The Neskantaga First Nation in northwestern Ontario hasn’t had access to safe tap water since 1995.

A generation of residents have grown up and begun to raise children of their own under a permanent boil water advisory, despite decades of federal government promises to address the water crisis on reserves. It’s the longest running boil water advisory in Canada, but just one of almost 100 currently in place.

Last month, things got worse. The reserve’s water pump and backup pump both broke down and tap water was no longer filtered.

The boil water advisory was replaced with a “do not consume” warning. Some homes had no running water at all. The community’s school was closed.

A mother in Neskantaga cleans and rinses her baby’s bottles. The Neskantaga First Nation hasn’t had access to safe tap water since 1995. Photo: Samer Muscati / Human Rights Watch.

The unfiltered water led to an immediate spike in residents visiting the local health centre, complaining of headaches, skin rashes and stomach problems.

Neskantaga — an Oji-Cree community of about 300 people accessible only by plane and by winter roads — joined 13 other reserves in Canada with do-not-consume water advisories.

On the morning of Sept. 14, two days after the pump failure, Neskantaga Chief Chris Moonias asked Indigenous Services Canada to assist with a community evacuation, but it refused, claiming that the repair would be quick and that there were “no immediate health or safety risks” to residents.

Moonias, unconvinced, declared a state of emergency.

“This continued water crisis goes beyond boiling contaminated water,” he said in a statement. “The bigger issue is that peoples’ basic fundamental human rights are being contravened and continually ignored.”

About 220 people — those most directly affected, such as infants and chronically ill adults — were evacuated by air to Thunder Bay, about 430 kilometres south of the reserve. They waited while a new pump was flown in from southern Ontario and installed, and for the water to be tested.

“I never thought it would happen,” a 24-year-old-mother who was evacuated told The Tyee. (She declined to share her name, citing personal reasons.)

“I thought it was a solid joke, honestly.”

Some residents make the trip to get water from the community’s reverse-osmosis machine, the only free source of clean drinking water on the reserve. The machine, photographed in 2015, breaks down a few times a year. Photo: Samer Muscati / Human Rights Watch.

High transportation costs mean groceries are expensive and residents rely on cheap, processed drinks, resulting in an elevated diabetes rate in Neskantaga. A 3.75-litre bottle of water cost $7.25 in 2015. Photo: Samer Muscati / Human Rights Watch.

It took about a week for the do-not-consume advisory to be lifted, and the evacuated community members began returning home on Sept. 23.

The water situation returned to the way it was the past 24 years — tap water that looks more like tea and that has to be boiled before drinking, and showers that can make residents itchy for over an hour.

“It’s yellow,” said the mother, “but sometimes I drink it when I have no choice.”

Usually she drives her truck twice a week to get water at the small, out-house-like structure that houses the reserves reverse-osmosis treatment system, near the motel that overlooks Attawapiskat Lake.

It’s the only place on the reserve residents can get free clean water, open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekends. Residents typically have to make a few trips a week. The machine has been prone to freezing and malfunctioning, forcing the First Nation to rely frequently on expensive bottled water shipped to the remote community.

For over 42 years, federal governments have been talking about solving the water crisis on reserves.

In 1977, the federal cabinet accepted a memorandum by then prime minister Pierre Trudeau on providing reserves “with the physical infrastructure that meets commonly accepted health and safety standards, similar to that available in neighbouring, non-Indian communities.”

But there was never legislation to cover on-reserve needs such as education, health and drinking water.

Only piecemeal policies and programs were approved, resulting in “confusion about federal responsibility for funding them adequately,” found a 2011 auditor general’s report.

The problem was reiterated in the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report. Indigenous communities “cannot effectively plan and control the delivery of their services because the federal government has not created a legislative base to hold itself accountable,” the commission found.

That has created uncertainty about questions like who is responsible for things like building and maintaining water treatment systems.

Youths walk along the road in 2015 in Neskantaga First Nation, a remote community in northern Ontario which has been on a boil water advisory since 1995. Photo: Samer Muscati / Human Rights Watch

Then there’s the problem of changes in government. In 2005, the Paul Martin Liberal government signed the Kelowna Accord, a $5-billion, 10-year commitment that included $400 million for clean water on remote reserves. But when the Harper Conservative government came to power the following year, the deal was scrapped.

And so the water crisis persists — due to inadequate funding, confusion about jurisdiction and poor water management, monitoring and personnel training.

Human Rights Watch found in 2016 that many water technicians and operators received limited education and training — learning through “trial and error” — and virtually no support.

“I learned by myself, by the book,” said one.

But every reserve is unique in its challenges.

On the Neskantaga reserve, it was an incorrectly built filtration system that resulted in the 24-year boil-watery advisory. For others, it might be a polluted well or a lack of pipes.

In the 2015 election campaign, Justin Trudeau promised he would help lift all drinking-water advisories on reserves by March 2021.

When his Liberal government came into power in November of that year, there were 105 reserves with water advisories. Government data show that 87 have been lifted during their term, with 56 remaining.

But in the same period, advisories were issued for another 39 reserves.

Neskantaga, with $8.8 million from the new government, was supposed to have a new water treatment facility by spring 2018. But the contractor the nation chose did not meet the deadline, and they were fired in February.

With a new contractor, the facility is now expected by next month at the latest.

