Attawapiskat School

We, the undersigned, believe that the Government of Canada has been unfair to those whom it serves, namely the First Nations peoples and specifically those of Attawapiskat in the James Bay Coastal Region.



The Government of Canada, through its functional branch Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, has left the J. R. Nakogee school contaminated by a diesel fuel spill since 1979 and unusable since the year 2000. The Nishnawbi Aske people of Attawapiskat were promised by three separate Ministers responsible for INAC that a new school would be built for the children. The latest Minister for INAC, the Hon. Chuck Strahl, was in Attawapiskat were he met with the Nishnawbi Aske Band Council, Chiefs, and elders and announced funding for a new facility to be built in the spring of 2008.



The rejoicing of the community was short-lived as the very same Minister turned around and without warning cancelled the funding and halted the plans for the construction of the new school. The spokesperson for INAC, when interviewed on CBC North Radio, reiterated that the primary concerns of INAC was to address the Health and Safety concerns of the community. We feel that this is a bald-faced lie, as the children are now in crowded classrooms, where the doors and windows do not close properly; where the bathrooms do not always work; where the bathroom doors cannot be closed; where the children are exposed to mold levels that would not be tolerated in any public school in Canada; where young students have to walk in the cold with wind chills reaching -50 to reach the gymnasium or the library; where the meals and snacks are prepared in areas still contaminated by diesel fumes and by mold growth and rodent infestations.



We believe that the Government of Canada is obligated to honour the rights of First Nations peoples to education in acceptable facilities as promised and outlined in Treaty 9. We the undersigned decry the deplorable way that the Government has continued to treat First Nations people as second-class citizens by denying them facilities considered a right by any other group of students within Canada. We the undersigned protest to the utmost the cancellation of the school in Attawapiskat, among others, and challenge the Government to do the right and legally required thing by providing the funding for the new school facility and by cleaning up the fuel contamination in the community of Attawapiskat.