Kashechewan First Nation Has Been Evacuated Every Spring For 17 Years. Leaders Want Action.

TORONTO — Leaders from Kashechewan First Nation are looking to the Ontario government and even foreign ambassadors for support in relocating their community, which they say the federal government has delayed for years.

“Our young people are getting really sick and tired of this,” Chief Leo Friday told reporters at Queen’s Park Monday.

Kashechewan came into being in 1957, when the Canadian government forcibly relocated Cree families from two islands onto a plain on the banks of the Albany River near James Bay, Ont., according to the book Invisible North. The name “Kashechewan” is the government’s misspelling of the Cree word “Keeshechewan,” which means “where the water flows fast,” the book says.

The Cree nation of 2,500 is currently evacuated because of flooding. Residents have had to leave every spring for 17 years due to flood water, Friday said.

The federal government hasn’t helped Kashechewan the way it helps other flooded communities in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, said Derek Fox, deputy grand chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN), a grand council representing northern Ontario First Nations.

“You see in Ottawa, the response is immediate. They pretty much call in the army to save everyone,” Fox said. “For Kashechewan, it’s been 17 years.”

He said the government would have acted more quickly if Kashechewan was a non-Native community.

“I sincerely believe that.”

The evacuations interrupt children’s education and deprive them of the chance to learn their culture, Chief Friday said. He said the regular evacuations have created a sense of desperation that has even led some people to think about suicide.

“The land does a lot of educating,” he said. “We miss our ceremonies in the springtime.”

In a letter to foreign embassies in Ottawa, Friday said the annual evacuation “only adds to the hardship, poverty and despair” that Kashechewan residents already experience.

“I want the world’s ambassadors to know that far too many First Peoples continue to suffer from the impacts of colonialism; an abusive Indian Act that spawned an Apartheid similar to that in South Africa; and an indifferent bureaucracy that continues to mismanage billions of dollars annually that are meant to lift our communities out of poverty,” he wrote.

“The world needs to know that Canada continues to treat its Original Peoples like second-class citizens living in third world poverty. But we are ‘out of sight, out of mind’ no longer.”

Kashechewan members rallied at Queen’s Park Monday and will protest on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday.

Friday said he wants Ontario’s government to “step in” and help with a relocation plan because Ottawa has only brought them “delays after delays” and “studies after studies.”

The provincial government is ready to help Kashechewan, Minister of Indigenous Affairs Greg Rickford told HuffPost Canada Monday.

“We believe that this community should be relocated and we stand ready, willing and able to work with the community-level leadership, with NAN and with the federal government,” he said.

“For more than 15, 16 years, different proposals have come before all levels of government including community leadership, and it’s time for action.”

Rickford said he would meet with Friday while he’s at Queen’s Park and has asked federal Minister of Indigenous Services, Seamus O’Regan, for a meeting.

A spokesman for O’Regan did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

With a file from The Canadian Press

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