[peaceful soundtrack playing]
Downloaded from YTS.MX
[announcer] What kind of country is Canada?
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
That depends on the eyes you put on it.
[Ellen Page] Nova Scotia: Canada's ocean playground.
I grew up in the capital city, Halifax.
Drive less than an hour away in any direction
and you're on a scenic shoreline without a worry in the world.
In some ways, Nova Scotia is the embodiment
of what many view Canada to be.
A sweet escape.
As a child, this is the image I had of the province.
Connected to nature, open-hearted...
and welcoming to all walks of life.
After all, Canada takes care of its people.
-[woman] Are you Canadian? -[man laughs]
[Ellen] We have universal healthcare.
Marriage equality became a reality 14 years ago.
[cheering and applause]
And we're the second country in the world to legalize weed.
-[laughing] -♪ Cannabis, cannabis ♪
[Ellen] But when you look beneath the surface,
the picture-perfect image begins to crack.
[protesters chanting] No way! No way! No way!
[chanting continues]
[Ellen] Politicians promise one thing and they do another...
Our history of colonialism continues today.
And our chances to save the environment are becoming slimmer every day,
as corporate interests seem more important to the government
than public concerns.
And the more I saw, the more I couldn't help but use my platform
to speak out.
Do you have any idea how we can get the public and the media
to pay more attention to what's happening in global warming?
I just want to say, too, people, particularly the most marginalized people,
and particularly people in the world that had nothing to do with this,
are the ones that are suffering the most currently.
Including in Canada.
Including the environmental racism that's happening in Canada,
including the province I'm from.
It's like, this is something that's happening.
And it's happening, the most marginalized people,
and we need to be talking about it.
[Ingrid over speaker] Hello. Ingrid.
-[woman] Hi, Ingrid. -Hey, Ingrid.
-[Ingrid] Hi. I'll let you in. -[women laugh]
Thank you.
[Ellen] I'm going to meet with Professor Ingrid Waldron,
who wrote the essential book on environmental racism in Nova Scotia,
There's Something in the Water.
[Ellen] Nice to see you.
-Thank you for everything. -Nice to meet you. Oh, no problem.
I woke up one morning in my office and I went to my Twitter.
And I saw somebody new following me. It said "Tiny Canadian."
It didn't say "Ellen Page, actress," so I didn't think anything of it.
And then I think I went back a month later
and my Twitter page had all these comments.
Like never before.
And I was like, "What is going on?"
And I realized it was you!
And it was there that this journey began.
Environmental racism is the condition,
is the problem,
of disproportionate exposure
of indigenous communities, black communities,
other communities of color, to environmental burdens,
to pollutants and contaminants.
But it's also about the slow response by government, right?
To address these issues.
What we know is that where you live
has bearing on your well-being.
In Canada, your postal code determines your health.
So we know that certain communities
are less healthy because of where they live.
Most African Nova Scotians live
in historical African Nova Scotian communities,
which are rural communities,
and many of them are near landfills.
And we know indigenous communities as well are the ones
that tend to be disproportionately located near to these hazardous sites.
When you're living in out-of-the-way, invisible communities
that often lack a voice,
that are invisible to government,
um, then often your voice isn't heard.
You have to look at environmental racism
within the context of the history of Nova Scotia,
within the context of colonialism in Nova Scotia and Canada.
There is a reluctance, a hesitance in Canada,
to name racism.
Racism imbeds itself into all of our social structures,
and in Canada we tend to steer clear of that.
Racism and environmental racism
have real impacts on the ground,
with respect to these particular communities.
It has impacted black and indigenous communities socially,
economically, and politically.
When you look at particular communities as not being worthy...
of having no humanity...
of, uh, not being valuable,
which is how we typically think of non-white peoples...
then it makes sense in many ways
that you're not going to respond
in the similar way as you would with a white community
because...
these communities don't mean anything to you, to individuals.
So I think there's a detachment,
as if you're not taking time to meet communities
and get a sense of their priorities.
Their experiences, their challenges
will never get written into environmental policy.
It requires that you listen to these communities,
and that's typically what's not happening.
[Ellen] If you look at a map of Nova Scotia
and you plot out the points where black and indigenous communities are located,
and then you mark where landfills and toxic industries are placed,
a disturbing connection becomes clear.
I'm heading to a few of these communities to hear how these environmental burdens
impact people's lives.
