Kasechewan one year later

29/10/2006
Kashechewan one year later
A year ago this week, I like a lot of people expressed outrage over the crisis about the contaminated water in the native town of Kashechewan, Ontario and total lack of due care shown by both the federal and provincial governments for Aboriginals in general when it comes to health.

In an op-ed today in the Toronto Star, the chief of Ontario's Indians, Angus Toulouse, said not much has changed in the twelve months since. Tell me something I don't know.

Even at Six Nations, the reserve south of where I live that has been in the news so much in the past year, water quality is a perennial problem and while some investments have been made in the core of Ohsweken, little or nothing has been done in the outlying areas of the tract -- much of which is still on septic tanks instead of sewers. For an area that's home to, what, over 10 thousand human beings (not to mention at least that many more who live off the reserve) it's so repugnant that the Iroquois can't get something as simple as clean water, that it's little wonder why there was the action taken at Douglas Creek -- the homes there actually have reliable facilities.

We consider water a human right, and have fought against it being privatized like it is in much of the European Union and at an increasing rate in the third world. Here in Hamilton, the P3 partnership that was set up was an unmitigated disaster so now it's back in the hands of the city.

But when it comes to natives, they become .. expendible. Am I the only one who thinks this is wrong?

29/10/2006
Kashechewan one year later
A year ago this week, I like a lot of people expressed outrage over the crisis about the contaminated water in the native town of Kashechewan, Ontario and total lack of due care shown by both the federal and provincial governments for Aboriginals in general when it comes to health.

In an op-ed today in the Toronto Star, the chief of Ontario's Indians, Angus Toulouse, said not much has changed in the twelve months since. Tell me something I don't know.

Even at Six Nations, the reserve south of where I live that has been in the news so much in the past year, water quality is a perennial problem and while some investments have been made in the core of Ohsweken, little or nothing has been done in the outlying areas of the tract -- much of which is still on septic tanks instead of sewers. For an area that's home to, what, over 10 thousand human beings (not to mention at least that many more who live off the reserve) it's so repugnant that the Iroquois can't get something as simple as clean water, that it's little wonder why there was the action taken at Douglas Creek -- the homes there actually have reliable facilities.

We consider water a human right, and have fought against it being privatized like it is in much of the European Union and at an increasing rate in the third world. Here in Hamilton, the P3 partnership that was set up was an unmitigated disaster so now it's back in the hands of the city.

But when it comes to natives, they become .. expendible. Am I the only one who thinks this is wrong?

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