Sigh...Grassy Narrows First Nations doesn't ever have it easy..

The Grassy Narrows First Nation (Asubpeeshoseewagong Anishinabek First Nation), in Northwestern Ontario, Canada, for decades has grappled with the health consequences of 10 tons of mercury having been dumped 150 metres upstream in the English–Wabigoon River, by the Dryden Chemical Company in Dryden. This company, between 1962 and 1970, dumped mercury causing people from the Grassy Narrows First Nation to suffer. Children were born with severe birth defects while older people suffered from tremours, memory loss, tunnel vision, and numbness in the extremities caused by eating the fish in the river, as fish is the staple diet of the community. Since 1970, the FN has demanded compensation for the mercury crisis and to end industrial threats to the community.

The Government of Ontario has confirmed that the high levels of mercury exist in the river and the fish downstream from the chemical plant. In 2022, decades later, some 90% of the community suffered from mercury poisoning but nothing happened to the mill, which still functions. The company has evaded responsibility and Provincial and Federal governments have been evasive in providing real solutions despite continual promises to provide long term health facilities. Honestly, nothing ever appears to come from such agreements. You'd hope, well think, that the Ontario provincial government and the Canadian Federal government would eliminate the ongoing health, economic and cultural problems caused by the mercury poisoning. You'd think that downstream of the plant the mercury levels would have fallen if the leaks no longer existed. Hmm… A recent study, authored by five mercury experts and released on 28th February, 2017, revealed that tests showed significantly higher mercury levels downstream of the plant compared with upstream locations. So how high? Well, 130 times higher. Hmm. The report suggests that the geographical region is suffering from ongoing pollution rather than the aftermath of chemical release that occurred in the 1960.

Last week the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) announced Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation (WLON) and the township of Ignace as the host communities to the $26-billion CDN, decades-long, project to bury millions of used fuel bundles underground for Canada's nuclear waste repository. Nuclear waste is to be transported from southern Ontario more than 1,000 kilometres through Thunder Bay to Ignace, 250 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay, a city on the northwest shore of Lake Superior, the westernmost of the Great Lakes. The prospect of a nuclear waste repository is frankly horrifying as Grassy Narrows First Nation is only 106 kilometres west and the river flowing past the waste repository site flows past Grassy Narrows First Nation.

Construction of the repository for spent nuclear fuel rods is expected to start by 2033. The site is expected to be operational in the early 2040s and create between 400 and 600 jobs. The population of Ignace, of roughly 1,000 people, is expected to double. The repository enables an increase in nuclear power as: (a) the Pickering nuclear plant, in southern Ontario, will have it's life extended as it's going to be refurbished and (b) a new large-scale nuclear plant will be built on the site of Bruce Power's current generating station, and (c) four new small modular reactors will be built.

Sigh. Awful really. It's not as if the people from Grassy Narrows have it easy anyway. It strikes me that many of Canada's Indigenous peoples suffer from industrial health problems...but perhaps because these people live far away from Canada's metropolitan centres..they're forgotten..and ignored. It makes me wonder if there are deeper issues, an industrial health issue at hand, or do many people in Canada's metropolitan centres not really care about Indigenous peoples? I remember reading Al Jazeera's expose on the Aamjiwnaang First Nation and the effects of its proximity to the infamous ‘Chemical Valley, in Sarnia, in south-western Ontario. I've heard rumours about a radioactive waste disposal facility at the Chalk River site in Deep River, Ontario despite decades of opposition from the Algonquin First Nations. Deep River is labelled as the “home of Canadian Nuclear Laboratories” with the label of “a very safe town”. Many high tech companies are based in this town based on its proximity to Ottawa.

I've always known that dozens of Indigenous communities across Canada live under ‘boil water advisories’ and lack clean water for drinking and cleaning themselves. Shoal Lake 40 First Nation in both Manitoba's Eastman Region and Ontario's District of Kenora, supplies drinking water to Winnipeg and much of the Province of Manitoba, but it wasn't able to supply drinking water to its community for twenty-four years. Why? It's only just obtained a functioning water treatment facility. What's the question that should go through your head when you've read these facts?

So, when I heard the news of the physical location of this repository about the health issues caused by industrial disasters, from friends in the Indigenous communities, I must ask, is profit being put ahead of human and life and is there a racist hierarchy that puts Indigenous lives last?