Kashechevan

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The Kashechewan or Kashechewan First Nation is one of the in Canada as First Nations designated Indian tribes . They belong to the Cree and live not far from James Bay , the southern bulge of Hudson Bay , more precisely on the north bank of the Albany River . The community has around 1900 inhabitants and is around 400 km from the nearest town.

Map of the region at James Bay

On the south bank lives the Fort Albany First Nation , which was founded together with the Kashechewan First Nation in the 1950s at Old Fort Albany . The area is connected to Attawapiskat, Fort Albany and Moosonee by winter ice roads .

The name Kashechewan goes back to the name chosen by the group, K ee shechewan - "where the water flows quickly". The name was changed to K ” £‹ a shechewan through a typo .

Along with seven other First Nations in Ontario , the tribe belongs to the Mushkegowuk Council , the local tribal council. This is represented by the Nishnawbe Aski Nation , which represents a total of 50 tribes of the 9 tribes affected in Northern Ontario. This in turn belongs to the Chiefs of Ontario .

Jonathan Solomon, Deputy Chief Philip Goodwin, has been the chief since 2006. There are also 12 tribal councilors and representatives for women, men and young people.

language

The language belongs to the Cree languages . C. Douglas Ellis, Professor of Linguistics at McGill University, collected legends, memories and conversations between 1955 and 1965 and published them bilingually. They document three dialects, the n-dialect (Swampy Cree, spoken between James Bay and northern Manitoba), the 1-dialect from the area around Moose Factory and the mixed n-1 speech , which he called Kashechewan Cree.

history

In 1674 the Hudson's Bay Company founded Fort Albany, which, apart from a brief French episode, was continuously owned by the company. In 1965 it opened a second post in Kashechewan, but it closed Fort Alberni in 1987. Since then , the North West Company has been running the two trading posts under the name Northern .

In 1905 , a reservation was created through the conclusion of Contract No. 9, which is one of the Numbered Treaties , the numbered treaties that the British Crown and Canada concluded with numerous tribes. The residents of this Indian Reserve 67 split into two groups in the 1950s, the Fort Albany and the Kashechewan. The former lives on the south side of the Albany River, around 15 km above the confluence with James Bay . The approximately 900 relatives live on the mainland as well as on Anderson Island and Sinclair Island. The Kashechevan live nearby, but on the north side of the river.

Current situation

Media and drinking water crisis

The Kashechewan became known nationwide in October and November 2005, when several hundred members of the tribe had to be evacuated because of coli contamination of the drinking water . The massive contamination had already been discovered on October 18 - but on October 24 the responsible Indian Ministry denied the need for an evacuation. But the very next day, the province's government arranged for around 800 tribesmen to be distributed to several locations for medical treatment.

It became public that the tribe had already been instructed to boil its drinking water for two years, although the water supplier had only set up a new system in 1998. Health Canada discovered the lack of training on the part of the operators, but also significant health problems, and uncovered a level of impoverishment that startled the Canadian public.

As early as 2001, a commission of inquiry from the Ontario Clean Water Agency , which was co-financed by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and the Ontario First Nations Technical Services Corporation , found that there were significant deficiencies in 62 First Nations in Ontario.

Two years later, Gilles Bisson and MP Charlie Angus reported on what would later become known as the Walkerton Tragedy . According to this, around 40% of the local population were affected by bacteria-related diseases. From April to October 2005 drinking water even had to be flown in to supply the Kashechewan.

flooding

The community, which had been in the public eye for months, became a symbol of the long neglect of these rural communities through further events. In April 2006 it came into focus again when the community had to be evacuated again - this time because of a flood. It should have been relocated long ago, complained Chief Leo Friday in June.

Suicide rate

Again in 2007 Kashechewan came into the focus of the media public. On February 7, 2007, The Star reported that in January alone, 21 teenagers, the youngest being nine, attempted suicide. Research found that the suicide rate, especially among youth, in First Nations communities was more than three times higher than in non-indigenous communities. The rate among adolescents in northern Labrador and Alberta was significantly higher.