The first place I'm going is the town of Shelburne,
just about 20 minutes away from where some of my family's from.
Seen by many as a lily-white coastal town...
Shelburne County once had the highest population
of freed black people in North America...
their descendants now living mostly in the south end of Shelburne.
But from the moment they settled here 250 years ago,
black citizens never received the same treatment
as their white counterparts.
A reality that they still face today...
as a dump that was placed in the town in the 1940s
continues to haunt residents in South Shelburne
years after it was closed.
I'm going to speak with local activist Louise Delisle to find out more.
[producer] Hey, you really like dogs.
[Ellen] Hi, precious!
-It's so nice out here. -Yep.
Yeah, it's beautiful here.
You know my family is from Lockeport.
-Yes, I heard that. -Yeah.
-So I've spent a lot of time... -I know some peo--
-Do you know Fred Page? -...in Shelburne.
-Fred? No. -No.
-I just know my dad was Dennis Page... -From Lockeport.
Dennis Page, Lorie Page.
-I know Lorie Page. -Yeah.
[man] Oh, jeez. Zach does that all the time:
"My cousin, my cousin, my cousin."
-Oh, Zach Page. -Lorie. I know Lorie.
-Oh, yeah. -Yeah.
-Nice, nice!
From the time that the black loyalists landed here,
we, like I said, we were indentured.
When we got here, we got here with a promise
of something better
for us, because we were slaves.
A lot of people coming through the Underground Railroad
and people coming on ships into the harbor,
and we're descendants of those people,
and I feel very, very honored
that I am part of that strong, strong family
of black loyalists.
In the early '40s, they started to gather together.
Well, you know how people are.
They gather around their family and whatever.
And people started to build their homes around each other.
In the late '40s, uh...
they decided they were gonna put... it was called a dump.
Where everything went. Nothing was sorted.
All the garbage from surrounding areas,
Shelburne, and Shelburne municipality, all went there.
There was things like garbage from the hospital.
In other words, there would be body parts, probably.
Uh, there were things from the navy base,
that we don't know what was dumped there.
Things from the shipyards, like paint and oil.
There were old cars.
There was food from stores,
there were animals dumped there,
like dead animals.
There was anything and everything...
was dumped on that dump.
They had to get rid of it because it was like a mountain of garbage.
So they set it afire.
And that would burn for days and days...
on end, and the smell would be horrendous.
And the smoke
would cover you.
You couldn't open your windows.
I remember that, um...
someone would say, "Oh, the dump's afire."
First thing, the seagulls would start yelling really loud.
And they would be gone.
And then the smoke would be just like a black cloud.
And then the soot, when it started to die down
or it started to rain, the soot would be all over everything.
I remember getting up and going to school in the morning
and we'd be lucky if we got to school
without, uh, smelling like
we'd been in some kind of, uh...
chemical warfare.
And then get to school
and then have the teacher say,
uh...
"Did you wash this morning?"
Was horrible.
We have been drinking water
from brooks
and wells that are in this community
for generations.
Who knows when that dump has leached into our wells?
Who knows?
When you're talking about, uh...
how environmental racism has affected this community,
it has... it's killing us.
We didn't put that there.
Our families didn't ask for that.
And now we're reaping the fallout from that
by losing the ones we love.
They're gone.
Like, you know, there's so much cancer in our community,
and people will say, "Oh, there's cancer everywhere."
But in this area,
we have one of the highest rates of multiple myeloma.
People dying from it in this area.
Why?
It's from the dump.
My mother is there. That's her sitting there.
And this is where... in our yard.
But that's me with my braids.
-Cute. -[Louise laughs]
Where were you in the seven?
-Were you... -[Louise] The oldest.
That's my brother Robert.
Robert here. Right here. That's the one that...
Him and... who passed away with cancer.
And that's my sister Babe, who has multiple myeloma.
And my youngest brother, Frank.
That's us.
That's my uncle who just passed away recently with cancer.
Two years ago, he passed away.
After my father passed away to cancer,
he sort of stepped up and was the father figure.
But they're gone.
I don't wanna...
I don't wanna say things that hurts anybody,
but I try to tell the truth.
That's, that's the thing, right?
It's hard sometimes, especially when you're talking about racism
and discrimination.
Couple of roosters. [chuckles]
The black community actually starts here.
These people, we did a well test here.
And these people had, um...
high levels of arsenic in their water.
