Good morning. Tansi.
My name is Taralee Beardy. I'm the chief of the Tataskweyak Cree Nation. I come from the community of Split Lake, which is 900 kilometres north of Winnipeg, Manitoba. We have about 2,500 residents on reserve.
Our community lies on the banks of Split Lake, which is fed by Manitoba's two largest rivers: Nelson River and Churchill River. These rivers have expansive watersheds that include Lake Winnipeg and extend west to the Rockies and east to northern Ontario, including the English River system, which is polluted by mercury. So many pollutants in those systems will find their way to Split Lake.
For centuries, the water in Split Lake, Nelson River and Churchill River was the lifeblood of our people. It contained all the resources we needed. It had water for drinking, fish and wildlife for food, and medicine plants. Fish was once a mainstay of our diets and present in every meal, but starting in the 1960s, our water changed. Where we once had perfect, clean drinking water right in front of our community, our water became murky and dirty. Our lake was flooded. River banks eroded and our beaches disappeared because of the artificial regulation of the lake by Manitoba Hydro.
Our elders noticed that the water quality had changed, and they didn't understand why. It was because Manitoba Hydro had built a hydro dam at Kelsey without our knowledge or consent.
This caused a lot of health impacts to our people. People have eczema, gastrointestinal upsets and cancers. There's a lot of diabetes and kidney and neuromuscular ailments. H. pylori was common among our people. A lot of people had stomach ulcers. We didn't allow our children to swim in the lakes anymore because they were getting skin rashes and sores.
Our people no longer fish in Split Lake. They have to travel further north to the northern lakes to get some fish for our elders and community members. There's an absence of country foods from our diets. We're depriving people of recreational opportunities like just playing in the water, allowing the kids to swim and boating. Things like that have been taken away from our people.
The other concern we have is the infrastructure. The infrastructure is not there. Of all the homes in our Split Lake community, 138 have water tanks. We need funding for more water infrastructure. We have about four neighbourhoods that don't have access to fire protection. If a fire breaks out, we don't have any fire hydrants. It's operated by water truck, and oftentimes, our water trucks are down. We then have to hire a water truck from Thompson, Manitoba, to come and service our community. We have 138 houses on water tanks, and even this is an added cost. We have to pay for a service truck because the infrastructure in our community is not good.
I feel that Canada needs to do better, especially when it comes to water. Life is water. Water is life. Everything we depend on has to do with water.
As you are aware, in 2019, Split Lake had a lawsuit against Canada because of that. We had to fight for our right for clean drinking water, and to this day, we still do not have clean drinking water. I'm very grateful that we're getting a new water treatment plant to another source from another lake, Assean Lake. However, we're still drinking bottled water.
There are times when we have to get bottled water delivered to our community. There are times when we run out of water, because there's not enough to go around. We have to provide water to the schools, the offices and the health centre. For years, the nursing station always brought their own bottled drinking water, but not for our community. Thankfully, we now have bottled drinking water, because our current water treatment plant can't clean the water to make it safe enough for us to cook or bathe our children. Our children are still having skin issues to this day.
I want to thank you for giving me this opportunity to express the issues we are facing in our community of Split Lake.
Again, I want to say that our community is located north of the 56th parallel, and we're west of 96°, so we're up in northern Manitoba. It's quite remote. Luckily, we have a road, but there are other communities that do not, such as Shamattawa. They're located more northerly. We're supporting Shamattawa as well, because they still do not have clean drinking water at this time.
Thank you.