When I first visited Grassy Narrows, I was four months pregnant and I remember asking myself, if someone offers me fish will I eat it?  Fish is traditionally an important staple food for the people of Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinaabek (Grassy Narrows).  But since the 70s when a mill dumped mercury in the river, it's no longer safe to eat.

Several members of the community commented on the poisoning while I was there.  Judy Da Silva said, "The [lumber] mills take from our forest, and then give us back disease and sickness and death.  Our people have suffered for forty years from mercury poisoning, and now this sickness is being passed on to our children in the womb."

Sherry Fobister, a young mother from Grassy Narrows didn't have the choice I had.  "When I was pregnant I couldn't afford to buy food at the store, so I ate what my grandfather brought home--mostly fish,” she said.  “Now both my children are sick with strange illnesses, just like their cousins.  I myself have tremors and numbness, but I don't qualify for compensation.  Sometimes I can't afford to bring my kids to Winnipeg for treatment.  I want everyone in Grassy Narrows tested."

Chrissy Swain told me,  "It is a fight for us every single day that we wake up and have to look at our children and think about them.  The land is part of who we are.  We should be able to go out and hunt and fish...If all that is gone, then who are we?"

"The land is part of who we are."  How can I even begin to understand that as a newcomer?  Who am I in relationship to this land and to the nations who lived here long before my ancestors settled here? I grew up on a farm in the territory opened to settlers by Treaty 6 and when I talk about "home" that's the place I always seem to be referring to even though I've lived in Toronto for a couple of years now.  Four generations of my family have prospered from the use of that land and its resources.  But while we have been content to benefit from the land, we have not felt the need to defend it.  In fact, my family has been employed in the lumber and oil and gas industries that have both done a lot of damage.

There's a story in the bible about Solomon having to decide between two women who are fighting over a child.  He discovers which woman is truly the mother by offering to cut the infant in two and give each mother half.  The real mother immediately tries to defend the whole child while the false mother is willing to settle for half.  I see a parallel in non-Natives scrambling to own a piece of land without too much concern for how the whole planet suffers because of our activities on it.  It's crazy; the dominant culture can be so greedy that we actually steal from our children and
grandchildren.  Have you ever seen the bumper sticker that says, "We're spending our children's inheritance?"  That's supposed to be funny.

  In contrast, Stan McKay writes: "Because we understand that life is a gift, it makes no sense within our native spiritual vision for either us or others to claim ownership of any part of the creation.  Our leaders have often described how nonsensical it is to lay claim to the air, the water, or the earth because these are related to all life and are shared by all life" (from "Rooted in Creation" in Nation to Nation: Aboriginal Sovereignty and
the Future of Canada p.29).  But the greed of non-Native settlers has forced many impoverished Aboriginal communities into a land-claim process, which McKay describes as "devastating to our cultural values...  The legal jargon we must use contains concepts of ownership that directly contradict our spiritual understanding of life.”  (Ibid)

Often it is Aboriginal mothers who stand up to defend the land and are unwilling to compromise their values.  Women like Judy Da Silva and Chrissy Swain whom I quoted above.

After a short while in Grassy Narrows, I went back to Toronto.  February 2010 I had a healthy baby girl.  I took her with me on a walk to increase awareness about mercury poisoning and its continuing effects on the communities of White Dog and Grassy Narrows.  At the rally in Queen's Park (Toronto), I remembered the fish I was afraid to eat as I listened to the women and men who were not afraid to stand up for the future of their children and mine.