Beautiful spring weather greeted the students at St. Benedict Catholic school May 5 as they performed an Anishinaabe-led ceremonial water walk to raise awareness of the importance and need for protection of water. St. Benedict’s Indigenous support worker and staff member of the school’s Diversity Club, Shannon Agowissa, led students from the school to a water fill station near the Gerry McCroy Countryside Sports Complex. There, they filled a ceremonial copper vessel with water and sang a traditional water song.

The water was quick, unforgiving. In a matter of days, the flooding on Peguis First Nation, believed to be the worst the community in Manitoba's Interlake has ever seen, displaced roughly 1,600 people and ravaged hundreds of homes. Peguis has 3,521 members usually living on reserve and 6,504 off-reserve members. The largest First Nation community in Manitoba is no stranger to flooding — over the last few decades, residents have been chased from their homes by rising waters several times — but that wasn't always the case.

The Milk River looks great right now, according to farmer Elise Walker. It's high, it's flowing and it's fairly clean. For now, she and about 30 to 40 other families in southern Alberta can continue using the water to irrigate their farms, helping to get them through a very dry spring. In fact, Walker already started to irrigate her 607 hectares (1,500 acres) of land at the end of March — the earliest ever.