First Nation communities are in danger of mass pollution from industrial business that are operating within their lands. There are hundreds of cases in which industry has polluted water and soil on First Nations reserve lands — more than half of all reserve lands in Canada.
1948 Giant Gold Mine Plans:
N’dilo is a Dene community of over 200 people in the Northwest Territories that is literally being poisoned with arsenic in the soil and water. In 1948, the Giant Gold Mine opened across Great Slave Lake, without warning to the locals that they were pouring a dangerous arsenic that is easily dissolved in water.
Shortly after opening the mine, it emitted the same arsenic into the air, which settled into the snow. People became very sick and some children died as a result. Not much has changed since then. Arsenic levels in N’dilo soil are high enough to cause long-term health effects and levels of toxicity are more than three times the maximum arsenic level allowed for industrial land use.
History of N’Dilo:
During the Great Depression in the 1930s, those in search of gold headed north. When a prospector spotted a lump of gold on a Dene woman’s stove, it led to attention in Yellowknife as a potential gold mine. This eventually led to the opening of mines, including the Giant Mine in 1948.
Arsenic concentrations:
Despite its closure in 2004, the toxic legacy continues in Yellowknife. The upper limit of arsenic concentrations for industrial land use in Yellowknife is 340 mg/kg, according to a toxicology report obtained by VICE News through access to information. Next to N’dilo’s school, soil samples are 1020 mg/kg, and near some homes they are 1060 mg/kg, according to the same toxicology report by an engineering firm contracted by the Yellowknives Dene First Nation.
The mine was storing 237,000 tonnes of arsenic waste into underground chambers, and while the federal government has started to remediate the Giant Mine site, there haven’t been plans to clean up N’dilo or compensate the people for its effects.
Grassy Narrows and Other Reserves in Need of Cleaning:
In the 1960s, Grassy Narrows was contaminated with mercury that was dumped by a pulp and paper mill. This poisoned the fish and people who ate them. It took decades to pressure the Ontario government to fund a clean-up.
There are around 300 sites on 134 reserves that have been identified for clean-up between 2016 and 2020. The federal government defines contaminated sites as those with substances that exceed regulatory guidelines and pose or will likely pose hazards to human health and the environment.
Health Effects of Contaminants:
Contamination seen on reserves today is the result of past activities that were often not entirely recognized as harmful. The contamination range from hydrocarbons emitted from coal, gas, and oil industries to metals to cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
