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“Safe drinking water on reserves has been a public issue since before 2003, when a government report found three-quarters of all water systems on reserves were at high or medium risk of failure.
Two years later, the auditor general found higher standards needed to be backed up with sufficient resources. That conclusion was echoed the following year by a panel convened by then aboriginal affairs minister Jim Prentice.
A third study in 2011 found little had changed since 2003.
Badger’s reserve isn’t the only one where water and sewer lines cross-contaminate.
“A lot of our community members are suffering from stomach infections that are due to unsafe drinking water,” said Dorothy Firstrider of the Blood band. “A lot of our infants are constantly being treated for a lot of infections that are due to unhealthy drinking water.”
Water on the Ermineskin reserve is often so bad, members have to drive to the nearest town to buy bottled water, said Chief Craig Makinaw.”
– CBC News, Alberta First Nations sue Ottawa over safety of drinking water.
“”People are afraid to wash their babies in this water because … there are dead mice floating in the water,” Sucker Creek First Nation Chief Jim Badger told a press conference, of contaminated cisterns on his northern Alberta reserve.”
– Sun News, Four Alberta reserves sue government over water quality.
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Download the 18″x24″ poster (.pdf), Indian Country 52 #25 – Clean Water for First Nations.
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Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
Creative Commons License
This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
