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“The deplorable state of drinking water on many First Nations reserves in B.C. is well documented.
At the end of February 2016, 26 communities in B.C. were under boil water advisories — some of them dating back 10 years.
“The issue and the challenge is that even though that water comes from pristine sources, some of those sources are susceptible to microbial contamination,” UBC engineering professor Madjid Mohseni told On The Coast host Stephen Quinn.
“Those communities are often very remote … much of the funding needs to be paid by the ratepayers or the users, and when you have only tens of people living there, it’s very difficult for them to afford installing a treatment system.”
Mohseni is a co-founder of RES’EAU-WaterNET, a program that works directly with small communities to find solutions for access to water.
His work focuses on working with communities, identifying their concerns and finding local human capacity for water treatment.
He and his students try to present various water treatment options to the communities to see which ones would work best given their human and financial capacity.”
– CBC News, Drinking water on First Nations reserves an ongoing problem in B.C., says professor.
“The United Nations and at least one NGO have called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to address water issues in Canada’s First Nations, citing human rights and cultural reasons.
Human Rights Watch called on Canada to address the water advisories affecting more than 100 First Nations communities in a “dispatch” report on its website.
Senior researcher Amanda Klasing wrote that Trudeau promised during his federal election campaign to end these advisories within five years.
“This isn’t just a campaign promise but a human rights obligation,” she wrote.”
– Huffington Post, Canada First Nations Water Issues Need To Be Fixed: UN.
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Download the 18″x24″ poster (.pdf), Indian Country 52 #12 – First Nations Water (Conditions).
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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.
