Attawapiskat Didn't Happen Overnight

Canada has been airing some of it's dirty laundry since the fall, as the Attawapiskat housing crises has been followed intensively by the media. It's about time ordinary Canadians took a look into our own backyard. Unfortunately, this has given some less-educated people a great opportunity to make racist arguments about "those lazy, alcoholics spending all our tax money on drugs" or something to that effect. I'm sure by now, many people have heard their uncle spew this type of insensitive statement over the dinner table. But as usual, whenever there is a "crises", people forget that these things don't just happen over night, and aren't caused by laziness on the part of the Aboriginal population.

If you are not familiar with the situation, basically there is an extreme shortage of housing in North Ontario's Attawapiskat First Nation community. People are living in the types of dwellings you'd expect in a refugee camp, not in our own province. I'll break down for you how this all came to be:

In 1979, there was a massive oil spill that leaked 30,000 litres of diesel under Attawapiskat's elementary school. In 2000, then Liberal AANDC Minister Robert Nault promised to build them a new school. A year later, they had to close the school down because of effects of the spill. They put up portables and held classes there instead.

In 2004, Rodolfo Stavenhagen (former Deputy Director General of UNESCO) visited Canada and formally reported that there were serious problems with the housing in Attawapiskat. He noted that overcrowded and inadequate housing conditions, as well as difficulties to access basic services, including water and sanitation, were plaguing the people of this community. In December 2007, a new AANDC minister (Chuck Strahl) was appointed and the plans to build the new elementary school were cancelled. AANDC stated that Attawapiskat was not a priority and they had no "health or saftety concerns" for this community. I guess Chuck must have missed (or dismissed) the UNESCO report.

As residents continued to bear with deplorable living conditions, they began to get increasingly angry that their long ignored community sat right next to a billion dollar DeBeers Mine. So in 2009, some people from Attawapiskat decided to block the road to the mine to raise awareness about their crises. In the same year, there was a massive sewage flood that caused 90 people to evacuate their homes. DeBeers paid for a temporary shelter (trailers) for these displaced persons, which they still live in today.

Meanwhile, Chief Theresa Hall was becoming increasingly frustrated. The government had promised $700,000 to repair the homes damaged by the sewage and wasn't acting to make this promise a reality. By October 28 2011, Chief Hall called for a state of emergency in Attawapiskat for the third time. AANDC Minister John Duncan claimed his department knew nothing of the conditions, however they had visited the community several times that year. By December, the Canadian Red Cross made Attawapiskat a priority, since clearly they were being neglected by the federal government for years. They began to fly in all kinds of emergency supplies (blankets, water etc). As journalists began to document the crises and interview the people of Attawapiskat, suddenly it became breaking national news.

I won't explain the rest of the story, since most people know that there was controversy about hiring a third-party consultant to help the community with their finances. Basically, since the fall, Attawapiskat has continued to be serviced by relief agencies like True North Aid (an Ottawa based NGO) and the Canadian Red Cross. It seems in the past few months, there has been so much talk and not enough action. Everyone is playing the blame game and not focusing on what needs to be done now: get these people into houses with running water and heat!

If you are interested in the latest news on Attawapiskat, check out this article:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/02/10/attawapiskat-homes-modular-moving.html