We have known about the terrible cost of mercury poisoning to the people of Grassy Narrows for many decades. This summer, a study published by Dr. Donna Mergler in Environmental Health Perspectives shows not only the intergenerational physical and neurological harm that has been known for some time, but for the first time in the world shows that the psychological harm from the poison dumped in the Wabigoon river is linked to attempted suicide in children and youth.

Her paper shows that the increased numbers of attempted suicides at Grassy is high among young people, especially women, whose grandfathers were most involved in fishing and therefore in eating fish contaminated by mercury.

We also already knew that youth suicide attempts at Grassy were three times higher than other reserves and 15 times higher than non-Indigenous youth. But until now researchers and the government assumed that intergenerational trauma alone was responsible rather than the mercury poison itself.

From 1962 to 1970, the Dryden pulp and paper mill dumped 10 tonnes of mercury into the Wabigoon River that feeds Grassy Narrows. Fish, including walleye, were soon too poisonous to consume. The dumping is believed to have contaminated more than 150 miles of watershed. A single gram of mercury is sufficient to make all fish in a 20-hectare radius unsafe for consumption.

“You can see this cascade of effects,” Dr. Mergler said at a press conference last Wednesday. “We found that the mother’s childhood mercury exposure is associated with today’s nervous system disorders, as well as a psychological distress.”

Mergler and other researchers studied the mothers’ umbilical cords, which had traces of their grandmothers’ mercury exposure.

“When you eat fish with mercury and you’re pregnant, the mercury is actively transported across the placenta … that affects the [foetus] development,” she said.

I have worked in solidarity with Grassy Narrows for decades. Judy DaSilva, who has been a brave and eloquent spokesperson for Grassy over those years and has lost four family members to suicide was a co-author of the study. Dr. Mergler is a good friend of mine and when she retired, I suggested she might want to work with Grassy as her specialty is the neurological impact of pesticides and other chemicals. She has devoted her work to Grassy ever since.

Expressing the devastation she felt at the results of this study, Judy DaSilva told media “I think it’s a very important finding so that young people understand why they feel the way they do.”

“I keep thinking that maybe if my niece and others knew the reason, they felt so desperately that they wanted to die was mercury poisoning, they might have held on,” she told me after a press conference.

Dr. Mergler told me that for her it was very difficult to maintain her professional composure when she realized the result of the study.

Mergler, along with fellow researchers and Da Silva selected 80 Grassy Narrows mothers and their 162 children aged between five and 17 and found significant links between grandparents’ exposure to mercury, the mothers’ psychological distress and the grandchildren’s risk for attempted suicide.

Moreover, most of the attempted suicides were among girls and women. The study also revealed that of the 34 girls aged 12 to 17 studied by Mergler and her colleagues, 41 per cent had attempted suicide, compared to about 11 per cent of the boys of the same age group.  Mergler told the press conference that we don’t know yet why girls are affected more than boys but it might be hormonal.

“Mental health issues have gone unrecognized for decades and today should occupy a central place in healing from mercury poisoning,” Mergler told the press conference, adding that construction of the care home should proceed “as quickly as possible and we should not drag our feet on this.”

Grassy Narrows has been fighting for what they call a mercury home for many years. Finally in 2020 and 2021, the federal government and Grassy Narrows signed deals amounting to nearly $90 million to build a mercury care home to provide services to those dealing with impacts of mercury poisoning. Construction has been delayed. Now the facility expected to open in 2023 is now slated to begin construction in spring of 2024.

“I am proud of our kids and our youth who accomplish so much in such hard circumstances. But we need more support so that they can thrive like other children in Canada,” Grassy Narrows Chief Rudy Turtle told the news conference. He called on the federal and provincial governments to compensate everyone in Grassy Narrows in light of the physical and psychological suffering they have endured over generations. He explained that not only is their health dramatically impacted but their economy was entirely based on fishing and the mercury poisoning destroyed it.

“It is hard to improve our mental health while we struggle with intense poverty,” Chief Turtle said.

The day after the press conference on the mercury poison induced suicide attempts, the people of Grassy Narrows participated in a rally of the Land Alliance of five first nations in Northern Ontario who have joined together to fight mining exploration without prior and informed consent on their Indigenous lands.

“We want our land to stay pure. We are not just doing this for us today, we are doing it for future generations so they will be able to continue to do our traditional practices and way of life,” Chief Turtle told the crowd.

The next rally is planned for September 27 at noon, where you can join with members of Grassy Narrows and all the other members of the Land Alliance to protest further incursion of extraction industries in their lands without their permission.