LUST FOR DIAMONDS: INDIAN AFFAIRS AND DE BEERS “SCROOGE” KASHECHEWAN

MNN. Dec. 23, 2005. “Quit ‘Scrooging’ them around!” This is what Indian Affairs and De Beers are doing to members of the Cree Nation of Kashechewan. Remember that isolated northern Ontario community on James Bay? That’s where the engineering geniuses at Indian Affairs designed and built a multi-million dollar water treatment plant that spewed filth and sewage into tap waters for nine years, starting almost from the day it was built. “Just put more chlorine in it and boil it”, said Health Canada, when the people said they wanted clean water. They’ve been sick and getting sicker.

In early November 1,000 people, that’s 50% of the community, were evacuated to faraway cities like Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie, Peterborough, Timmins, Cochrane, Sudbury and Cornwall to save their lives. Since then they have been put up in hotels and given vouchers for necessities, but little cash. This has lead to lonesomeness and other desperate situations. Families have been broken up. They don’t have money to use phones to keep in touch with each other.

About a week ago, Indian Affairs decided to move a family of six, the husband and wife and four children ages 14, 13, 12 and 8, from Sault Ste. Marie to the Akwesasne Women’s Crisis Shelter near Cornwall.

Apparently the couple went drinking one time. Who wouldn’t? The Children’s Aid Society got involved. Without consulting them, they spirited them to Cornwall. No rooms at any inns were found there because of Christmas bookings. They were taken to the crisis center. “There were high fences and high tech gates. It was like a prison with guards. Our people do have to get help for their problems. They were not told anything”, said the vice-chief of Kashechewan. “We were initially told that Cornwall could take 1,000 people. But there wasn’t even room for one family”.

The family was not told where they were being taken. They were as good as kidnapped except there were no black hoods put over their heads. They were never told where they would end up.

The family can’t go home. Their trailer has been gutted and is getting fixed. The water is still no good. It has to be boiled. In the infamous Walkerton water crisis, all the pipes were replaced. In Kashechewan they are only going to sanitize them. They say the water is frozen and can’t be drained. So how are they going to sanitize them? This situation gets worse. Indian Affairs won’t tell the people anything. The water is okay only for bathing and laundry if you’re not fussy about your whites. Ontario Water Works from Red Lake Ontario are up there maintaining and monitoring the water treatment manually. They have to stay there so nothing breaks down.

Indian Affairs won’t fix it because they say funding was accidentally misused. If the community gives it back, the plant will be fixed. It’s impossible. There’s no economy up there. There are no jobs and no income. How can they pay back $120,000? For this they are going to poison and kill everybody! Indian Affairs keeps cutting their budget all the time. No one has made Indian Affairs accountable for their miserable engineering job. For three years they have been asking Indian Affairs for funds to give special training to the native people to be certified to run the plant. No way! This would cut out Indian Affairs jobs! Guess what? The request has never been approved.

The family in Akwesasne would like to go Sudbury to meet up with other members of their family. Indian Affairs refuses because of the crisis they are in. The crisis who’s in, the family or Indian Affairs? When you feel so powerless, what are you going to do? Indian Affairs made a unilateral decision on their behavior. Said the vice-chief, “You guys, you think you can do this to my people? If you play dirty, we’ll play dirty too. Your treatment is totally inhuman and we’re going to tell everybody about it”.

Two mysterious strangers, a man and a woman, strode onto the scene. No one knows how they got there or who paid their way. When the people asked what they were up to, they said they were working behind the scenes to help them. The DART team did get a water purifier up there to purify and bottle water from the river. The woman made up a binder outlining their dire situation to get the help they needed. She got Band Council Resolutions to send to government ministers and to the Minister of Defence, Bill Graham. The Canadian public was told that everything was hunky dory. But no one responded to their requests. So they phoned and were told they never got the binders.

For three years Indian Affairs was working on an environmental assessment of the area. They consulted the people a few times for half a day with not more than 10 to 15 people. Indian Affairs approved the findings. They gave DeBeers Diamond Mine the right go ahead and start mining. The people did not understand the report and what DeBeers’ interest was. Indian Affairs did not translate the complicated material into Cree syllabic. It is a conflict of interest for Indian Affairs whose fiduciary duty is to protect the people and at the same time try to do business off their backs. The Province of Ontario and the federal government are going to get a portion of the royalties from the mine. The Indians, who own the land, get nothing. They may end up losing their lives because their environment has been damaged so badly.

These two strangers and some community members are on a negotiation team. Guess whose funding this negotiation team? DeBeers! DeBeers gave the team $114,000 to negotiate with them! What do you think of that? The woman attends meetings and speaks on behalf of the Kashechewan people without any people from the community present.

This woman is setting up a meeting in Toronto between the Kashechewan people, DeBeers and Indian Affairs. She even found a lawyer for them from Calgary, Jim HopeRoss. Is this starting to make sense? How do things look when you connect the dots? Who is helping the people of Kashechewan? They don’t have money. Indian Affairs refuses to help these people. They throw them at the mercy of De Beers who pays for the negotiations which is attended by Indian Affairs.

She did make a budget for the vice chief to visit the people who had been deported to the various cities. She got $50,000 to do this.

She also got Jim HopeRoss from Calgary as a lawyer for them. He does aboriginal land claims, oil fields and other resource fights for people from those areas. He told them they had a “win-win” case because they had not been told what Indian Affairs had done before DeBeers arrived on the scene and made their plans with them. Perhaps they should consult the remaining Kalahari Bushmen in Africa as to the tactics DeBeers used to remove them off their lands in order to mine for diamonds – murder, starvation, loss of hunting and gathering rights and deprivation of water, to name a few.

This negotiation meeting at the Delta Hotel on January 3, 2006, at 9:00 am is of great public interest. Three parties are involved. Who do the diamonds belong to? Are they a common gift to humanity, or are they private property? Can they be claimed by De Beers, a private company? By Canada, a colonial state? Or by the people of Kashechewan, the original occupants of the territory who never surrendered their land?

What do you think? Isn’t this an important public question? Remember that DeBeers supplies the U.S. military through their South African mines 60% of the diamonds for their lethal armaments such as bunker buster bombs and diamond dust in the metal to make the tanks shatter proof. Diamond mining contaminates the water table because they water blast the soil to erode it. The water contains chemicals, salts and other environmental hazards. The mind goes down thousands of feet. One in Africa goes 4 miles deep.

Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
Kahentinetha2@yahoo.com
Contact: Kashechewan 705-275-1043