Clean Water Agency called Kashechewan a "Walkerton-in waiting," and the reserve has been under a boil-water advisory for two years, and off and on for years before that. Squalid living conditions, overcrowding, and massive unemployment estimated as high as 80 percent among adults in the community all shocked Canadians across the country.

Kashechewan has plenty of company.

An Indian Affairs study in 2001 found that about one third of the 740 water systems tested in Native communities across the country posed a potential high risk of poor water quality. Only a quarter were in the low- or no-risk category. According to one report, in October 2005, when the Kashechewan crisis came to light, there were 95 Native communities in Canada that had to boil their drinking water. Health Canada issues boil-water advisories when the water contains such contaminants as dirt, uranium, or fuel oil.

Uranium has made the water at Keewaywin Reserve in Northern Ontario undrinkable. The community of 425 is near Sioux Lookout, 100 kilometres from the Manitoba border. But, a report in The Globe and Mail said the community won't be getting its first water plant until 2008. Another community in the region, the Neskantaga First Nation reserve, has reportedly been boiling its water since 1995.

In October 2005, the federal government announced some plans to improve life on Native reserves. For starters it said it will build a new community for the residents of Kashechewan. There will be clean water, better healthcare services including a dozen nurses (up from four), and possibly a new school. It promised to build 50 new houses in 2006 and 50 more every year for the next 10 years. In addition, it will fund renovations to 60 existing houses, and provide more family services, counselling, and family violence and suicide-prevention services. Then-Indian Affairs Minister Andy Scott also told reporters the government would make sweeping changes to the reserve water systems. He promised that by March 2008 the number of high-risk water systems would be cut to zero from the 29 percent identified in 2003. Medium-risk systems would drop from 46 percent to 16 percent in the same period.

Crummy water isn't the only thing causing alarm on Native reserves. Many are also plagued with suicide. During the first six months of 2005, the village of Ahousaht in British Columbia counted more than 40 suicide attempts and one suicide death among 850 people. Most of the incidents involved young people in the community and have been linked to alcohol and drug abuse. This, in turn, is linked to a complex mixture of isolation and economic and cultural problems.

Ditto for Davis Inlet and Sheshatshiu, mostly Innu villages in Labrador, which most people had never heard of until 1993. That was when a video appeared showing a group of Innu adolescents strung out from sniffing gasoline and screaming that they wanted to die. This scene of despair among young Native People was nothing new to local police. But, this time it was captured on film for the world to witness.

As in Kashechewan, action was swift. Public servants, politicians, aid agency workers and Native leaders flocked to Davis Inlet. Public funding for the community of 530 sky rocketed. The government committed hundreds of millions of dollars to improve housing, water supply, and ultimately to build a new settlement farther north called Natuashish. As well, the youngsters in the videotape, along with others suffering from solvent abuse, were sent to Poundmaker's Lodge, a special clinic in Alberta that helps Native People with addiction problems. But, a year later, all but five of the 18 teenagers treated at Poundmaker's had returned to solvent abuse. And, in 2005, within two years of the Innu move to their new village, it was clear that the social problems had moved with the people. New houses, clean water, a new school, a health centre, an airport, and a fire hall were not enough. Those who predicted the social problems would continue were right. Unemployment, addiction, suicide, spousal and child abuse, and chronic hopelessness continue.

A year before the Davis Inlet videotape surfaced, in July 1992, Shamattawa also reached a low point: in that one month, the Manitoba reserve of 700 residents had one killing and seven attempted murders. In one 18-month period there were five suicides and 60 attempts. The reserve's solvent-abuse problem had reached the third generation, with at least 80 percent of the young people known to be chronic sniffers of gasoline, nail polish remover, paint thinner, varnish, and airplane glue. The situation became such a crisis that the school principal and seven teachers feared for their lives and left the community.

Four years later, in 1996, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples had this to say: "After some 500 years of a relationship that has swung from partnership to domination, from mutual respect and cooperation to paternalism and attempted assimilation, Canada must now work out fair and lasting terms of coexistence with Aboriginal People."

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. An editorial in The Globe and Mail in February 2005 pointed out that a decade ago, "Newfoundland's then-premier Clyde Wells predicted that the relocated community of Natuashish would become another Davis Inlet and suggested that the Innu move to urban centres where, with the right financial carrots and support, they might be able to integrate and have at least a chance of employment." Discuss whether or not you think this approach would help solve some of the problems encountered by Native People across Canada.

2. Norwegian anthropologist Georg Henriksen spent two years (1966-68) travelling with the Innu people of Northern Labrador as they hunted caribou herds. In his book Hunters in the Barrens: The Naskapi on the Edge of the White Man's World, published in 1975, the author contrasts the traditional Innu hunting pattern with the way they lived after being moved to coastal settlements. Review Mr. Henriksen's book.

3. Discuss whether or not you think this latest "wake-up call"--at Kashechewan--will be any different from the previous ones, or will the people with the power to do something hit the snooze button once again?

FACT FILE

Between 1992 and 2000 the Ontario Native community of Pikangikum, 300 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, had a suicide rate more than 16 times the national average: the average was 213 suicides per 100,0000 compared with 13 per 100,000 for all of Canada. In 2000, the rate in the community soared to 470 deaths per 100,000.

There were an estimated 10,000 to 35,000 Mi'kmaq living in eastern Canada when European explorers first made contact with them in the 15th century; by the 1840s, there were only 1,300 Mi'kmaq alive.

