Reframe opening-night feature looks at drinking water inequities in Indigenous communities

In the documentary Boil Alert, Six Nations activist Layla Staats visits Neskantaga First Nation, a fly-in community about 450 kilometers north of Thunder Bay. This remote reserve has been under a boil water advisory for 29 years — a record for the longest in Canada.

Staats helps unload a shipment of water, shocked by the amount of bottles needed to sustain the community. “You said this was supposed to be a small one,” she quips.

Staats and community members deliver water from house to house, and the reality of life in this First Nation begins to sink in for Staats. Many of these plastic bottles will end up in the landfill; some will be burned. The “smell of plastic is not something you want to smell,” says community member Marcus Moonias.

As Staats’ visit continues, we observe bears rummaging through garbage strewn on the land and a fox meandering about. Children play baseball in a field. “I heard a story that one of the youth [here] said they felt like they didn’t exist,” shares Staats. Moonias emphasizes the social impact that the lack of clean drinking water has had on community wellbeing, contributing to depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation.

Local First Nations also face drinking water inequities

A screening of Boil Alert will open this year’s Reframe Film Festival on January 25, bringing Neskantaga’s story to Treaty 20 territory, where local First Nations have also experienced the impacts of inequitable access to clean drinking water.

In 2021, then-Chief of Curve Lake First Nation Emily Whetung led a class-action lawsuit against the federal government on behalf of all Indigenous people who have experienced a long-term drinking water advisory since 1995, including Curve Lake citizens. The lawsuit settled, with the federal government agreeing to put $6 billion toward the construction and operation of water treatment facilities and another $1.8 billion to be paid in compensation to impacted First Nations and individuals. (The claims deadline is coming up.)

In October 2023, Hiawatha First Nation celebrated the opening of a new water treatment plant, bringing to an end decades of boil water advisories for about one-third of that community.

“Water is life,” said Hiawatha Chief Laurie Carr at the opening of the plant, according to the Peterborough Examiner. “In August, I turned on the water at home for the first time in 31 years, knowing that I could drink my water and be safe.” 

More than 100 homes still need to be hooked up to the new treatment system, Carr said.

Meanwhile, Curve Lake First Nation citizens will have to keep waiting for their new water treatment plant. Most Curve Lake buildings are served by groundwater wells, but that source “cannot meet for the community’s water demands” and has failed water quality tests, according to the terms of reference for a new treatment facility. Funding for the treatment plant, which would treat and deliver water from an intake in Buckhorn Lake, has not been announced.

Activist’s travels helped her reclaim her Mohawk culture and identity

From its outset, Boil Alert emphasizes the powerful, spiritual significance water holds in Indigenous cultures. In Neskantaga, the struggle for land rights and clean drinking water is closely aligned with the struggle for self-worth and identity, for meaningful and equitable inclusion within the colonial project.

Throughout the documentary, Staats travels to different Indigenous nations across Turtle Island that are suffering from the impacts of environmental racism. Each destination serves as a pilgrimage point on her “Red Road,” which she explains is her path to reclaiming her Mohawk culture and identity which she was separated from in her early years.

Toward the end of the film, Six Nations of the Grand River hosts a Nation to Nation discussion and press conference with Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs. “It’s safe to say that we need to come together as people to understand what we mean to the land,” says one speaker.

The gathering affirms what Staats has been exploring up until that point in the film: the undeniable link between the wellbeing of the land and its impact on the health of the people who live there, and how, when Indigenous peoples are supported in their traditional ways of caretaking and connecting with the land, the spiritual wellbeing of communities will improve.

Peterborough Currents is happy to publish this story about the 2024 Reframe Film Festival. As a sponsor of the festival, Currents committed to providing coverage of it, but we maintained editorial independence over our content throughout.