‘YOUTH ARE DYING’: Shamattawa fighting feds for clean drinking water

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A northern Manitoba chief is blasting the federal government and pleading for safe drinking water in his community.

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Shamattawa First Nation Chief Jordna Hill said a boil-water advisory has dragged into its sixth year and brings harm and in many cases hopelessness to the Shamattawa First Nation.

“Our youth and our people deserve to live a good life, yet Canada doesn’t even see us as worthy of having safe drinking water,”  he said during media conference in Winnipeg last week.

“We at Shamattawa First Nation are basically held hostage for the basic human right of clean drinking water in a G7 country.”

Shamattawa has been under an official boil-water advisory since 2018, because ice clogs their water treatment plant’s intake in the spring, leading to brown and contaminated tap water.

Federal data shows 160 homes and 14 community buildings are affected.

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The community launched a class action lawsuit against the federal government in September of 2022 claiming government has failed to ensure First Nations people have access to clean drinking water on reserves.

Since the litigation was filed, more than 50 other First Nations from across the country have joined, and a motion for a summary judgment is expected to be heard in a federal court sometime next month.

Hill said community leaders are asking the federal government do more to assist them in getting the issues at the water treatment plant fixed, but believes “an end to this is nowhere in sight.”

Shamattawa community leaders would be open to an out-of-court settlement but he hasn’t seen the federal government show any interest in settling.

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“We urge Canada to stop fighting First Nations over a basic human right like safe drinking water. We live in a G7 country not a poor country in another part of the world,” Hill said.

“For years we have been asking for a new water treatment plant. Canada is putting the rights of people on the back burner and people are getting sick, and youth are dying.”

Hill said that more than six years without clean water has had long-lasting negative effects on the community that go well beyond whether or not people can drink what comes out of their taps.

“There is hopelessness and youth are pushed to suicides,” he said. “Over the past few days a young man was murdered, and a 15-year-old took his life,” Hill said. “We aren’t being treated like human beings.”

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Alana Robert, a Toronto-based- lawyer representing Shamattawa in the lawsuit, said the federal government “year after year is chronically underfunding water infrastructure on reserves, but also the operation and maintenance costs of that water infrastructure on reserve, so the infrastructure does not last as long.”

An Indigenous Services Canada spokesperson said in an email that “Since 2015, Canada increased by 150% its investments in water infrastructure in First Nations communities. Since then, the number of long-term water advisories went from 105 to 31, and a plan is in place to address all the remaining ones.

“Canada has also been following Shamattawa’s lead to lift their drinking water advisory. We have provided $26.5 million to expand and upgrade the water treatment plant and water main distribution.”

— Dave Baxter is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the Winnipeg Sun. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

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