Where is the help promised Grassy Narrows?
Grassy Narrows Chief Rudy Turtle heard Justin Trudeau’s apology on Thursday but he will not take it.
And neither will the nearly 1,600 Ojibwe who make up the Grassy Narrows community.
“We acknowledge it, but we aren’t accepting it,” Turtle said from the band office, about an hour outside of Kenora.
The majority of his people are sick with mercury poisoning that has afflicted the community for decades. They are battling a chemical that doesn’t disappear once inside you, but is instead passed down through generations. Their bodies shake, their hands and feet affected by constant tremors.
This is the tragedy a demonstrator was trying to bring to the prime minister’s attention at a Toronto fundraiser on Wednesday night.
But the PM did not choose compassionate engagement. Rather, in a display of callous arrogance, he made a joke of it.
As the demonstrator was being pushed out of the Omni King Edward Hotel, Trudeau laughed and began to play to the crowd.
“Thank you for being here,” Trudeau said, his voice rising over the commotion as security staff hustled the demonstrator out.
“Thank you very much for your donation here tonight.
I really appreciate it …”
The members of the Laurier Club, who like the demonstrators, had paid $1,500 per plate to be in attendance, laughed.
The people of Asubpeeschoseewagong or Grassy Narrows did not. They have been laughed at by politicians in this country for as long as they have been poisoned, tweeted writer Robert Jago. The same can be said of the Wabaseemoong or Whitedog First Nation, also poisoned by mercury.
These people were made sick by 10 tonnes of mercury dumped into the Wabigoon and English River system between 1962 and 1970 by a company that didn’t give a damn. For decades, they have demanded the governments of Ontario and Canada help them clean the water up, restore their health, their way of life and their sacred-held land. But the Crown, too, didn’t give a damn.
The people who lived in the area were told the river would eventually clean itself, reporters David Bruser and Jayme Poisson discovered in a Star investigation.
However, a confidential report prepared by the current owners of the land said the province knew for years the site of the mill was contaminated. Residents and activists, including Amnesty International, sounded the alarm for decades and all levels of government seemed to be deaf to the tragedy until just recently.
And yet, even with the recent apologies and pledges to act, movement to help the people has been slow. Chief Turtle says he has heard all of it before. It is all “words, words, words.”
“This mercury poisoning has been going on for 50 years. It is not right for someone to brush it off and act as if it is nothing,” he said.
The total lack of care Trudeau showed on Wednesday is nothing new. It is the source of the community’s original tragedy. And of the ways that tragedy persists to this day.
There are no specialists in the community who can readily treat mercury poisoning or the psychological stresses of what it is doing to the community. If the people want treatment, most have to drive to Kenora and speak to their family doctor.
They don’t have proper medical care or healthy food. People still eat fish from the river.
A health centre was promised to the community in late 2017 but that still hasn’t materialized. “We were hoping to break ground this summer. But I don’t know,” he said.
Trudeau’s glib laughter represents an attitude that has no doubt had costlier manifestations than the prime minister’s cheap joke. But, as Turtle said, “even an insult hurts.”
Yes, the sting can still be felt on the thick scar tissue built up over more than a century and a half of colonialism.
Turtle said he always hears Trudeau talking about how he wants to fix long-standing issues with First Nations, Inuit and Métis people. He has heard him say that it’s the most important relationship to him and to Canada.
But he no longer believes the prime minister’s rhetoric when it comes to his commitment to Indigenous people.
As we’ve witnessed time and again, it is all just words, words, words.
This time, anyway, Trudeau’s words were more in line with his government’s actions.