[Witness spoke in Mohawk and provided the following text]:

Wa’tkwanoweron Katsi’tsakwas ne iontiáts tánon Wakeniáhton, Kanehsatà:ke akenàkere.

[Witness provided the following translation]:

Warm greetings. My name is Katsi’tsakwas. I am turtle clan, and I am from Kanesatake.

[English]

Thank you for inviting me to testify on the subject of environmental racism. It's important to stress that the issue of environmental racism is rooted in the past, tethered to systemic racism, the Indian Act and the genocidal acts of the Indian residential school.

It is incumbent upon me to address the past, my community of Kanesatake's past, which was shaped by racist genocidal acts under colonial powers and created over a century among all Crown actors—federal, provincial and municipal governments—and the colonial creation that became the indigenous band council system.

All of the above situations and actors' apathy have led to Kanesatake's current situation. G&R Recycling facility, on the Kanesatake land reserve, has 160 Olympic swimming pools' worth of toxic waste lying in the small community of Kanesatake's lands, along with the multiple side dumps it has spawned and their effects on our community's health and well-being.

Details of this site's impacts are fully documented in the brief I submitted. A network of over 100 allied organizations, including some of our country's largest unions and civil society institutions, have already expressed their concern on this issue. The dump is a mere system, and we need to get to the root of this problem.

The fact that indigenous communities have become convenient places to dump toxic construction waste, raw sewage and other waste products that would never be accepted in a white community speaks volumes in itself. The fact that this is the norm is a mere symptom of the problem of environmental racism. In order to find solutions, we must address the root causes, and we must dig deep into those causes, among which is colonial genocide.

Environmental racism is a wicked problem. These are problems that became enormous, knotted up in all levels of governments' culture of bureaucracy, placing the burden to act, to stop the continuation and protect the environment, onto vulnerable community members, who are ignored and so must live with the consequences of corruption mingled with apathy, enhanced by fear and coercion.

The federal government, which has known about this problem in our community since at least 2019, has not yet found a way to resolve it. We have a provincial government in Quebec that has also not helped and refuses to acknowledge any form of systemic racism, environmental or not. This issue is complicated, because, like all such issues facing my community, it is rooted in past wrongs that need systemic, ongoing reparations. It requires reparations and restitution for the failure of governments to act and to do the right thing.

The issue of toxic dumping in my community cannot be resolved simply by cleaning up one site. It is the interplay between the past and the present and all of the dysfunctions it has created that need to be addressed. I assure you that, without that, there will be many more toxic dumps popping up in my community for every one that is ordered shut and cleaned.

If I might quickly quote the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, article 4(c) states, “Shall not permit public authorities or public institutions, national or local, to promote or incite racial discrimination.”

Bill C-226 must...and its approach to environmental racism is that it addresses the systemic nature of these issues and goes to the root causes.

[Witness spoke in Mohawk]

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