This community, this community is a small community.
This family lost members
of, uh... for cancer.
This man is diagnosed and probably won't live much longer.
He, uh, he has, uh, lung cancer.
Man that lives here.
Very nice people there.
Should have took you in and introduced you to them,
but I didn't let them know we were coming, so better not.
[laughs]
These people's well is contaminated.
Can't drink their water.
This lady's husband died of cancer.
She lives alone there.
This lady's husband died of cancer.
He, uh... But she moved on.
Found somebody else. A very nice man from Newfoundland.
All the family that lived in this house
died of cancer.
This is now... now belongs to somebody else
who moved in the community and is trying to fix it up, live in it.
But everybody that lived in that house died of cancer.
This lady's husband died of cancer.
She's quite sick now herself with cancer.
The man that built this house, him and his wife died of cancer.
Their daughter lives in Birchtown now.
She had cancer, survived cancer.
But, uh...
the sons, the other two sons, died of cancer.
Yeah.
Not good.
This... this house here...
is the closest house
to the dump.
This young woman
had to move back home here
and live here.
Her mother died of cancer. Her father died of cancer.
And she's back there now. She has five kids living in that house.
She has no place else to live.
So she has to move back into there.
And you can, just through those trees,
is where the foot of that dump was.
It's not very far.
Yeah. We used to play in those woods.
Yeah.
Not good.
Ellen, do you want to get out and walk up?
[Ellen] Can we walk up to the dump?
We'll... Well, there's a sign that says "no trespassing."
But I know how to get in there.
This is Mr. Clyke.
Mr. Clyke is very eccentric.
And Mr. Clyke is now diagnosed--
He's probably the oldest black man, I think, in the community.
I don't know if he's home or not.
Huh?
[man speaking in the distance]
What are you doing?
This is Mr. Clyke.
This is Ian.
Ian what?
Ian, I don't know what...
[Ian] Daniel.
-Daniel. -Ian Daniel.
Look at all these cameras.
[Louise laughs]
Here, man, look at me.
-[Louise laughs] -You look great.
-I'm Ellen. -What?
-My name's Ellen. -Ellen. Ellen what?
-Page. -Page.
Ellen's coming and talking about the dump.
Oh...
Yeah, and we were talking.
We were talking about, uh...
how the smoke and the soot and the ash and all that stuff...
and what we wanna get.
Yeah.
[Louise] Because everybody's gone. 'Cause you're the oldest one left now.
-Oh, I think so. -[Louise] Yeah.
The oldest man, aren't you?
Yeah, because Wally Davis is about 70.
Wallace, yeah. Wallace is...
He's treatin' fast.
Wallace is getting treated again for lung cancer, yeah.
And I go this week.
You go this week?
Next Friday.
You go to see how you're doing.
-Yeah. -Yes.
I get rechecked. I go once a year.
Yeah. Do you think the dump had anything to do with your cancer?
Who knows?
Who knows, yeah?
For sure?
'Cause the whole neighborhood's got it.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
[Louise] All the men are gone, aren't they?
There's Frank and Selden and Ed, and your friend Ed,
is all gone, aren't they?
-[Mr. Clyke] And Berne and Shirley. -And Berne and Shirley, yeah.
So we're just gonna go over here and we're gonna walk around.
We're going to sneak along the fence.
Oh, yeah, there's a path right there.
Yes, we'll go along the path.
I hope that... I hope that...
if anybody gets anything from this...
I hope...
environmentally, I hope that people learn how to use stuff.
That way there's no dump.
I... Wouldn't it be nice
if we could find a way to...
everything that we need, that we need, can be...
used again and again and again and again?
How nice would that be?
So we would never have this issue,
of people dying of things that we've consumed and...
set afire.
[Ellen] The dump was permanently closed in 2016.
When you walk around it today,
if it wasn't for scattered remains lying around,
you may not know it had ever been a dump.
The concern now is what's buried in the ground
and what impact that might have on the water and soil nearby.
[Ellen] I imagine, too, it's just like daunting all the time
when you're just like, "Is it in my water?
Has it reached the water?"
Thank God, now, the water testing that we've done
and talking, going into people's houses.
I've been going to everybody's house and talking about,
"You gotta get your well tested.
I'm here, I've got a team of people, let's do it."
And people are becoming conscious of that now
because they've got that water test back
that says there's something in my water.
