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A decade of despair in the Pikangikum First Nation
The reserve is home to 2,700 people next to a patch of pristine boreal forest that Canada hopes will be recognized as UNESCO World Heritage site. Yet for the last 15 years Pikangikum’s leaders have been begging whoever will listen for help.

An aerial view of the long-promised and now nearly completed construction of a new school in the remote Pikangikum First Nation.
An aerial view of the long-promised and now nearly completed construction of a new school in the remote Pikangikum First Nation. (FACEBOOK)

By ALLAN WOODSQuebec Bureau
Mon., April 25, 2016
There were few images more jarring than that of Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett slopping through the muck around a ramshackle water pumping station in a red shawl, red socks and red rubber duck shoes during a recent visit to the Pikangikum First Nation.

The reserve is home to 2,700 people and located in northern Ontario, next to a patch of pristine boreal forest that Canada hopes will be recognized as UNESCO World Heritage site. Yet for the last 15 years, Pikangikum’s leaders have been begging anyone who will listen for help.

Help for running water and indoor plumbing to replace the water stations and outhouses; help to upgrade its diesel-powered generating system or, better yet, to get hooked up to the electricity grid; help for a new school to replace the old one, which was built for 300 students and houses more than double that figure.

The community first requested funding for a new water system in 1999, more than 16 years ago. In 2007, then-Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice announced a $46-million infrastructure program, including a water system, a new school and a modern electricity system in Pikangikum.

But nothing had happened by 2011, when the water system broke down, prompting a state of emergency.

The chief at the time, Gordon Peters, wrote a desperate letter to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that described sewage lagoons and a string of 16 suicides in his community between 2006 and 2009 that prompted an inquiry by the Ontario coroner.

“We are living in fourth-world conditions in a first-world state,” read the letter, dated Oct. 12, 2011.

Things only got worse in Pikangikum. In January 2012, the school was temporarily closed after mould was discovered. Then, in November of that same year, the generators failed, leading to power outages in minus-20 temperatures and another state of emergency declaration.


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That declaration prompted emergency funding for blankets, gas heaters and repairs to the generators, according to news reports at the time. But the emergency was never lifted. It remains in place to this day — more than four years later — as one of 28 ongoing emergencies on First Nations reserves in Ontario.

Pikangikum’s chief and council declined interview requests, but allowed the Star to review a selection of the appeals, presentations and pleading letters it had sent to federal bureaucrats, aboriginal affairs ministers and even former prime minister Stephen Harper over the last decade.

“If you see first-hand how bad the situation is, Pikangikum believes, in spite of what has gone on in the past, that you will have no choice but to do the right thing,” former chief Peter Quill wrote to then-Aboriginal Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl in July 2009.

“It is inconceivable that what is happening in Pikangikum can be tolerated in modern-day Canada.”

That was followed by a letter to the prime minister in July 2012, expressing shock that, five years after the $46-million infrastructure promise, not a dime had been delivered. It warned: “The consequences of not acting can be measured in human lives.”

The next month, the federal government pledged to start work on a new school, but the other essential infrastructure promises — water, sewage and electricity — went unfulfilled.

“Despite numerous clear commitments from six ministers of the Department of Indian Affairs, I have met with Indian Affairs staff twice this year and I have been told, ‘Sorry, there is no money,’ ” then-chief Paddy Peters wrote in another letter to the prime minister, this time in 2015.

The next time that Pikangikum made the news, it was because of a tragedy. In March of this year, a house fire killed six adults and three young children — aged four, two and eight months.

The traumatic deaths were met with condemnation and condolences, but no specific promises of cash. At the time, Bennett said that money in the recent federal budget was meant to improve on-reserve housing and that Pikangikum’s plight was “a high priority” for the government.

The government said it is working to get the community connected to the electrical grid, which it believes is a first step toward alleviating other problems.

“Connection to the provincial grid is critical for the First Nation to be able to expand its infrastructure, help to alleviate overcrowding in homes, develop water and wastewater servicing in the community and contribute to the well-being of the First Nations’ residents,” a spokesperson said in a statement.




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