DoomsdaysCW<p>‘We want the mill to shut down,’ <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/GrassyNarrows" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>GrassyNarrows</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/FirstNation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>FirstNation</span></a> to <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Ontario" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Ontario</span></a> </p><p>After nearly 60 years of industrial poisoning, the northwest <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Indigenous" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Indigenous</span></a> community continues to demand justice</p><p>September 17 2024 <br>by Jon Thompson</p><p>"When members of <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Asubpeeschoseewagong" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Asubpeeschoseewagong</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Anishinabek" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Anishinabek</span></a> (Grassy Narrows First Nation) and their supporters arrive at Queen’s Park this week, they’ll be calling for the <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/DrydenPulpAndPaper" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DrydenPulpAndPaper</span></a> mill that’s been poisoning their water with <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/neurotoxins" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>neurotoxins</span></a> for nearly 60 years to permanently close. </p><p>"'We want everybody to be compensated, we want the mill to shut down, and we don’t want no <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/mining" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>mining</span></a> or <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/logging" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>logging</span></a> in our territory. We just want it all to stop,' says <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/ChrissyIsaacs" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ChrissyIsaacs</span></a>, lead organizer of the caravan.</p><p>"Isaacs has been a staple of the annual <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/RiverRun" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>RiverRun</span></a> demonstrations since they began in 2010. She was a leader among Grassy Narrows youths who blockaded <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/LoggingTrucks" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>LoggingTrucks</span></a> from entering the nearby <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/WhiskeyJackForest" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>WhiskeyJackForest</span></a> in 2002 and is currently travelling 1,900 kilometres to Toronto from her community near Ontario’s western border to protest the downriver effects of <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/methylmercury" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>methylmercury</span></a> poisoning.</p><p>"Staff at the upstream <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/ReedPaperMill" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ReedPaperMill</span></a> in <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/DrydenOntario" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DrydenOntario</span></a>, about 150 kilometres east of Grassy Narrows, dumped nearly 10 metric tonnes of <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/mercury" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>mercury</span></a> into the <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/EnglishWabigoon" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>EnglishWabigoon</span></a> River system in the 1960s and early 1970s. Mercury poisoned the <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/plants" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>plants</span></a> and <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/fish" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>fish</span></a> that the people of Grassy Narrows, and neighbouring <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Wabaseemoong" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Wabaseemoong</span></a> Independent Nation, were consuming.</p><p>"A half-century later, medical experts are finding that varying nervous and neurological health effects affect up to 90 per cent of Grassy Narrows residents. </p><p>Members of Grassy Narrows First Nation stopped to demonstrate outside of the Dryden mill before heading to Toronto for the annual River Run demonstration at Queen’s Park. There, they will call on the Ontario government to compensate the community for generations of industrial poisoning and call for the mill, now owned by First Quality Enterprises, to be shut down.</p><p>"The Grassy Narrows road blockade to prevent clear-cut logging and mining from happening in their traditional territories has stood for 22 years, and in that time Isaacs’s children have had children of their own. She says the conversation has never been transformed as much as it has this year. </p><p>"In May, scientific researchers released the revelation that <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/sulphate" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>sulphate</span></a> and organic matter in the <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/effluent" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>effluent</span></a> that the mill is still releasing into the river is making methylmercury in the river system even worse, as opposed to diminishing over time as they were told."</p><p><a href="https://ricochet.media/indigenous/we-want-the-mill-to-shut-down-grassy-narrows-first-nation-to-ontario/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">ricochet.media/indigenous/we-w</span><span class="invisible">ant-the-mill-to-shut-down-grassy-narrows-first-nation-to-ontario/</span></a></p><p><a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/MercuryPoisoning" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>MercuryPoisoning</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/DirectAction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DirectAction</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/WaterIsLife" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>WaterIsLife</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/NativeAmericanNews" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NativeAmericanNews</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/NativeAmericanActivism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NativeAmericanActivism</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/InformedConsent" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>InformedConsent</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/CanadaFirstNations" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CanadaFirstNations</span></a></p>