Jukasa News Update – Monday, July 22, 2019
Indigenous Services Minister Seamus O’Regan is headed to Attawapiskat to see the community’s water crisis first hand.
The reserve has been plagued with high levels of chemical contaminants in the water that has left residents with a long list of health issues.
Officials confirmed the minister and Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler will meet with community leaders and members to identify immediate and long term measures to to address infrastructure issues
About $1.5 million dollars has been approved to repair the reserves water treatment plant and ensure that clean drinking water is available for residents.
The Lummi Nation in northwest Washington state is requesting a meeting with Canadian officials regarding the environmental impacts of industrial projects on the Salish Sea off the coasts of Washington and British Columbia.
The secretary for the nation sent a letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland this week, saying that projects including the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will result in unavoidable, irreversible and unacceptable harm to the nation’s territorial waters.
The nation says Canada’s actions constitute a violation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as international law that prohibits environmental harm across international boundaries.
A new report says Government hospitals placed Native American patients at increased risk for opioid abuse and overdose in the US, failing to follow their own protocols for prescribing and dispensing the drugs.
The report examined care at 5 Indian Health Service hospitals and found patients were given opioids in amounts that exceeded federal guidelines.
The overdose epidemic that has killed more people than any other drug epidemic in U.S. history has hit indigenous communities hard. Native Americans and Alaska Natives had the second-highest rate of opioid overdose out of all racial and ethnic groups in 2017, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Residents of two northwestern Ontario First Nations forced from their homes by forest fires will soon start heading back now that the blazes are dying down, provincial officials and community members said Friday.
Ontario’s Ministry of the Solicitor General issued statements saying residents will begin travelling back to the communities of Keewaywin and Pikangikum in the coming days, adding the process is expected to take more than a week.
Major forest fires forced the majority of residents to flee the flames and seek shelter in host cities ranging as far afield as Saskatchewan while crews worked to contain the flames, some of which came perilously close to community borders.
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