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Latest news about the Safe Drinking Water Team
After its acclaimed debut at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2020, The Water Walker, which followers the Anishinaabe Indigenous rights advocate Autumn Peltier on a journey to speak in front of the United Nations, has been picked up by HBO Canada and will be available to stream on Crave in April. At only 17, Peltier has over 100,000 Instagram followers and has spoken to prominent world leaders while advocating for safe and easy access to water as a fundamental human right.
Jamie Lee Parenteau knows that water is where life originates. She knows that it must be protected in every way possible from pollution or waste. The Ojibway woman’s ancestors were able to live off the water as a resource, and to sustain all living things in their care. Yet in some First Nation communities today, water has become a curse. “In our culture, water is so much more. It’s sacred,” says Parenteau, who is from the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation. “Our people could just go to the lake for everything. That was before all these things like the (pulp) mills and mercury poisoning. Our people drink that water and got poisoned by it.” The young mother is a water protector — and she now has a licence that says so.
Activists in northeastern Ontario fighting for safe, clean water in First Nations communities across Canada are getting tired of broken promises. After five years and millions in spending, the Liberal government announced in early December that it would not fulfill its commitment to end all long-term water advisories on reserves by March 2021. Although some progress has been made – 97 advisories have been lifted since November 2015 – there’s still a long way to go. There are 59 active long-term water advisories in 41 communities across the country, and activists maintain that clean water should be a priority for the federal government, especially during a global pandemic. “Water is a basic human right, and nobody should have to beg for it. This is wrong, and it’s come to the point where I think it comes down to racism,” said Autumn Peltier, a teenage water-rights activist from Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory on Manitoulin Island.
