RE: Why so few people on Six Nations reserve have clean running water, unlike their neighbours ( http://www.cbc.ca/radio/outintheopen/why-so-few-people-on-six-nations-reserve-have-clean-running-water-unlike-their-neighbours-1.4618968)
EXCERPT from the program:
. . . communities suffering from disease and death thanks to long-neglected water quality.
Martin-Hill . . . “I think we all know at some level that the environment has a lot to do with this. We just don’t have the data,” she said. “So my goal is ‘Let’s just … see if we can get a clearer picture of what’s happening.'”
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Dear Piya,
Thank-you to you, your team, and to Dawn Martin-Hill for “Out in the Open“, April 21, specifically for raising the issue of clean water.
(Clarify: I am not First Nations.)
Monday, 16th April, I made a presentation to my local Town Council regarding the cases of cholera and norovirus contracted from food harvested from Georgia Strait, offshore the east coast of Vancouver Island.
The association with human sewage is down-played. However, the reports from the
- BC Centre for Disease Control and from
- the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO)
both cite human waste in the marine environment as the likely cause.
“long-neglected water quality” is absolutely a serious issue, thanks to Dawn Martin-Hill for speaking up.
The cholera in the offshore water came to light after a First Nations (Cowichan Band, Vancouver Island) harvest of herring eggs, a centuries old cultural practice. Information in the submission to Council describes how cholera spreads. The symptoms are similar to norovirus – – severe diarrhea, vomiting, rapid dehydration.
Please see
The posting includes an update received after I made the presentation: 40 cases of norovirus is now 126 cases of norovirus.
I have come across no estimate of how many cases of either water-borne illness (cholera or norovirus) go UNreported.
(Aside: I find it ironic that some people believe Canadians can protect the West Coast from oil spills associated with a seven-fold increase in super-sized tanker traffic, when we can’t even regulate and innovate to stop the entry of sewage into waterways. It has the look of coming back to bite us in the ass – – very serious diseases.
Dawn Martin-Hill says, We just don’t have the data. In my experience with university research (e.g. Hydrology, Toxicology, Medicine (cancers), Dentistry (mercury poisoning)), they staunchly do not conduct research that might lead to true prevention of disease (actual removal of cause. You can live “healthy”, exercise and all that good stuff. But that won’t save you from the accumulating poisons in water. If you don’t know we’re in trouble when it gets to cholera, let alone the diseases that Dawn Martin-Hill is addressing, you know the level of subservience by influential people to economic – corporate interests, without doubt.)
I hope the information in my presentation to Council may be useful in some way. Anyone is free to copy and paste. From my perspective, information and knowledge are part of “The Commons”, upon which we are all dependent for survival.
Best wishes,
Sandra Finley