Mercury poisoning is passed along to the embryo in pregnancy, which has meant that younger generations of Grassy Narrows members have been affected by it, even after the contamination in the Wabigoon/English River system was discovered. In all, ten tons of mercury were dumped into the Wabigoon/English River system from 1962 to 1970. Thus began the decades-long struggle for justice by the people of Grassy Narrows, located in northwestern Ontario. Japanese researchers took an interest in visiting Grassy Narrows beginning in 1975, because in the 1950s one hundred people died in Minamata, Japan, and several people experienced brain damage from eating fish contaminated with mercury. A lot of our life was based on the river – fishing and living off the fish.” Mercury poisoning What I hear from older people is that we were river people. A lot of families struggle with appointments, special needs and education for our children … Physically, mentally, and spiritually too – the river was always a part of our way of life here. “It’s fair to say that everybody in Grassy needs to be compensated. Isaacs shared the myriad impacts that mercury poisoning have had on her community and the need for compensation for all. But within a few years, the First Nation invited experts from Japan to help them make the link between the company’s dumping of mercury into the nearby Wabigoon/English River system – whose plentiful fish were the main food source for the Nation – and serious harm happening to the health of the people.Ĭhrissy Isaacs, a mother, grandmother, and land defender who was part of initiating the Slant Lake Blockade, began her talk with an ancestor song. The fight by the Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinabek (or Grassy Narrows First Nation) against incurable mercury poisoning did not begin immediately after the poison was first in use by the Reed Paper Company starting in 1962, because its effects were not clearly understood. The rally was moderated by Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and opened by Garry Sault, an elder from the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and a longtime ally of Grassy Narrows, who also offered a smudge and prophecy song People of the river The Online Rally for Grassy Narrows was attended by well over 200 people and focused on the need for compensation for all people in Grassy Narrows – a need that continues to go unmet by the Canadian and Ontario governments. While the pandemic is preventing the River Run from taking place this year, members of Grassy Narrows and Free Grassy, a solidarity network, organized a jam-packed online rally on March 27. The River Run, which started in 2010 and has taken place every two years since, sees members of Grassy Narrows travel to Toronto for a series of street-based actions and community events centered on raising awareness and demanding justice from the Ontario and Canadian governments. The people of Grassy Narrows have been fighting for mercury justice since 1970, and their struggles have informed and inspired anti-colonial and environmental justice organizing across Canada.
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