UN expert urges ‘profound changes’ in Canada to uphold First Nations’ water rights [Video]

Charles Hookimaw had one, simple question for the United Nations’ independent expert on water rights when they met in Toronto this spring: “How would you feel?”

How would you feel if you had to trudge through snow in the freezing, subarctic northern Ontario cold to get a jug of water from a reverse osmosis system just to make tea, like the elders of Attawapiskat First Nation do, Hookimaw asked?

That’s the situation the James Bay Cree community has faced for more than five years, Hookimaw told the official, after harmful levels of chemical disinfection byproducts, called trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids, were found in their tap water in 2019.

“We’re not even considered to be under any boil advisory,” Hookimaw told CBC Indigenous this week.

“Yet at the same time, we are being told to limit our use of the water in our homes, have a vent in your washroom, open the window, don’t rinse your …