Whether they say it's not from the dump or whether--
we know it's our water that's making you--
When you have coliform and E. coli in your well,
that you use in your home to cook with, to feed your children
and your husband or... and to brush your teeth with
and to bath with and whatever, you know.
And when you find out that there's something wrong with your water,
well, it's your life.
That's your life.
Your whole life.
You know, it's our God-given right... to clean water.
[Ellen] You shouldn't have to fight for this.
We shouldn't have to fight for this.
We should-- And the people that we vote for
in this community should be fighting side by side with us
for clean water.
But wake up.
They're not even... it's not an issue.
Doesn't seem to be an issue 'cause it's not affecting them.
Because they have what they call clean, potable water
because they have town water.
We don't even have that.
We don't have that option.
We don't even have the option of saying,
"Okay, well, I'm not going to use this well anymore
because it's contaminated,
so I'll just hook up to town water."
We don't have that option.
They have-- They find it not feasible
to put in pipes so we can have clean water.
Why are we any less in this community
than the people in that community?
[Ellen] For the past few years, Louise has been speaking out,
pushing the government to pass an environmental bill of rights
that would guarantee a healthy environment for every resident,
especially historically marginalized people.
But the response from local politicians has been upsetting.
So racism has carried on and it's still here.
And if we don't talk about it, identify it,
it's never, ever gonna stop.
And my speaking out about it
has separated me from some members in my community,
because they don't want to talk about it.
[Ellen] You mentioned the mayor.
-Oh. -[Ellen] Okay, there's my answer.
[both laugh]
-Oh, the mayor. -[Ellen] I was gonna say,
what is your mayor doing?
[Louise] The mayor doesn't think that I have the right to speak.
[Ellen] How come?
Because she...
She actually has told me that, you know,
"The community doesn't want you to talk about this.
The community doesn't care."
But I'm sorry.
I'm gonna say it.
It's...
It's my God-given right to tell you
that you are destroying my family, my community,
and it's been destroyed because you decided
to dump your garbage in my backyard.
Sorry.
But that's how it is.
You either help us or you're against us, one or the other, right?
When election time comes,
they come into this community and they promise you the moon.
"Oh, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that,
we're gonna do this for you, we're gonna do that for you,"
and people trust.
My people trust people.
And they vote for these people, and these people just...
[scoffs]
And if you can't take care of your neighbor...
or the people around you, or your family,
what good are you to anyone?
Like, why are you here?
If you don't care about your brothers or your sisters
or whoever...
why bother?
Like, you know? What do you get up for every day?
Yourself? It must be awful lonesome.
If that's what they're living for.
Right?
The love for people needs to come first.
We have to be there for each other.
We only go one way.
And if we don't do it right the first time,
we don't get another chance to do it again.
So, if it means making sure
that my neighbor is healthy, in some way,
and if it's just one little thing that I can do to ensure that,
then I'm going to do it.
[Ellen] Installing a community well
to provide clean drinking water at a location
that Louise is proposing would cost approximately $10,000.
This year alone the town budgeted $35,000
for their annual Founder's Day Festival.
Just three hours north of here,
the community of Pictou Landing First Nation
is also confronting a toxic legacy of government neglect.
The current fight of the Mi'kmaq people here
is reflective of a long line of struggles
between indigenous communities and the government
since the colonization of present-day Canada began.
Genocide, assaults from federal agents, and Catholic residential schools
have stripped the Mi'kmaq
of much of the land and culture they once knew.
Today, they're also dealing with an environmental disaster
which has been plaguing their community for over 50 years.
[bird calling]
[announcer 2] Boat Harbour, Nova Scotia.
Thousands of fish gasping for breath and dying.
Most people who saw these pictures on the news were disgusted, indignant.
How could it happen?
But these pictures are just the latest in a long history of pollution here.
-[gasps] -Oh, hello!
-It's so nice to meet you. -Nice to meet you, too.
-Come on in. -Yeah, sorry about that.
GPS just... The next thing you knew, I was getting it stuck in the mud.
I kind of knew that it was the back road. I was like, "road closed." Hmm.
[laughing] Yeah.
[Michelle] Pre-pollution, what we now know as Boat Harbour
was called A'Se'K.
A'Se'K means "the other room."
It was the place that our community members ran to
when the Indian agents used to come
to collect kids.
They used to run to A'Se'K.
