Pikangikum looks beyond housing, water crises for long term solutions
Click here to read the following Edmonton Journal story ...
Ont. reserve looks beyond housing, water crises - Deal may be near for improved services at Pikangikum
Steve Lambert, The Canadian Press - Published: Monday, January 08, 2007
PIKANGIKUM, Ont. -- Crammed into a ramshackle 700-square-foot house she shares with eight relatives, Juliette Turtle has resigned herself to a life without a decent roof over her head, a toilet or running water.
"I've just learned to accept it because there's no housing," the 58-year-old says through a translator as she sits on her worn beige sofa beneath a leaky window.
A few steps away, one of Turtle's grandchildren lies in what passes for a bedroom -- a space with three mattresses covering almost every bit of the floor. Clothing is hung on hooks or strings on the wall.
Pikangikum First Nation resident Juliette Turtle sits in an overcrowded bedroom Friday as her grandchildren sleep.
Outside is an outhouse the family members share -- a situation faced by almost every family on the Pikangikum reserve, 300 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.
When the pit starts to fill with excrement, the Turtles fill it in, dig a new hole nearby, and move their floorless outhouse shack over it.
Also on the property are the gravesites of relatives, including some of the seven children Turtle has lost to suicide.
She's not sure why most of her 12 kids took their own lives, but it's not shocking in a community that has suffered one of the highest suicide rates in the world.
"After all the things I've gone through, I'm hoping my grandchildren don't have to go through the same things," Turtle says.
The community of 2,200 has a litany of problems that start with basic infrastructure.
Half of the 430 homes are falling apart and unfit to live in, yet continue to be occupied. Ninety per cent don't have running water or indoor toilets. Turtle and many other families haul water in jugs from the community's water treatment plant. Some draw water from a lake and boil it to make it safe.
Still, many in the community believe there is hope for the future.
After years of fighting the federal government over funding, a deal may be close at hand to build water and sewer lines, and more housing.
Federal officials and local leaders formed a working group in November to tackle the priority areas, and will meet again this week. Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice has promised swift action.
"We've made significant progress at the table," Prentice said last month. "In the new year, people will see us moving in a very tangible, concrete way."
Community residents are cautiously hopeful.
"This is something we've heard in the past," said Dean Owen, who served as chief for 18 months until last fall.
"There is hope . . . that all these things will start happening."
The band has received money to build about 10 new homes in each of the last several years, Owen said, but it's not enough to keep up with a growing population and the need to replace dilapidated houses.
Work to connect homes to the water treatment plant has been stalled since 2001, when the former Liberal government took over the band's finances. The books were in order, but the government felt the band was not addressing the community's social problems, including its alarming suicide rate.
Last September, a regional medical officer of health based in Kenora said Pikangikum's water troubles were putting residents at risk of developing disease. The town's electrical supply -- a diesel generating station -- is so overtaxed that residents were told not to put up Christmas lights this season.
Still, there are signs that life has begun to improve.
Mick Staruck, principal of Pikangikum's school, said the youth suicide rate peaked in 1999, when a half-dozen kids in his Grade 7 class alone took their own lives.
Over the last two years, only two children in the entire school have ended theirs.
Staruck credits a new wave of dedicated teachers recruited specifically from northern areas, along with new after-school programs and sports that have kept kids engaged and off the streets.
The school has forgone new supplies in order to hire its first guidance counsellor as well as several teaching assistants.