It’s about clean water. It’s always been about clean water. Miranda Dick, Secwépemc, repeatedly emphasizes the importance of clean water when she speaks about her actions trying to stop the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline. She said for her whole life, stemming from her mom and dad, she’s been protecting the watershed. Her mom passed away from cancer more than 18 years ago. “She always said it was in the food we eat and the water we drink – this cancer would be contaminating our human consumption. So she always said to protect clean water, protect the berries, and protect the salmon and the deer. It’s our food supply, right?” remarked Miranda. “So I always led with that, over the course of time, protection of clean water.”

After a wildfire tore through the forest around Kakisa, N.W.T., in 2014, Lloyd Chicot began noticing changes in the lake: the pickerel grew fatter, and the pelicans moved in. Chicot, the chief of Ka'a'gee Tu First Nation, attributes the change partly to climate change and partly to runoff from the fire, which brought nutrients and debris into the lake. "Right after the fire, there was a lot of burnt driftwood and that kind of stuff," he recalled.

“I think it is time for Indigenous leaders and communities to take a look at how much participation in resource extraction is too much and how to mitigate some of these things and push towards water conservation and other things we know will help to curb forest fires,” said Houle. A hot and dry spring has meant that there has been little precipitation to help firefighters battle the blazes.

A new copper plaque on the boulevard along Broadway at Donald Street aims to educate Winnipeggers about the source of their drinking water and the community surrounding it — Shoal Lake 40 First Nation. "For years Winnipeg members, their citizens, were able to … turn on their tap," said Chief Kevin Redsky of Shoal Lake 40 First Nation at the unveiling of the plaque on Friday.  The plaque pays tribute to Shoal Lake as the source of city water since 1919, when the Winnipeg aqueduct was completed. It explains how the project impacted the First Nation community and its relationship with water. "The 24-year boil water advisory, the sickness created bathing our own children, not being able to drink safe water," Redsky said.

The Ktunaxa, Secwépemc and Syilx Okanagan Nations and their members will benefit from new interim agreements that share revenue generated from the Columbia River Treaty. Through the three separate interim agreements, the Ktunaxa Nation, Secwépemc Nation and Syilx Okanagan Nation will each receive 5% of the revenue generated through the sale of Canada's share of downstream power benefits under the treaty, otherwise known as the Canadian Entitlement. The proposed interim agreements will share this revenue over four years.

The Land Back movement has called for global solidarity to address the oppression and dispossession of Indigenous Peoples’ lands and territories. The alienation of Indigenous Peoples from Water has largely been absent from this call to action. However, there is a growing consensus among Indigenous Water Protectors who assert that there cannot be Land Back without Water Back.

The MP brandished a container of gray and opaque water in front of the journalists, demanding a Parliamentary commission concerning the alleged toxic discharges into a watercourse adjacent to the G&R Recycling site at the northwest end of Kanesatake. “If that’s water that we find on the ground in Kanesatake because of an illegal dump that is contaminated, no one wants to live in an environment like that,” the MP said.

A group that claims to speak on behalf of citizens of Kanesatake is calling for an independent commission of inquiry with the participation of the United Nations on the crisis in the Mohawk community of Kanesatake. NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice participated in a demonstration that brought together about 25 people in front of the office of the Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller Tuesday in Montreal. The MP brandished a container of gray and opaque water in front of the journalists, demanding a parliamentary commission concerning the alleged toxic discharges into a watercourse adjacent to the G&R Recycling site at the northwest end of Kanesatake.

Three main barriers impede access to safe services for many people in high-income countries, according to the new paper. First, systemic racism underlies inequities and limits access to resources, said the article. Historically marginalized people and low-income communities are more likely to lack access to safe water and sanitation. Those groups include minority racial and ethnic populations as well as Indigenous communities, migrants and people of colour, said the co-authors. In the United States, for instance, the authors found Native American households are 19 times more likely, and Black or Latinx households are nearly twice as likely, to be without functional water and wastewater access than households identifying as white. Second, changes to infrastructure financing, including a move to full-cost pricing in HICs, have reduced subsidies to people lacking services.  Third, gaps persist because availability and quality of services are tied to housing and property ownership. Linking property to water and sanitation services is a policy choice that disadvantages groups including migrants, people living in poverty and people experiencing homelessness or in unstable housing, said the paper.   

