Cancer has ravaged this tiny First Nation. Now it’s on the verge of disappearing
Residents have asked for probe into the reserve’s water issues, but that still hasn’t happened
NORTHWEST ANGLE 33 FIRST NATION, ONT.—
Nestled among the thousands of islands in Lake of the Woods, rotting timber poles bob in the waves, relics from logging operations of the 1940s that once occupied this pristine corner of Ontario.
Rusted logging anchors remain drilled in the muskeg near a commemorative plaque that rises from the waterfront like a tombstone. The plaque marks the spot where Treaty 3 was signed between the Crown and the Ojibwe in 1873, as a launch point for the trade and voyageur routes that built Western Canada.
The land has since been flooded and the water contaminated. The original location of the treaty signing is now said to be underwater. And nearby are the gravesites where Northwest Angle’s latest generation of cancer victims are buried.
A few decades ago, Northwest Angle 33 First Nation’s Angle Inlet reserve was home to hundreds, but years of longterm drinking water advisories, poor health care and chronic cancer cases have plagued this community. It is now home to a few dozen people and is on the verge of disappearing.
The numbers are stark. Sixty per cent of residents had a first-degree relative with cancer, particularly stomach cancer, according to a never-before-released report by the University of Toronto written in October 2017. The average age of a cancer diagnosis on the reserve was 41.
U of T researchers are now trying to reconcile the First Nation’s water-quality issues, including suspected mercury contamination, with the reserve’s incidences of illness and death. So far, their findings are consistent with other First
Nations in the Lake of the Woods area, indicating a significantly higher rate of colorectal cancer than in First Nations across the province.
“The consistency in the findings of the
NWA33 analysis (although small population size) and the other cancer burden reports mentioned above indicate
some concern, especially for colorectal cancer, within this region,” the report reads.
The project is currently being run by Suzanne Stewart and Michael Anderson from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at U of T. Stewart is also director of the Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health.
Of particular concern are the dramatic health disparities between the general Canadian population and remote First Nations.
“As an Indigenous person, you have two choices — to die or assimilate,” says Stewart. “The reserve is just part of that. There are hundreds of policies in the Indian Act that are to that objective — of eradicating Indigenous populations.”
The research team planned to test lake water this year, but has been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and, as often happens with long-term projects, Northwest Angle 33 must hold elections, as mandated by the Indian Act, causing another delay. LEGACY OF LOGGING From cut deadhead logs stuck in the lake to the anchors used to chain the booms drilled into the island rocks, logging operations have left a legacy that is visible throughout the isolated reserve.
For many years, residents of Northwest Angle 33 have pointed to the black spruce trees and the mysterious gas that bubbles from their logs. In the early 1980s, scientists in the region discovered that black spruce stimulates the production of methylmercury.
In 2000, scientists at the University of Montreal discovered that clear-cutting forests increased mercury contamination in nearby lakes by up to 100 per cent. And as the mercury was released into the water, it moved into the food chain.
Today, fishermen from Northwest Angle 33 take photos of bleeding fish.
In 2016, the Star reported on internal emails of top environment ministry officials in Ontario who had warned that clear-cut logging releases mercury into the environment. The emails were in reference to a plan for more clear-cut logging near Grassy Narrows.
The scientists warned that no one was tracking the downstream implications.
The mercury contamination and illness and early deaths at Grassy Narrows and White Dog First Nations have prompted other Northern First Nations to seek answers about the pulp and paper industry and contamination of soil and water.
At Northwest Angle 33, residents have asked the government to investigate but that hasn’t happened, and there remains no proven link between the reserve’s water advisories and its cancer rates. Leaders from the community say they have been asking for an investigation since 2010, a year before they were put on a long-term drinking water advisory.
AHealth Canada cancer study began in 2015, but stalled and no environmental tests were conducted.
Seven other First Nations in the region, including Grassy Narrows and White Dog, wanted to be included in the study, but there was not enough funding. Northwest Angle 33 was commissioned by the First Nations Environmental Contaminants Program to study the cause of cancer in its community, according to information acquired through the Access to Information Act.
Northwest Angle 33 is working with researchers to build a framework for healing people on their Angle Inlet reserve. It has yet to be determined what this will look like.
“I cannot express enough the need for healing for them and their families,” says Norma Girard, a band councillor for Northwest Angle 33 who has lost two generations of her family to cancer. “The sustenance of our water. It’s so important we find the source of contamination, put it to rest by way of bringing those people peace.” WATER CONTAMINATION In Northwest Angle 33, where water is seen as a sacred resource, more than 70 per cent of residents did not consider their main water supply safe for drinking, according to community surveys in the 2017 University of Toronto report, which was co-authored by Cancer Care Ontario.
