DISPATCH: Resistance on the Attawapiskat
In northern Ontario, a region rich in mineral deposits has become a frontline in the fight for Indigenous sovereignty and against extraction.
To get to the camp, we first had to fly 500 kilometres on a seven-seater plane north from Thunder Bay to Neskantaga First Nation, located in the northern reaches of Ontario, southwest from Hudson’s Bay.[1] After landing at the small airstrip that services the Neskantaga community of around 350 people, we then drove to a waiting float plane, our next mode of transport before we reached camp, passing a nursing station along the way. The building had been hastily boarded up, the words “still closed” spray painted across the door. A quicker-than-usual spring thaw had flooded the small clinic. Despite Neskantaga leadership’s persistent requests, the federal government has yet to carry out the necessary repairs, forcing the community to live without access to healthcare for months, with no end in sight.
Infrastructural neglect is not new here. Neskantaga has the grim reputation of having the longest boil water advisory in Canadian history, now in its 30th year. In 1995, the water treatment facilities installed by the federal government broke down just months after they first came into operation and have yet to be permanently repaired. The community has never known a life with safe drinking water, a form of racialized injustice widespread in First Nations communities[2] across Canada. Both community members and public health researchers have made links between toxins in the water and Neskantaga’s devastating suicide crisis.
We parked our truck at the bank of Lake Attawapiskat, the headwater of the Attawapiskat River. Its waters are calm and clear. Neskantaga’s homelands are situated within one of the largest peatlands in the world which, like the Amazon Rainforest, serves as a vital carbon sink that must be protected if we hope to prevent climate catastrophe. To some Indigenous people in the area, these are known as the “Breathing Lands” because of how they act as “the world’s lungs”. The Canadian government, however, sees the land differently. The Breathing Lands, claims Ontario’s Minister of Mines, George Pirie, are “largely empty and begging for exploration drill holes.”