So A'Se'K... and one of our elders says it so eloquently, at one time
was like a parent to them.
Um... they protected them.
They fed them when they were hungry.
You know, they kept shelter, you know, and when...
the mill came along in 1965
and started their very intentful plan to, uh...
infiltrate our land,
um, and our A'Se'K...
uh... all that was taken away.
All that was taken away.
[announcer 2] In 1965, the Scott Paper Company
wanted to build a pulp-and-paper mill in Nova Scotia.
They knew exactly where they wanted to go.
The town of Pictou.
[indistinct speech]
It was their consultant, Dr. John Bates,
who had selected the site a few years earlier.
This is what he proposed,
that Scott Paper build a kraft pulp mill.
The waste for the mill would be piped under Pictou Harbour
and dumped into Boat Harbour.
Eventually, the industrial waste would make its way into the ocean.
By the time this was proposed,
Dr. Bates was no longer a consultant for Scott.
He had become the head of the Nova Scotia Water Authority.
Everything was in place for a very lucrative deal
between Scott Paper and the province of Nova Scotia.
The government agreed to look after the waste from the mill
and began buying up land in the area.
The only problem was the Indians who lived on the edge of Boat Harbour.
[Michelle] The Water Authority had approached my grandfather,
who was chief at the time, and, uh, the council,
and said, "Yeah, well, you know, we wanna bring this mill here.
Um, yeah, don't worry about it.
Everything's gonna be great. It'll be a fresh-water lake.
It's not gonna impact, you know, anything."
There was documented concerns about the impact on the environment,
the impact on their fisheries, so they were raising the concerns
as our leadership, you know, have done for decades.
So once they found out that we were worried about these things,
"Oh, we'll just, you know, we'll take them on a trip."
They went and they took my grandfather
and another councillor, Martin Sapier,
to, uh, a place in, uh...
New Brunswick,
which wasn't even a treatment facility
similar to the one that they were building.
Mr. Wigglesworth come down,
took us up St. John's, or Lancaster,
or whatever you wanna call it, a pulp mill up there.
And he showed us that there was no discolor in the water, no odor.
[reporter] He showed you there was no discolor in the water.
Discolor in the water.
There's no odor or anything coming out of that pulp mill.
[announcer 2] The smoke here is from the pulp mill in St. John.
But the Indians were never taken there.
All they were shown was a water treatment plant
for domestic sewage a few miles away.
That was, you know, a facade in itself.
Um, and, you know, spewed some lies to them,
you know, made them, you know, try and understand
that, "It's not gonna impact this.
It's gonna be a lake.
You're still gonna be able to enjoy it, recreation,
you're still gonna be able to do the things, you know,
that you want to do."
And there were conditions.
There were conditions in the agreement that were totally ignored.
You know, they wanted to, they wanted to know...
um, for sure, you know, what's the impacts,
and that was never followed through with.
The only thing that was followed through with
was, uh, $60,000.
You know, $60,000 back then to an oppressed community
that, you know, had been suffering
under the impacts of, you know, residential school and... and...
It was a lot.
I can just imagine what was going through my grandfather's mind.
"I'm doing so-- like, oh, my God.
The environment isn't gonna be impacted.
You know, I feel for the county.
I feel for, you know, I'm helping.
Nothing bad is gonna come out of this."
My grandfather, right there in New Brunswick,
along with Martin Sapier,
signed on a piece of paper.
A piece of paper. Right then and there, they had him.
[announcer 2] The Indians had signed away their rights to Boat Harbour,
for about $65,000.
Two years later, the plant was in operation.
And the waste started flowing into Boat Harbour.
They killed every fish out there,
over the next day up there, all along the shore.
Dead fish, [indistinct] seals, and everything all around.
They killed them right away, overnight.
[reporter] That was within a week of the plant start-up.
[man] That's about three, four days after it started.
Yeah. Killed everything with it.
And just to think about the grief he felt
when he realized that Boat Harbour was dead.
He died, you know, thinking that
it was his fault.
And then he passes that down to, you know...
that sense of guilt down to, you know, his kids and the family
and how did they cope, you know, when...
Then you have...
[sighs] It's just a cycle that needs to be broken.
What would life be like for my family...
if Boat Harbour didn't happen?
My grandfather and my grandmother had 13 kids.
My grandfather passing away at a very, you know,
very young, late 40s.
Um...
Right now, to this day, my mother is still living, and my aunt.
