Not cleaning Indigenous people’s water is genocide

Re ‘I’m afraid,’ Nov. 26

Many thanks for the Star series on “tainted water” investigated by several Ryerson journalism students and Star investigative reporter Robert Cribb. This health crisis facing the Oneida Nation on the Thames River is extremely serious, alarming and totally preventable. This is another example of the Canadian government’s genocidal policy of inaction and willful incompetence on crises affecting Indigenous people’s health and environment.

I fear there will be another Walkerton water crisis when seven people died from E-coli in the drinking water and over 1,000 became seriously ill in the summer of 2000. Tainted or contaminated water on the Oneida Nation and any other reserve is inexcusable and preventable if the Trudeau-Liberal government had the political will to act. I suspect many Indigenous people including children have become seriously ill or died despite the government’s many “boiled water advisories.”

Where are the national protests against the Trudeau government’s racist policies that drive its indifference and inaction on Indigenous health and environmental crises? Excuses and fake apologies from Prime Minister Trudeau and other ministers are a sham. The Oneida Nation and other First Nations together with many human rights and social justice activists demand an immediate end to the Canadian government’s genocide.

Don Weitz, Toronto