Ed Note: There are times when it seems as if the Nation is covering the same issues year after year and decade after decade. This is an excerpt of an editorial published in 2005. It still resonates.
When I first looked at the studies of mining contamination of the waters around Ouje-Bougoumou I was more than a little angry. Many of you, once you read the story will feel equally shocked and outraged over what has been withheld from the Ouje-Bougoumou people. This information is the smoking gun: the Quebec government’s own data show that the lake and river sediments are poisoned.
The amount of contamination allowable under Canadian federal law was illegally exceeded many times over and nothing has ever been done about it even to this day. Given that Quebec has suppressed the data from this study for three years, it’s obvious the government has no intention to enforce the law. This begs the question of whether or not the concepts of environmental protection, guidelines and law are real within Canada, and within the province of Quebec.
The Quebec government has known that the guidelines have been exceeded and are still allowing working mines to continue their old practices of dumping mine tailings and waste into the lakes. Is the lack of enforceability planned? Is the fact that the primary victims of this poisoning are Cree having any impact on these decisions.
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Epilogue: This excerpt was published in Volume 12, No. 20 on August 19, 2005. The Nation had already covered the Ouje-Bougoumou mining contamination story for almost a decade. Many at the time said there were no problems, or at least it wasn’t anything to worry about. American mine decontamination expert Chris Covel told another story. He had taken samples from the area and when he had them tested analysts said that they never had never seen such high levels of contamination.
It is still a problem as there has been no clean-up of the contamination. It’s a lesson for the Cree when looking at new mines in Eeyou Istchee. It was amazing when the Cree youth stopped a planned uranium mine from operating in our traditional territory.
Like the youth, all Cree should be concerned about the potential risks, not just to the environment but also the other inhabitants of the land – the animals and people. If we can’t even begin cleaning up the environment around Ouje-Bougoumou almost 20 years later, then don’t expect a lot from the federal or provincial governments when problems pop up in the future.