On July 30, 2007, the Canadian government signed an agreement that will provide the community with $ 200 million to rebuild the infrastructure, rebuild houses, and repair a destroyed levee. The resettlement has since been refrained from.

That would at least address one of the two reasons why the suicide rate in indigenous communities is so high, namely the economic problems. The other problem that probably contributes to this behavior is the cultural uprooting that extended well into the earlier colonial phase and the attacks on self-determination and personal identity - at least that is how the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People saw it in 1995 .

The fact that the public discourse, largely led by the media, is itself a means of power, in that it repeatedly exploits stereotypes from the colonial era to assign guilt and responsibility, ability and inability to health and illness, has rarely been criticized.

Contract with De Beers

After five years of negotiations, Chief Jonathan Solomon and Chief Andrew Solomon of Fort Albany First Nation signed a contract with the diamond company De Beers Canada Inc. This so-called Impact Benefits Agreement offers in connection with the exploitation of the Victor mine, which opened in January 2008, at the common reservation land Indian Reserve No. 67 jobs and training positions for the Indians of the two tribes. De Beers, for his part, had already signed similar contracts with the Attawapiskat First Nation in November 2005 and with the Moose Cree First Nation in September 2007. The negotiations on preventing and, if necessary, compensating for possible environmental damage, supporting the communities and their cultural practices and compensating for negative effects on the traditional area and lifestyle turned out to be particularly complex. The ceremonial confirmation of the contract took place on December 1, 2009. The mine is the Group's first diamond mine in Canada and the second outside of Africa, De Beers reports. In 2009, 42% of the mine’s employees were from the five First Nations with whom the company has contracts. The mine offers 400 permanent jobs and processes 2.7 million tons of rock annually with a yield of 600,000 carats. A GDP of 6.7 billion dollars is expected, of which 4.2 for northern Ontario alone.

literature

  • Michelle WyndhaM-West: Phenomenologically Productive “Creation” Stories: Aboriginal Health Discourse and Mass Media Coverage of the Kashechewan “Crisis” , in: Explorations in Anthropology 9/1 (2009) 143–157.

Web links

See also

Remarks

  1. See Chiefs of Ontario .
  2. Review by Jennifer SH Brown (historian from the University of Winnipeg) on ​​C. Douglas Ellis (ed.): Âtalôhkâna nêsta tipâcimôwina: Cree Legends and Narratives from the West Coast of James Bay , in: Manitoba History 33, spring 1997 .
  3. ^ Fort Albany, HBC Heritage, Hudson's Bay Company , archive.org, September 25, 2012.
  4. See Kashechewan will not be evacuated: INAC, March 15, 2006 ( Memento of the original from September 15, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wawatay.on.ca
  5. See Karen Howlett / Bill Curry, Polluted reserve to be evacuated, in: National October 26, 2005 .
  6. Cf. Concerns over water on reserve ignored for years, in: CTV, October 27, 2005 .
  7. See Lauren La Rose, Kashechewan a 'community in crisis'. Wave of suicides by young people ravage Northern Ontario native community, The Star, February 7, 2007 .
  8. See Ontario Consultants of Religious Tolerance, Suicide among Canada's First Nations .
  9. See Richard Brennan: Ottawa to rebuild troubled reserve , in: The Star, July 30, 2007 .
  10. Choosing Life: Special Report On Suicide Among Aboriginal People, Royal Commission on Aboriginal People , Ottawa: Canada Communication Group Publishing, 1995.
  11. ^ Kashechewan First Nation and Fort Albany First Nation Sign Impact Benefits Agreement With De Beers Canada , Glückauf. mining reporter, December 7, 2009 , archive.org, December 24, 2009.
  12. De Beers Canada diamonds make history in Ontario , De Beers, March 24, 2009 , archive.org, May 27, 2010.