Communities working to provide for evacuees

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More than a month has passed since David Ramsay, Ontario's minister of Aboriginal Affairs, declared a medical emergency in Kashechewan First Nation and announced plans to evacuate about 1,000 of the community's 1,900 or so residents to nearby communities such as Ottawa, Sudbury, Cochrane, Timmins, Attawapiskat, Sault Ste. Marie, Peterborough and Moosonee.

The move came more than 10 days after routine testing showed elevated levels of E.coli in the community's water supply. This was only the latest problem with water quality on the First Nation, which has been under a boil water advisory since 2003 because the cloudiness of the water could mask the presence of bacteria.

According to Gary Lafontaine, executive director for the Odawa Friendship Centre, when the city of Ottawa caught wind of the fact that they were going to be receiving Kashechewan members, they contacted the Odawa centre to help bridge any cultural and language divides and to help meet the newcomer's social and service needs.

The Odawa centre formed committees to help ensure the people of Kashechewan received the food, education, clothing donations, help with translation and navigation and other services they needed. The centre received the first group of evacuees on Oct. 31, who arrived on a series of seven flights.

"Oct. 31 was one of the largest intakes that we had in one day," Lafontaine said. "That's the purpose of friendship centres and cities, it's to assist people who are coming from a rural setting into the city and try to make them feel welcome. We are putting our best foot forward."

The Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health was set up in a community centre to conduct an initial medical assessment for the new arrivals. Lafontaine said in most cases, people needed immediate medical attention and were taken to various hospitals in the Ottawa area.

The efforts of the Odawa centre received a nod of approval from Kashechewan Chief Leo Friday while the chief was attending a dinner hosted by the Metis Nation of Ontario on Nov. 17.

"The Chief made an announcement that he was very satisfied with the way the Odawa centre and the other agencies within the city of Ottawa were helping his people out," said Lafontaine. "He wants us to continue in that capacity and that's what we're doing."

Since the arrival of the evacuees, the Odawa centre's 32 staff members have been putting in 12-hour days, trying to not only help the people of Kashechewan who are temporarily calling Ottawa home, but also trying to continue with their regular duties as well.

Since it opened its doors in 1975, the non-profit Odawa centre has been working to serve the Aboriginal people in the Ottawa-Carleton region. The centre offers a total of 12 programs, including an Aboriginal Healthy Babies program, a Healing and Wellness program and an Aboriginal Family Support program. It also provides recreation programs, cultural awareness programs and support and information referral services.

"Like any friendship centre across Canada, our primary function is to improve the quality of life of Aboriginal people that are in and coming to this urban area," said Lafontaine.

He believes the people of Kashechewan were anxious to come to communities like Ottawa to escape, at least temporarily, from ongoing problems on the reserve which eventually became too much to bear. And the water quality problem that threw the community into the national spotlight was just the tip of the iceberg.

"The water issues, I believe, is sort of like the straw that broke camel's back," Lafontaine said. "It was just one more hardship that was piled on top of housing and health issues and it came to a head."

Now that information about the many problems faced by the people of Kashechewan have received so much media attention, Kashechewan Deputy Chief Rebecca Friday hopes the department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (INAC) will speed up the process to address the problems.

"The secret is out now, so I hope they do learn their lessons and keep their promises," she said. "They have made promises before, which they can easily break again."

On Oct. 27, Indian Affairs Minister Andy Scott met with Kashechewan Chief Leo Friday and announced a deal that would see 50 new houses a year over 10 years built on a better site not far from the community's current site. But the deputy chief said she wants a 100 per cent guarantee that the community will be relocated.

"I'm not going to wait one year or two years down the road. I want it done now," Rebecca Friday insisted. "Right now, I'm not a hundred per cent that they will be looking at the new relocation of my community. They promised us 50 houses per year but I don't want them building in a place where it's already contaminated."

According to Rebecca Friday, approximately 107 community members have already been flown back to Kashechewan to begin work to renovate their homes. The homes need to be heated so that the water pipes don't freeze.

Work is currently being done to "hammer down deals with Indian Affairs to make sure that the emergency housing repairs that were agreed on are moving ahead," said Charlie Angus, NDP MP for Timmins-James Bay.

"We want to get the commitments now for the long-term housing," Angus said. "We are really pleased that we managed to secure this deal and we believe that it is a very historic agreement, especially for communities on the west side of the James Bay that have just been left in squalor."

That doesn't mean, however, that Angus doesn't have any concerns about what the federal government has agreed to do for the people of Kashechewan. Like Rebecca Friday, he will be watching to see that the promises made are kept.

"As we see with every treaty and every government agreement ever signed with First Nations, the spirit of the agreement disappears very quickly once the ink is dry. Therefore, we need this commitment to be over 10 years. We need 50 ouses a year for 10 years, in order to meet the basic needs of that community. I still maintain grave concerns that this government, once the spotlight fades on Kashechewan, will start to hem and haw about living up to those commitments."

Angus is also concerned about something he's heard from a number of First Nations people he's met with-that they've been told additional money for improving conditions in Kashechewan will be found by diverting funds already set aside for infrastructure projects on other First Nations, many of which face the same problems with water quality, health and housing as Kashechewan.

"We don't know where they are hearing it from but I would imagine from INAC bureaucrats," Angus said. "The minister has assured me that is not the case."

Ministerial assurances aside, Angus sees this as normal day to day operations for INAC.

"This is how Indian Affairs plays itself out. We have the minister making the statements ... but what goes on behind the

scenes and what the media and the rest of Canada never sees is the continual bullying tactics and the nickel and dimming that happens at the regional offices of Indian Affairs," Angus said.

"In Kashechewan what had happened, because of the under-funding by INAC year after year, the community had gone into heavy levels of debt, basically trying to maintain an infrastructure that was beyond repair. Therefore, the real issue for First Nation planning is to ensure that we are not doing the Band-Aid solutions but that we are taking long-term approaches to communities."