Art installation supports Shoal Lake 40’s clean water campaign

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This article was published 15/07/2016 (2841 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Stephen Juba Park on Waterfront Drive was the setting for a temporary art installation Saturday to support Shoal Lake 40 and its decades-long campaign for clean drinking water.

A collection of the city’s community groups led by 13 Fires Winnipeg presented the vision of local artist Leah Decter with her project, Reflect in Water, to draw attention to the inequities of life for the Ontario First Nation.

The First Nation was cut off from the mainland by an aqueduct a century ago to supply Winnipeg with fresh water.

The community has been under a boil-water advisory for 19 years. While efforts to build a permanent road, dubbed Freedom Road, to link the community to the mainland have won the support of all three levels of government since last fall’s federal election, life there is marked by disadvantages beyond the lack of potable water. Probably worst among them is the reality residents risk their lives falling through winter ice trying to cross Shoal Lake. In summer, when the channel is open, a ferry ride costs $10 one-way.

The plight of Shoal Lake 40 is the ongoing focus of various national awareness campaigns, but Saturday’s event was an attempt to use art to reach ordinary Winnipeggers out for an afternoon stroll.

The park was decorated with blue broadcloth banners emblazoned with statements from Shoal Lake residents such as, “Some days I’ll have a shower and I’ll get an allergic reaction, rashes and bumps” and “Municipal areas take for granted the fact they have clean drinking water at the expense of indigenous committees. My hope for the future is every First Nation has access to clean drinking water.”

Each statement was signed with the name of the Shoal Lake resident who wrote it.

Stencils with the same statements were on hand to be sprayed like watermarks on the paths of the popular route for joggers and cyclists. Like invisible ink, visitors were invited to spray “paint” the stencils into the cement with non-potable water collected with permission and ceremony directly from the First Nation, located on the border with Ontario. The watermarks vanished under the hot sun, a symbolic gesture to show change take repeated efforts before it sticks, Decter said.

“This is a huge collaborative project with Shoal Lake 40, 13 Fires, the Friends of Shoal Lake, the Peace Alliance of Winnipeg, the Museum of Canadian Human Rights Violations in Shoal Lak,e and it’s a Winnipeg Art Council Project,” Decter said.

“Freedom Road is the beginning of remediation of the problems in Shoa Lake, but there are larger problems there that are colonial consequences, issues that need to be resolved. We’re working with the people at Shoal Lake to remind people just because Freedom Road in in process doesn’t mean there aren’t other issues that need to be resolved.”

The message got through to some people taking in the Saturday sun.

“I was reading the banners. They definitely make you think,” said hair stylist and salon school instructor Jenna Waldner. She said she’s taken part in work-related campaigns to raise funds for clean water systems in developing countries, and she said it’s shocking to think First Nations such as Shoal Lake live in the same conditions in a country like Canada.

That’s the point, said Rainer Bunn, a 16-year-old from Shoal Lake about to enter Grade 12 this fall in Sagkeeng First Nation, 100 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

His mother volunteered him to lead one of several talking circles planned as part of the art installation

“This is great,” he sai as he and a handful of other Shoal Lake members arrived for the event.

“I like making connections with people, so this is a great opportunity for me.”

The event, scheduled for Saturday afternoon only, was to wrap up with a feast at the nearby Thunderbird House on Main Street.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca