protecting water

Canada gets serious about water woes. Will Indigenous voices be heard?

Canada gets serious about water woes. Will Indigenous voices be heard?

Makaśa Looking Horse has been protecting the water since she was a child – as part of her spiritual beliefs, in protest against Nestlé’s extraction of water from her nation’s traditional land, and today as a youth advocate of Ohneganos, an Indigenous water research project that, in the Cayuga language, means “water is life.” She doesn’t consider herself an activist. “It’s more like my way of life. And I do it every single day,” she says. It was passed down from her parents. “But it doesn’t stop there. My grandmothers and my ancestors, that’s what they always did, too. So it’s not just me and my activism in a little compartment. It’s me and my whole lineage and my people and my way of life, of always protecting the water.”

NCES students raising money for Indigenous communities

NCES students raising money for Indigenous communities

Students at Nicola Canford Elementary School (NCES) are doing their part to ensure all Canadians have access to safe, clean drinking water by launching a fundraiser in partnership with Water First, a Canadian charity that raises money for Indigenous communities in Canada without safe drinking water. “As part of our curricular work, we have accessed water testing kits from safewater.org and their teaching resources,” said Bergmann.