Line 5 transports crude oil through the heart of the Great Lakes, an invaluable cultural resource for residents and visitors to the region who benefit from the connection with the water and the land. The pipeline has already leaked 29 times, spilling over 4.5 million litres of oil and putting 84 percent of North America’s surface freshwater at risk. And yet, Canada continues to prioritize the ongoing operation of the pipeline over this critical global freshwater system.

Leaders and community members in the Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) of Kanesatake are demanding help in decontaminating a dump site that could affect water quality in one of Quebec's most popular lakes. Mohawk Council of Kanestake Grand Chief Victor Bonspille said he is in contact with Canada and his community's environmental protection office to find a solution to toxic water leaking off a now-closed recycling operation in the community west of Montreal.

The controversial Canada-U.S. oil and gas conduit known as Line 5 could be facing its toughest challenger yet: the very watershed the pipeline's detractors are trying to protect. Spring flooding has washed away significant portions of the riverbank where Line 5 intersects Wisconsin's Bad River, a meandering, 120-kilometre course through Indigenous territory that feeds Lake Superior and a complex network of ecologically delicate wetlands.

On a sunny Tuesday evening in Fort Simpson, N.W.T., Derek and Julia Erasmus cook up a dinner of waffles and sausages as their two young daughters play outside.  Watching them, you wouldn't know just how difficult the past two years have been. They were one of 10 families who lost their house when the community flooded in 2021. "It's kind of just a huge life-changing event," Derek said. "We kind of thought we were going to retire in that house some day … then those plans were all gone after that."

Your best hope is to fish down and try and catch hold of the old wires or some other part of the pump, then pull it up. Find a stout metal hook, tie it securely to a 1/4-inch cord, then try your luck. You might just connect with a loop or hole on the pump and pull it up that way.

Nooks Lindell was sitting in his home, having tea with his cousin, two summers ago when he saw a group of people working out on the land outside his home. He later learned the people were surveyors looking at the land as the potential site of Arviat's new fuel tank farm. "I was shocked. I was pretty upset," Lindell said of finding out about the potential tank farm location. Lindell lives in the home where he grew up in Arviat. He and his partner are raising their two young children there. "I spent the last two years at home being a stay at home ataata (father) … so I've spent a lot of time looking out the window right where they're going to put that tank farm," he said. 

An update on the area of notification connected to the fuel leak at the Lhtako Gas & Convenience Store has been provided. SLR Consulting, the environmental consultant hired by Lhtako, says the area of notification for tap water sampling includes 36 separate legal properties off-reserve, and 1 on-reserve property. It says 30 off-reserve properties and the 1 on-reserve property have been tested as 4 of the legal properties share a well with an adjacent property and one has no building and is not occupied. SLR says to date the water on just 3 properties have been identified as having concentrations of gasoline-related parameters above Health Canada and provincial drinking water criteria.

In early February, Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in northern Alberta started fielding calls from community members after the provincial regulator revealed toxic wastewater had been leaking for months from a tailings pond at Imperial Oil's Kearl oil sands mine. Many in the community hunt and fish downstream of Canada's huge bitumen mines, and wanted to know if the game meat in their freezers was safe to eat.

The Okanagan can expect more spring floods, but also longer and drier summers in the future. That’s thanks to climate change, says James Littley, deputy administrator with the Okanagan Basin Water Board. “According to the 2020 report, climate projections for the Okanagan region, we will see warmer temperatures here,” Littley told delegates to the Southern Interior Local Government Association convention in Vernon on Tuesday.

A recent string of leaks from tailings ponds at oil sands operations upstream has once again drawn attention to the profound transformation Canada’s largest industry has had on the region – and the distrust that comes with it. In May, Calgary-based Imperial Oil notified Alberta’s energy regulator it had discovered discoloured water near its Kearl oil sands project. The regulator soon concluded the water had come from tailings ponds where the company stored the toxic sludge-like byproducts of bitumen mining. Environmental samples showed high levels of several toxic contaminants, including arsenic, iron, sulphate and hydrocarbon – all of which exceeded provincial guidelines.

Indigenous communities in Canada's oil sands region on Monday called for Alberta's energy regulator to be disbanded and replaced following a months-long toxic tailings seepage from Imperial Oil's Kearl oil sands mine. Community representatives were testifying to a parliamentary committee in Ottawa about the impact of the leak and ongoing concerns about oil sands tailings management.