"A couple of ancient chartered airplanes took off from the shores of James Bay yesterday evening, filled with 75 sick and bedraggled passengers who have learned, once again, about Canada's indifference to its native people.

The Cree people who left from the airstrip near Kashechewan are sick. There is no surprise that they became ill -- only the familiar feeling that, once again, the governments that are supposed to help them failed in their task.

In particular, the children of the Mushkegowuk First Nation are infected with scabies, a nasty parasite, and impetigo, a bacterial skin infection with blisters. They got these disorders because they washed in water from the community's treatment plant that was contaminated with the E.coli bacterium. 'It was basically sewer water coming out of their taps,' a local doctor said."

Get the Story:
Murray Campbell: Indifference to native people shows again (The Daily Globe and Mail 10/27)

"Kashechewan . . . Walkerton.

There are those who will say that's a bit of a stretch. But why even look that far away for comparison when a far more apt one is so close at hand?

Kashechewan is the reserve on the Ontario side of James Bay that is being evacuated this week after an E. coli breakout that has affected nearly two-thirds of the Cree village.

They have been calling it a "jurisdictional" problem -- Ontario waited for the federal government to act, Ottawa wanted Queen's Park to do something -- and finally the province has done an about-face from its previous finger-pointing and is, instead, actually doing something about the village's contaminated drinking water and its ill residents."

Get the Story:
Roy MacGregor: Only a bay and 20 years separate one aboriginal tragedy from another (The Daily Globe and Mail 10/27)

Related Stories:
Conditions on First Nation called Third World (10/25)
First Nations finally invited to top-level meeting (10/24)