All others have been lost to cancer.
To suicide.
You know, alcoholism and drugs.
You know, took a driver's seat.
So I often wonder... if this didn't happen,
would we have had a chance...
to live in a way...
where we could grow old together?
I'll be taking you guys out to see the Effluent Treatment Facility...
uh, over at Simpson's Lane.
Just not far from our community.
This is the entrance to the treatment facility
that's been here since 1967.
This is what is directly coming out of the mill.
Raw, untreated effluent.
That used to dump directly into, onto our land.
There was no, like, treatment system for it,
so the pipe just used to dump.
I get so sad coming down here.
That's what our community smells like.
Sometimes you go into our community buildings and our homes
and you feel that, like it just sticks to the walls.
These are the aerators.
They're supposedly giving oxygen to the water, which is fairly sad,
but, uh, back in the day when they said that it would have no impact...
this is what we're left with.
Uh, all this is boiling over into our community,
so not only are we suffering,
knowing that, you know, this exists to our water,
look at our air as well.
And, uh... yeah.
It's...
It's sad.
[Ian] Do you worry about your own health?
It's so funny that you mention that,
because, uh, just knowing, you know, where I came from
and, you know, the family that's gone before me,
I've never expected to live long.
I'll be 41, you know, next week.
And...
knowing that, you know, everybody passed away so young...
uh, I'd always felt that,
you know, I wasn't gonna get a chance to grow old.
And sometimes I think that way.
Grief... and I say that word a lot,
because I don't know how else to describe it...
takes many forms.
It's... It's, you know...
How do you cope with this?
How would you cope with this?
[reporter] Was that a concern of yours,
that the lagoon was so close
to the Indian reserve?
Well, it wasn't doing them any harm.
They weren't in the water, they weren't living in the water.
They were living in sight of the water.
And, uh, so what?
[Michelle] So these are some of the community members that we've lost
since the opening of the mill.
Yeah.
And, yeah, you can clearly see that...
They die young, they die young. Yeah. No, it's true.
I don't like to count the dead.
We had a lot.
We have a lot of people that should be here.
[laughs] They should be here.
They should be fighting alongside us.
They should be seeing the end to...
the water, the pollution.
They should be, but they're not.
So we wanted to try and commemorate that,
where, you know, they're gonna be here.
They see what's happening. They see what we're doing.
They're going to be proud of us.
This just reminds me, it just reminds me, you know, why I'm doing what I'm doing,
because...
[sighs]
Enough is enough.
[Ellen] In 2014, tensions came to a head when the mill's pipe broke,
spilling 47 million liters of toxic untreated effluent into the area...
on land known to be Mi'kmaq burial grounds.
The government had pledged to close Boat Harbour several times
but never kept their word.
This time, Michelle and her community sprung into action
and created a blockade,
vowing not to leave until Boat Harbour was closed,
forcing the provincial government to finally step up.
[Michelle] Since, you know, June 2014,
it was, you know, highly in the media,
of our peaceful protest
during the effluent break
from the pipeline.
We were on the front lines.
Just fed up.
Just fed up that, you know, this keeps happening,
this effluent, you know, that's been a burden since,
you know, for five decades, is continuing to harm us.
We were going back and forth.
Our leadership was, you know, we're meeting with government
quite frequently and trying to figure out a resolve
to what was happening.
We met in our gymnasium, our community gymnasium,
and leadership would come back and say, "Okay,
well, we've had discussions with the government
and this is what they say,"
and, of course, we don't trust, you know.
This is rule number one, is, the trust has been broken,
through several governments,
and, you know, through several, several broken promises
throughout, you know, the decades and decades.
So, that was the biggest thing.
That was the height of us trying to figure out,
is what they're saying, is it the truth?
We were fortunate to come to an agreement,
an agreement that we weren't totally happy with, um...
that they were finally going to acknowledge the devastation
and they were going to propose a closure date
of the Boat Harbour Effluent Treatment Facility.
So the date they proposed wasn't the date that we wanted.
Um...
We were hoping sooner.
[laughs]
The date they gave us was January 31st, 2020.
Um... We thought long, we thought hard about that.
Um...
But we compromised.
[Ellen] To be clear, the compromise made was not to shut down the mill,
but the Boat Harbour Effluent Facility,
which had harmed the community for decades.
