Thirteenth Blog

Sunrise outside my unit

I have been thinking about writing a blog about many problems residents of Shamattawa First Nations community face ever since the unfolding of events at Attawapiskat First Nations.

Just like most Canadians who have never experienced life in the reserves I was under the impression that the government of Canada took good care of the first nation communities and that the core of the problems laid with mismanagement on parts of the local chiefs and counsels. I must say that even after living here for more than a year I was still under the same false impression that members of the community receive hefty allowances to live a pretty comfortable life. But after a couple of days of research I was shocked to find out how short changed the locals really are, and still cant believe the amount of money they have to survive on in this harsh environment.

A storage in the community, 3:45pm

I talked to some of my local friends and asked them about average income and cost of living in this community. What I have found is astonishing. I am pretty sure many of you, my non-First Nation friends, will feel the same after reading this blog.

Here are some of the facts I manged to gather. I must say that some of the numbers might not be exact since I decided to be very conservative and take the minimum for costs and expenses and maximum numbers for income and government subsidies.


Social Assistance (Welfare cheque):
   
   $371 per adult per month

   $646 per child over the age of 6 per month

   $663 per child under the age of 6 per month

I was told those who are disabled receive a slightly higher rate which I am sure can not be higher by a few percents of the above sum.

Basic Expenses

$100 per month, house maintenance fee

$100 minimum per month, hydro bill (could be much more depending on the number of appliances)

$60 per month, for a land phone line with a Canada wide long distance plan

$80-$120 per month, for satellite TV (if they chose to subscribe)

$1000 per month, for fuel for heating ( Many in the community simply cant afford this fee and cut woods to keep warm!)

I would like to remind you that it gets pretty cold up here with typical low of about -30 for many winter nights. The houses that I have visited are poorly insulated or not insulated at all which can increase the amount of wood needed to keep the place warm. Not to forget the health hazards associated with burning woods in an indoor environment with almost non-existing ventilation.

Class Party

Running Water
There are houses without running water up here as well. Houses that not only don’t have running water but not toilets either so these people have to either head out in the freezing cold or have to use buckets!

Poor Quality of Tap Water
The other major issue is the poor quality of running water in this community. I have been here for more than a year and still can not bring myself to drinking the water. I take water from a spring which is about 3-4km away from the reserve on a pretty rough dirt road which is often inaccessible due to either mud or snow. There is however the option of buying water but that could cost you a lot of money up here. To refill a 20L container we have to pay $9. If you didn’t have a container, it could cost from $17-$20. Bottles of water can cost up to $3 per half a litre.

Class Party

Overcrowded Housing
Due to whatever reason, I wont speculate the supposedly financial rewards of having many children, houses are extremely overcrowded. It is quite normal to have families of more than 8 living in a house with two or three bedrooms.

Cost of Food
In my mind one of the biggest problems many northern communities face is the lack of quality and affordable food. Most reserves have a single blood-sucking food chain that charges an arm and a leg for basic food items at the lowest possible quality. A four-litre jug of milk costs $13.29 with expiry date of no more than 7-8 days. A loaf of cheap white bread costs about $5. There are a few items in the produce department but are too expensive for most locals to afford. Price is only half of the problem. The more sinister issue is the poor quality of the items available up here. There are shelves after shelves of ready made hot dogs and hamburgers, rows upon rows of pops, chips, candies, yet you would have a hard time finding juice and fruits. It is cheaper to buy pop than buying water which forces many to drink pop instead of water. I cant count how many times I have seen kids come to school in the morning having chips and pops as their take away breakfast. As a result more than half of the kids are missing numerous teeth, and unfortunately more chronic health problems are sure to follow.

A family can spend all the monthly money they receive from the government on food that may sustain them for one week only! It is no wonder that there is always a long line up at the town’s nursing station. Which brings me to my next point.

Cost of Health Care
Its true that the health care is free, but there is nowhere near the level of care people receive in other parts of the country. If it did, this place wouldn’t have one of the highest rate of TB in the world. I can understand its hard to bring in resident doctors up here but wouldn’t it be possible to have better incentives to have doctors up here. I can see them being successful with bringing in nurses with good enough incentives and am sure it would work if they used the same level of relative incentives with doctors. I can assure you that the cost of medical evacuation (medi-vac) at $10000 per flight would handsomely pay for a rotating resident doctor. I don’t know the exact number of medi-vacs per month but it is more than 25, as I often hear planes at odd times and most of those are for medi-vacs.

Class party

Government’s Claims
Every time there is a crisis, you hear the officials speaking of the enormous amount of money allocated to these communities. I would like to argue that very little of that money actually goes to the locals. If it is for health care, it is going to drug companies and airlines taking care of the problems that would have been easier to prevent. It would make much more sense to improve the quality of life than using urgent treatment of problems that keep coming back.

If money is allocated for infrastructure, it always goes to outside firms with little oversight to the quality of their work. If things break the locals are always the first to blame. It is much easier this way, since there was no real government inspection of these projects. 

The government might as well hand the money to the outside firms, since most of it goes directly to them any ways. I have just learned that the grocery chain charges locals a fee for cashing their social service cheque in order for them to spend it at that very same grocery store!