Meanwhile, the Liberals have pledged to meet their March 2021 deadline for eliminating all drinking-water advisories on reserves. The NDP have promised that it would do it even faster if elected. The Greens have also pledged to address the issue, while the Conservatives announced Friday they will “continue to support efforts to end long-term boil-water advisories, which were first started by the previous Conservative government.”

Considering the confusion that still exists around responsibilities, the problems are not likely to end soon.

The Tyee made multiple unsuccessful attempts to interview someone from the band office and health centre and was unable to reach Chief Moonias by email or phone.

Due to the psychological affects of the 25 year BWA, it will take another generation to trust the water after the BWA has been lifted. If it’s ever going to be lifted. Even today, we have a hard time trusting any water from the tap. Pictured is a boiled water from Neskantaga pic.twitter.com/5zaj4pHjXC

— Chris Moonias (@can_ndn) December 7, 2018

But Moonias, in a tweet from last year, noted the “psychological” effects of these water advisories. It’s stressful wondering if water from the tap for a drink or a bath will make you and your kids sick.

In his community, Moonias says, “it will take another generation to trust the water after the BWA [boiled water advisory] has been lifted.”

“If it’s ever going to be lifted,” he added.

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Cape Town, South Africa is running out of water.

Compared to Gilford Island, a Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation reserve on B.C.’s temperate rainforest coast, that sounds like an upgrade — at least in Cape Town they still have some water to drink.

Kwakwaka’wakw Hereditary Chief Bill Wilson’s mother is from that reserve. For 50 years, he has watched the water quality decline — first, as logging removed the island’s natural filtration systems, then, as a series of bungled procurements failed to deliver a water filtration system that worked.

“You have young kids breaking out in skin rashes,” says Wilson. “If it was a white community, they would have the best facilities immediately. Because it’s an Indian community nobody gives a shit.”

The David Suzuki Foundation published a new report in February on water issues on First Nations reserves. It found that while some progress has been made to correct the massive shortage of safe water on reserves, there remains a spending gap and a lack of follow-through on many of the measures recommended by governmental and non-governmental agencies.

“I am mother to a five year old; I can only imagine the frustration, the heartache, the amount of work it would take to run a household where you can’t put your kid in the bath, where you can’t wash yourself, where you’re hauling water to do dishes,” says Alaya Boisvert, co-author of the new report.

“The fact that people were so shocked that that could happen, it’s important for the Canadian public to realize that there are thousands of people living in more than 100 communities in Canada going without access to clean water, and in some cases already have been for a decade or more.”

“If it was a white community, they would have the best facilities immediately. Because it’s an Indian community nobody gives a shit.” https://t.co/CRyO8FTYHg

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 28, 2018

According to the Department of Indigenous Services, as of February 12, 81 long-term drinking water advisories are in effect on reserves south of the 60th parallel; Health Canada reports an additional 26 short-term advisories as of the end of 2017.

The federal government has pledged that they will all be lifted by 2021, but a Parliamentary Budget Office report found the government had over the previous years fallen 30 per cent short of providing enough funding to solve the problem.

The 2018 budget contains $172.6 million more over three years for drinking water on reserves.

“We’re making new investments that will accelerate work to deliver clean, safe drinking water to Indigenous communities ahead of schedule,” Finance Minister Bill Morneau said in his budget speech on Tuesday.

“We’ve already lifted 52 long term boil-water advisories, and mister speaker, we’re on track to have all others eliminated by March 2021.”

The federal government doesn’t track water issues in communities north of 60, but in the Northwest Territories, the community of Colville Lake has had a boil water advisory in place since June of 2004 due to an inability to get qualified staff. Departments responsible for water safety in Nunavut and Yukon did not return requests for information on their water advisories.

Like Colville Lake, many of the advisories are due to a lack of trained personnel, and several of the First Nations DeSmog Canada contacted were not desperate to have a new system in place; there are degrees of challenge ranging from the inconvenient to the dire.

In the Tlazten First Nation community of Middle River, residents get drinking water from Fort St. James, about a two-hour round trip away.

“Summertime, springtime it gets really bad,” says Mitchell Roberts, a public works attendant. He says residents get frustrated at the lack of safe water.

For Shoal Lake 40 reserve on the Manitoba/Ontario border, the situation is much more serious. The community has had a boil water advisory for 21 years as of this February while the construction of a treatment plant has been an emotional rollercoaster ride of promises, delays, plans, alterations, and more delays.

Cuyler Cotton is in charge of the water system project on Shoal Lake 40.

“It’s more than frustrating,” he says, breathing a tired sigh into the phone. “Living with this sort of thing on a daily basis; struggling with five-gallon jugs to waltz around when you’re trying to get a glass of juice for your 10 year old or your grandmother. For 20 fucking years. And being ignored. Being told that your expectations to have equitable treatment like the rest of Canada is too expensive.”

Cotton bristles when asked if he believes the extra $172 million in the new budget will make a difference.

“Fuck right off, build this plant — then we’ll believe you,” he says. “That’s not a question that should be directed at First Nations in Canada. It’s insulting.”

For both Cotton and Wilson, the answer isn’t more help from Ottawa in the form of external contractors and bureaucrats. It’s giving the money over to where it’s actually needed, and letting communities find solutions.

“Only the people living with the problem should be provided with the money,” says Wilson.

“Give them the damn money and they’ll fix their own problems,” echoes Cotton.

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