‘Freedom Road’ is coming
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/07/2015 (3192 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Last week, what should have been a celebration on Shoal Lake 40 First Nation ended in tears and frustration.
Politicians of all stripes were on hand to begin construction of the permanent bridge that will help end the reserve’s century-long island isolation.
During the celebration, the community looked to federal Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford, hoping he would use the event to hint at more, to hint that Ottawa is willing, like the province and city, to help fund the $30-million, all-weather road from the reserve to the Trans-Canada Highway.
Instead, Rickford artlessly ducked questions from band members and physically dodged reporters. It felt as if the road and the prosperity it could bring were still a far-off wish.
That’s not the case. The road is nearly an inevitability, for two main reasons.
In the last couple of years, Shoal Lake First Nation has embarked on one of the most effective public awareness campaigns in the country.
For months, Shoal Lake has invited a cavalcade of high-profile visitors for tours — Amnesty International staffers, Council of Canadians head Maude Barlow, indigenous leaders and politicians of every stripe. Most of those made headlines, stirred the pot and rallied support for a permanent solution.
Last summer, the band took advantage of the opening of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights to remind Winnipeggers the museum gets its clean drinking water from a reserve that hasn’t had any for nearly 20 years, thanks to a boil-water advisory.
Mayor Brian Bowman was just out to Shoal Lake earlier this week, after pledging to finally deal with the band’s issues. He made the promise during last fall’s civic campaign, where it was rare to attend an all-candidates’ forum where Shoal Lake wasn’t raised. That sure didn’t happen in 2010 or 2006.
The band’s next tactic is halting the planned twinning of the nearby Trans-Canada Highway, a stalled project the federal government agreed to fund ages ago. Already, former Winnipeg mayor and current Ontario cabinet minister Glen Murray has warned Ottawa the twinning project won’t happen unless a solution for Shoal Lake is found.
Shoal Lake is a perpetual topic on social media and this week a cheeky online crowdsourcing fundraiser was launched to raise the $10 million Ottawa appears unwilling to pledge. The campaign won’t likely hit $10 million, and maybe it shouldn’t. It’s Ottawa’s job to help build roads and improve reserves. But hundreds of people have already pledged thousands, which adds to the momentum.
Meanwhile, nearly every reporter in the region has visited Shoal Lake 40 in the last year or two, filing acres of copy and hours of footage. Typically, reporters found a remarkably open, patient, resilient, welcoming community — and an undeniably great story.
Shoal Lake, especially its articulate chief, Erwin Redsky and its tireless policy wonk Cuyler Cotton, have endlessly explained to outsiders the technical reasons why Shoal Lake was rendered an island nearly a century ago so Winnipeg could have clean water.
With forbearance, residents will tell and retell stories of nearly falling through the ice bringing groceries back to the island in the spring. They’ll describe daily life hamstrung by a lack of reliable, clean drinking water. They’ll daydream aloud about the kind of jobs and economic development the reserve could have if it had a proper all-season road. Even dubbing the route “Freedom Road” was smart public relations.
In a country cynical about band corruption, it doesn’t hurt that Shoal Lake is well-run and stunningly beautiful. It’s hard not to look at it in context, located as it is a few kilometres from million-dollar cottages, and marvel at the absurdity of its situation.
And that’s the second reason a road will get built. What happened to Shoal Lake, and what continues to happen, is an injustice that borders on the ridiculous.
Winnipeg’s source of good health and prosperity has specifically stymied that of the area’s original inhabitants. It’s been allowed to continue for generations even though fixing it would cost a relative pittance. All this has made Shoal Lake a black-and-white symbol of much more complicated injustices perpetrated on indigenous people. Shoal Lake is fast becoming the national poster child for all we did wrong.
Shoal Lake has benefited from the huge national debate about indigenous reconciliation now underway in Canada. But unlike the terrible complexities of families broken by generations of residential schools or the intractable troubles of the child-welfare system or the staggering need for housing on hundreds of reserves, Shoal Lake’s problems are simple.
Build the permanent bridge, fund the road and then tackle a water-treatment plant and, hopefully, the band will thrive.
Righting Shoal Lake’s century-old wrong is nearly as easy as a bit of pavement and a treatment plant. We build those every day in this country.
Doing so now — now — would be a clear show of good faith on the part of all governments at a time when we need a few tangible bits of progress toward reconciliation. At this point, it’s simply not possible to pass up a easy fix that could mean so much. The smart people of Shoal Lake have shown they won’t let us.
maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @mawwelch
History
Updated on Thursday, July 2, 2015 7:19 AM CDT: Replaces photo