I feel like I can go on and on and on, but I am sure you are aware of many of the issues I have mentioned above. I do however want you to crunch these numbers I have mentioned and see whether it was possible to survive on the allocated money. To me it is heart breaking to see the true owners of this country suffer so much in a country so well developed and so rich in natural resources which belonged to them in the first place!

In memory of my best friend in the north

December 7th. will always be noted as a sad day for me as I lost my best friend in Shamattawa, the black dog. It made it even harder to accept since we were together merely 15 minutes before he was hit and killed by the school bus.

The long outings on the weekends and short walk after work were becoming much more fun with him around. Unlike other dogs he had this understanding of the surroundings. He knew when to lead and when to follow. When we were out in the woods, he was the only dog that would stay close. By doing so he would not scare off the pray, while at the same time protect me from unwanted attention. When walking in town, he would not run after neighborhood dogs and would respect their territory. And once in a while when were being chased by a pack of dogs on the other side of the town, he was the only dog that didn't escape and stuck right by me. Although he was just a year old, he had managed to assert his leadership in the area that dogs who were much older and heavier than him would not dare to venture in our neighborhood. He didn't need to fight, just getting close to an unwelcome dog was enough to deliver the message. I only saw him fight once with a much larger dog, and as soon as he established the superiority he let the dog a way out without hurting it. He had this silent and humble take on being the top dog in the area.

You will be terribly missed.

Eleventh Blog

Completely frozen section of the river

The weekend was very cold and windy, by far the coldest two days of this term. Saturday we had a blizzard and Sunday a sunny but extremely cold and windy. We didn't have internet for long periods of the weekend so it was hard to know exactly how cold it was. But I heard that it was roughly about -30 with windchill of about -40. On Saturday I went for an hour of walk with a colleague. It was too windy and I was walking backward for a good portion of the walk. Sunday I decided to head out at noon, supposedly the warmest time of the day. But soon I realized that there was no such a thing as warm for that day. It was crisp sunny and very beautiful though. You could see mist rising from the river and even though it was windy, everything appeared dead still. I had three dogs with me, the big black and still nameless dog, a chocolate brown female dog and a young husky pup. In the beginning it was fun having them around but soon things changed and they started to act very strangely. As soon as we left the village and out into the woods, they dropped behind me; soon they were nervously trailing me by more than two hundred meters or so. I started bribing them in order to calm them down and to calm myself down as well! There were wolf tracks everywhere and the dogs would examine each track and nervously look in all directions! The big black dog was the closest to me but even he kept looking back towards the town more frequently now. I knew the dogs could sense or perhaps see something but decided to move forward any ways, especially as I had one of the locals open the door and jokingly ask me to get her a ptarmigan or two!

Still nameless!

Soon I noticed a wolf is coming right at us on the road. I have learned that dogs and wolves trust their nose more than their eyes, and this wolf was coming right at us sniffing the ground without even lifting its head to see us down the road. I started to shout out loud and waving my arms to get his attention. Sure enough it worked and it went flying and disappeared in the woods to our right. I stopped and looked around to see if there were any more around. The dogs by now had made up their mind and were running back towards the town. I had to call them and practically beg them with treats to stop them from leaving me. I thought for a couple of minutes whether to continue or head back to town. I walked back by about five hundred meters, but then suddenly changed my mind and decided to continue with the excursion. By now I was about two kilometers away from the village. The dogs were a bit calmer but they stopped following me after a few minutes and zoomed at a point on a gravel mount on the left. I called them but they wouldn't follow and kept looking at that same spot. I went back and saw a magnificent grey wolf standing on the mount looking at us. It was exhilarating and scary at the same time, its hard to explain how you feel seeing a wolf in a classic pose about a hundred meters away. I shouted and threw my arms up in a threatening manner, but he didn't move at all and just stood there sideways looking at us. I knew there had to be others, since they tend to move apart from each other. But this time I didn't want to look for the rest of the pack and decided to head back quickly and as calmly as I could. As soon as I turned around the dogs were running back and soon two had disappeared. I only had the black dog with the help of treats to head back to town. I was hoping to take a picture of the wolf, but it was too cold and later on when I tried taking a shot of the almost frozen river, there was a message on the screen telling me the battery temperature is either too low or too high! So it wouldn't have worked any ways!

Its strange how different it is when you see one compared to seeing their tracks. I had seen their tracks all over the places I had ventured to, some as far away as ten kilometer from the town, but seeing them in person no matter how close it was to the town sent shivers down my spine. I am not sure whether I head out alone, well at least not without a real gun!

Work has been pretty good and if things move the way they have been for the past couple of weeks, we should be able to finish off the chapters we are working on before the break. Grade ten math, and grade nine science students are doing pretty good, my only worry is with the two grade nine math classes I have. It is hard to get them do any work and the few motivated students are coming to class looking more and more tired and sleepy in the morning. The problem is that we are working on the most fun section of the curriculum, drawing symmetric shapes, and finding area of 3-d objects. If they are not excited about this, I don't know how I can get them to do algebra once we get back from the break!

Last week we started an indoor soccer, Futsal team with scheduled practices on Tuesday and Friday nights. The response has been overwhelming and I am thrilled to take part in something that I truly love that they enjoy as well. On the first night we had about 30 kids and the next session twenty of the serious ones showed up. We start the session with some running, then stretching, drills and end it with a game. If things go as they are now, we will have a pretty good team capable of competing with any school in the province.