Communicating is the bare minimum

The city of Ste. Catherine, which is facing dozens of charges under the Fisheries Act for allegedly allowing Terrapure to dump toxic water into the Seaway, is finally engaging with Kahnawake after a series of face-palm-inducing communications failures.

It’s bad enough, of course, that the city of Ste. Catherine didn’t bother looping in Kahnawake to what was allegedly happening on lands that are covered by the Seigneury of Sault St. Louis land grievance. Same thing when it failed - alongside any other governmental body - to let Kahnawake know about the charges that were laid relating to an industrial facility just on the other side of what is currently considered Kahnawake’s border.

But then, after all this was revealed, for Ste. Catherine to call an all-hands-on-deck emergency meeting about Terrapure and let Kahnawake only find out about it by stumbling upon a French-only press release without so much as a heads up?

Nothing in the above picture signals respect.

After all, Kahnawake’s leadership shouldn’t have to run vital information about Seigneury of Sault St. Louis lands and waters through Google Translate in hopes of figuring out what the heck’s going on.

This approach culminated in an embarrassing public relations mishap a couple weeks back in which the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) put out a communique railing against its exclusion from an intergovernmental meeting thinking it had already happened, when in fact it had merely been requested.

Whatever blame the MCK has in that instance, grand chief Cody Diabo is certainly right when he complained it could have been averted with a phone call. It’s the least anyone could do, still light years away from the relationship set out in the Two-Row Wampum.

It seems like the PR debacle was a blessing in disguise, however, since it finally got Ste. Catherine’s attention, and now Kahnawake will be at that meeting to demand some answers at long last.

But while we’re glad to see the mayor of Ste. Catherine finally coming to meet face to face in Kahnawake and seeming to make an effort to reset things, it’s only the beginning of a start.

For one thing, it’s clear more work needs to be done when it comes to educating Kahnawake’s neighbours about their responsibilities to the community - or, imagine this, them educating themselves for a change - and particularly the importance of Kahnawake’s unresolved land grievance. Because even after Ste. Catherine acknowledged Kahnawake’s environmental and health worries, it compared these concerns to those of everyone else in the region who may be affected.

Well, it’s no surprise, but this means that on an important level, they just don’t get it.

We worry for everyone’s health and wellbeing, too, but let’s make this clear: Kahnawake’s concerns are unique in this situation, and Ste. Catherine and every municipality, agency, and provincial and federal body that comes near here needs to know it.

The Terrapure facility and the Ste. Catherine industrial park where it operates have long been a thorn in the side of the community. Putting industrial facilities handling - or should we say mishandling - toxic materials, right on the border of an Indigenous community? It’s the textbook definition of environmental racism.

What else can you call it considering the original Kahnawake Survival School had to move to a new building because the land where it stood, so close to the Ste. Catherine industrial area, had been contaminated by heavy metals; but still no one thinks to ring Kahnawake when known contaminants have been allegedly illegally dumped over and over again into the river?

It’s no surprise that the community meeting a couple weeks ago saw Kahnawa’kehró:non venting their frustrations about this situation and making it crystal clear that they don’t want industrial facilities on the edge of Kahnawake.

Even before these charges and the revelations about contaminated water being allegedly dumped into the river, poor air quality and strange odours in the area of the industrial park were making Kahnawa’kehró:non fear for their children’s health.

Not long ago, it was the Chateauguay fuel spill, and now this. Where does it end?

Even now, with the heat of the federal government and mainstream media breathing down its neck, the Terrapure plant apparently accidentally spilled as many as 1,000 litres of industrial water that flowed into a Ste. Catherine sewer just last week.

We don’t expect the anger over Terrapure to simmer down anytime soon, and with the recent revelations about a Monteregie health agency internal report that suggested Terrapure workers had been exposed to lead, first reported on by Radio-Canada, it’s not only in Kahnawake where a hard look at this facility has momentum.

But this is just one example of a bigger issue. Kahnawake has rights when it comes to what happens on its traditional territory, including environmental stewardship, and that’s the case whether outside communities and governments understand that or not.

TED Staff