Websites

Canada's Tibet: The Killing of the Innu-http://www.survival-- international.org/pdf/Innu% 20report.pdf

Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples--http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ ch/rcap/rpt/lk_e.html

As Harbourfront Entertainment explained in its promotion of the documentary, The Mushuau Innu: Surviving Canada: The Innu "... have suffered for many years. They were forced to live in unimaginable squalor. Houses not much better than cardboard boxes. No running water, no sewage disposal. Human waste tossed into the streets where children played in it and dogs ate it ... In 1993, the Canadian Human Rights Commission released a report condemning the federal government's treatment of the Innu. The report came to a shocking conclusion. It found the federal government had been in violation of the constitutional rights of the Innu for more than 50 years ..." This picture depicts 19th-century Innu in caribou-hide coats, which were decorated with natural pigments.

WARNINGS IGNORED

The Native people said there would be problems decades ago.

When the government started building houses at Kashechewan in 1957, band members said they should be built farther upstream to prevent water damage. They had given the federal government the same advice 45 years earlier, in 1912, when the community was first established. But, officials weren't listening. Flooding from James Bay forced people to leave the community in the past, and spring floods continue to be a regular occurrence, leaving houses structurally weakened and plagued by mould.

A recent report in The Globe and Mail added that requests over the years to move the community to higher ground were ignored too.

LAND GRAB

Some Cree elders of Northern Quebec remember helping prospectors find interesting rock outcroppings, not knowing they would be stripped of the land that supported them and that the land would be stripped of its riches. As the Cree explain, "As the identification of mineral deposits intensified, outsiders established mining camps, settlements, and towns. The discovery of economically interesting geological formations took precedence over the continued existence of (Cree) villages. We were threatened and coerced into abandoning our village sites, which were then bulldozed and destroyed. Through collusion among the mining companies and the Quebec and Canadian governments, we were forced to relocate our villages seven times over 50 years. There was a deliberate policy in place of attempting to make us disappear."

The Cree said that by the 1970s "the full force of resource development had begun to be felt. A dozen mines were operating on our land and interfering with the pursuit of our traditional way of life. Clear-cutting occurred on such a scale that a very significant portion of our frees were destroyed, and along with them, the habitat required by the animals upon which we depend ... The non-Aboriginal settlements thrived while we, the original and permanent inhabitants of our territory, were completely isolated and marginalized from the economic and political life of the region. We estimate that approximately $4 billion (Canadian) worth of resources have been extracted without our consent or our involvement, and without any benefit to us. Our pleas were ignored ..."

The nomadic Ojibway of Mishkeegogamang in northwestern Ontario lost their land for different reasons. Assured that their traditional life would not be affected, the Ojibway signed a treaty in 1905 agreeing to share their land. In 1928, the federal government and Ontario Hydro announced they were building a dam to produce power. By 1934, a second hydro dam had been built. That meant a lot of the land the Ojibway agreed to share was now under water. The Native people could no longer use the land for trap-lines, or hunting. Even some of their ancestors were disturbed when an ancient burial ground was flooded and their bones began washing ashore. The land that had supported generations of Ojibway was gone and they were forced to settle in Mishkeegogamang, 320 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, Ontario.

As recently as July 2005, the Ojibway people and in particular a group of women of Mishkeegogamang and Saugeen First Nations known as the Northern Lights Anishnaw-bekwes were organizing to oppose the taking of their lands by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, and pulp and paper and forestry corporations.

HAPPIER PAST

A generation ago, the Innu lived a nomadic life of hunters and gatherers as their ancestors had done for at least 2,000 years and possibly 8,000 years. They have a profound respect for Nature, seeking to blend their lives harmoniously with the environment. Assembling teepees as they travelled, they lived by hunting, gathering, trapping, and fishing. Life in the bush was at the core of their being. Caribou provided food, clothing, and shelter.

That all disappeared when government agents persuaded them their lives would be better if they gave up their nomadic ways. Missionaries also praised life in a house as much better than life in a tent. The Innu, a gentle and non-assertive people, for the most part, went along with the plans. For those with doubts there were laws that made hunting illegal and threats of worse to come. Truancy officers warned parents that if the children were not in school they would be taken away from them. So, the people moved from a cashless and self-sufficient lifestyle to a work-and-wages society overnight. But, there was little or no work, so the wages had to come from government handouts. The people became dependent on money from the white man. Their children were taught lessons based on Euro Canadian culture with the message that their own culture was inferior. Some were beaten for simply speaking their own language. Many were treated abysmally.

In 1999, a group in London, England called Survival International released a report which says: "There is overwhelming evidence of widespread and systematic child sexual abuse by priests and teachers over the last 40 years, and several have been convicted in the courts. This has not only left hundreds of Innu traumatized, but also, since abused children often grow up into abusing adults, created a cycle of sexual abuse which has become endemic in many families. This trend of clerical abuse has continued right up to the present: a priest recently left one Innu community amidst accusations that he had abused a young girl."

The report described the Innu of Labrador as among "the most suicide-ridden people in the world," with a suicide rate 13 times greater than the Canadian average.

Here's what the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples had to say three years earlier, in 1996:

"A careful reading of history shows that Canada was founded on a series of bargains with Aboriginal Peoples--bargains this country has never fully honoured. Treaties between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal governments were agreements to share the land. They were replaced by policies intended to:

* Remove Aboriginal People from their homelands.

* Suppress Aboriginal nations and their governments.

* Undermine Aboriginal cultures.

* Stifle Aboriginal identity.

It is now time to acknowledge the truth and begin to rebuild the relationship among peoples on the basis of honesty, mutual respect, and fair sharing. The image of Canada in the world and at home demands no less."