Opinion: Clean water for First Nations must be a national priority
Anja Geitmann is dean of the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at Â鶹AV, Jan Adamowski is a professor and director of Â鶹AV’s Integrated Water Resources Management Program and Julien Malard is a PhD student in Bioresource Engineering at Â鶹AV.Â
“Water is a crucial component of good health, not just physically, but for mental and emotional health as well. The issues of poor water quality and the ability to resolve the issues speaks directly to the lack of democracy and First Nation-led decision-making within the Indian Act,” says Chief Kevin Hart, the Manitoba Regional Chief for the Assembly of First Nations of Canada. “We need to have clean water in our communities in order to have healthy families in our communities. There are few things sadder than seeing spots on a child’s body that you know is due to poor water — a problem that is preventable if First Nation communities are provided with the proper resources.”
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