Environment Canada has found several contaminants in Lake of the Woods, including mercury, according to the agency’s monitoring reports. And more than a decade ago, potentially toxic bluegreen algae blooms and declining quality of the lake water caused Environment Canada to assess parts of the region.
Two boil water advisories have been in place since 2011. In 2016, Health Canada found that water from the reserve’s west-end pumphouse plant contained a lethal chemical cocktail — including radium, uranium and lead — which formed radionuclides that are linked as a cause for various kinds of cancer. A do-not-consume advisory, the most serious level, was issued. The First Na
“No one would listen. But then along came (Justin) Trudeau and more promises.”
LILI SIOUI ANGLE INLET’S WATER OPERATOR
tion’s council declared a state of emergency.
Three years before this advisory, Lili Sioui, Angle Inlet’s only water operator since 2010, found exceedances in particle activity that create radionuclides.
“No one would listen,” says Sioui. “But then along came (Justin) Trudeau and more promises. We became an overnight emergency because of timing and political agendas.”
Today, half the community relies on untreated surface water from the lake.
The reserve has several pumphouse plants to supply water to the community, but they have been continuously defective.
Samples taken at both Angle Inlet pumphouse plants have exceeded health limits for chemical and bacteria elements such as turbidity, colour, dissolved organic carbon, total dissolved solids, manganese, sodium, chlorine, heterotrophic plate count, total coliforms and E.coli. Both are now closed.
The Angle Inlet reserve has received substandard repairs to their water and wastewater systems for so long that bandage repairs only compound the problems and the costs.
Water inspectors’ reports to Indigenous Services Canada have noted high levels of trihalomethanes (THM) — chemical compounds believed to be carcinogenic — in the eastern pumphouse plant on the Angle Inlet reserve.
The same inspectors labelled the water source as high risk.
Northwest Angle 33 has another reserve near Sioux Narrows called Dog Paw where exceedances in THMs have been found, according to the 2017 U of T cancer report. THMs were again found at Dog Paw in 2018. The water operator indicated there were more THM exceedances in 2019.
In Northwest Angle 33, the journey to clean water has been multi-generational.
In 1975, three Northwest Angle chiefs approached numerous federal government departments, including what was then known as the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, imploring the government for new water and sewage systems.
“To those living in the communities served by sewer and water systems,” the chiefs wrote, “this may seem like a routine request. To our people, it is not. It is more than a question of convenience. It is a question of the health, well-being and even the survival of our people. The present water sources are such that we must boil water.”
One of the chiefs who made the request, Ronald Sandy, has since died of cancer. The disease spread throughout his family, afflicting his brothers and nephews.
“We only know that we must continue to use outhouses and carry water through the long winter and we must continue to risk our health and the health of our families every day that proper sewer and water treatment are not available to our people,” Sandy wrote with the other chiefs.
“We want you to think of this in terms of the human problems involved. We want the importance of our lives and health to outweigh budget considerations.”
In the document, the chiefs protested regulations created by the Indian Act that led to the depletion of their natural resources, such as wild rice, forests and fish.
They also made a request to the Human Rights Commission for assistance to determine the best way of investigating whether their people were being discriminated against.
Today, experts believe that one of the most damaging functions of the Indian Act has been the governance system. The belief is that Indigenous self-government is a key step in getting out from under the Indian Act, but many First Nations are not in a position to do this.
Under the Indian Act, these same First Nations must hold elections every two years.
For a reserve lacking human resources, the constant shuffling of chiefs, councils, and mandates — combined with the wait for funding and project approvals — has created an inertia in which the people of Northwest Angle 33 find themselves.
By the time a project is approved, they must enter another election. And now COVID-19 protocols have halted outside access to the reserve.
It has now been 10 years since the First Nation says it first asked Health Canada for an investigation into the cause of the cancer affecting its band members.
Norma Girard completes her band duties from Keewatin, a suburb of Kenora, where her mother took her as a child to keep her out of the residential schools.
Girard, and many others, have watched the reserve community dwindle.
“It’s a flawed system,” she says, in reference to the Indian Act. “It’s not designed for the purpose of helping First Nations communities at all.”
Finding the answer for cancer has become a key step in rebuilding their historic community. But still the Indian Act stands in their way of seeing the project through.
“We were forgotten,” says Girard. “We want to know what’s going on in our environment.”