A group from Saugeen Ojibway Nation has completed a nearly 600 km Water Walk around their territory.
The purpose of the 17 day journey has been to reflect on the importance of the protection of the water in their traditional lands. Walkers of all ages took part.
Walk Leader Joanne Keeshig says, the walkers carried three items with them. One was a rock from the area where TC Energy is proposing a pumped storage energy facility that would draw water from Georgian Bay at the Canadian Armed Forces 4th Division Training Centre in Meaford.
She says they also carried an Eagle Staff and a water vessel.
She says, “Each walker, while they’re carrying those sacred items is also carrying tobacco which is one of our four sacred medicines and tobacco is the medicine for communication. It’s our conduit to the creator.”
Keeshig says two main concerns they focused on during the walk were the pumped storage proposal and the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s (NWMO) site selection process for a deep geological repository to store used nuclear fuel 600 metres underground in the rock at one of two locations; the Municipality of South Bruce which is within SON’s traditional territory and Ignace in Northern Ontario.
Proponents of both projects have indicated they will not move forward with the DGR, or the pumped storage facility if SON does not support their respective proposals.
Keeshig says, “The awareness that we’re trying to create is among our own membership, because we are the ones that have to eventually decide what’s going to happen in the territory.” Keeshig also says the walk has prompted non-indigenous people in the area to come up to them and ask questions to learn more about SON’s concerns with the two proposals.
“There’s a lot of support from them for we’re doing because they feel they don’t have a voice to express how they feel about the deep geological repository or anything that’s going to affect the water,” says Keeshig.
Keeshig notes, the Water Walkers want people to think about how they consume energy and about how energy production, to meet those demands also creates nuclear waste.
“This is life. How are we going to do this? Everybody is accustomed to a certain level of comfort now as well, so how do we address that,” says Keeshig.
She adds, “We can’t do the ‘us and them.’ We have to be able to resolve this situation from a different perspective or a different level of being. It’s a situation that cannot be resolved with the same paradigm in which it was created,” says Keeshig, explaining, “We have to think bigger than how it came into being.”
She says, “We’re in this together, and I think that when we make the spiritual connection to the Earth we’re not doing it just for ourselves. When we’re doing this kind of work we’re also encouraging all of those that live within the territory to create their own connection with the Earth.”
“We’ve gotten away with taking more than what we need. So we need to get back to something more simple,” says Keeshig.
She adds, “It’s thinking like that, how do we make things better and how to we stop doing things that endanger the environment.”
Prior to this walk, a Water Walk took place in 2017, to affirm the boundaries of SON’s traditional territory.