The government of Nova Scotia passed the Boat Harbour Act,
a law that orders that by January 31st, 2020,
using the Boat Harbour facility
"for the reception and treatment of effluent from the Mill must cease..."
allowing time for two things:
to plan and build a new wastewater treatment plant
and to plan the cleanup of Boat Harbour.
Northern Pulp was given five years to come up with an alternative plan.
But four years later, the best plan they could propose
was to build a new pipeline
that would dump the effluent
into the Northumberland Strait,
right next to Pictou Landing...
lucrative fishing grounds for both the native and non-native community,
a plan that created public outrage.
Yeah, we wanna be happy.
We wanna celebrate the closure of something.
We wanna start healing.
We want to do all those things that we feel that...
we should have been able to do.
And, how can we celebrate that knowing that they're proposing
a new pipeline or a new treatment plant
that just takes it from our backyard and puts it in our front yard?
But what really bothers me is that they say,
"treated effluent, treated effluent, treated effluent."
We've been impacted by this treated effluent
for more than five decades.
Like, we shouldn't have to continue to fight.
We shouldn't have to be out there
saying, "What the fuck is wrong with you?
Why are you proposing to put that there?"
Like, why is the government okay with that?
After knowing full well of the devastation that we've been through.
Our history.
We're... We're never gonna be free of it.
[Ellen] In early 2019, the Pictou community came together
to keep public awareness focused on the planned 2020 closure date.
[reporter] The room was filled with optimism
as the Pictou Landing First Nations kicked off their one-year countdown
to the Boat Harbour Treatment Facility closure.
Together, we want a clean environment.
Together, we want to make things right, and that's what this is all about.
This date means so much to not just Pictou Landing First Nation,
but it means a lot to everybody.
"I want my kids to already be able to swim and fish in Boat Harbour
at my current age.
So then they have the childhood that I didn't."
[Ellen] At the very same time the community was celebrating,
Northern Pulp decided to have their own gathering.
Without an alternative treatment plan in place
and hoping to avoid a full mill shutdown,
they asked for an extension to keep the Boat Harbour facility open.
We all have the same goal
and that is to see Boat Harbour return to its natural state.
We simply need a bit more time to ensure the time and due diligence
to carry out each phase,
from environmental assessment
to construction, and finally commissioning of this new facility.
Well, today was meant to be a celebration,
just an hour before the event kicked off,
Northern Pulp Mill made an announcement that they would be requiring an extension
to shut down the Boat Harbour facility.
Chief Andrea Paul says the timing of that announcement is disappointing
and says an extension would be unacceptable.
They knew by 2015,
and had they taken that time to be proactive
instead of reactive to the news,
they would have been further ahead in what they wanted to accomplish.
[Ellen] And then, Stephen McNeil, the premier of Nova Scotia,
and the first head of government to be firm on a closure date,
now also seemed to be bending.
We gave them five years, and I've been very clear about that,
that on January 31st, 2020, is our deadline.
I've also said, to the community and to this company,
if you can come together and find a path
that you can find and land on an extension,
then I would consider that.
Instead of manning up and to say,
"No, A'Se'K's government created a legislation to close January 31st, 2020,
and we're going to stick by that,"
they chose to...
use us as a scapegoat.
"Okay, well, you know, we could maybe, if Pictou Landing agrees..."
I thought that was very unfair.
That was very unfair to us.
If it was true, a true relationship...
like they like to boast about,
they would have said, "January 31st, 2020.
We created the legislation, we're gonna stick with it,
that's it, the end."
But they didn't.
I just want so desperately to believe in something,
and...
and right now I believe in January 31st, 2020.
I just hope that people will realize
that, you know, we're not doing these things to be troublemakers
and to, you know, to cause everybody grief.
We're doing it because we need a future.
We need to be connected to the land.
We need to, you know, have sustainable environment,
um, for our kids,
for our kids' kids.
And, you know, we do it because we're meant to be here and do this.
The bottom line is, is that we're sick of being sick.
And we hope to heal.
We hope to heal from all this, eventually,
but there's a quote that I always go back to,
is that you can't, you can't heal
in the same environment that made you sick.
So in order for us to start healing, that water has to stop flowing.
[Ellen] If or when the waste water does stop flowing,
an intensive cleanup process is needed,
estimated to take up to five years
and cost over $200 million,
to remove toxins like mercury from Boat Harbour.
The hope is that eventually the area will return
to something close to its original state.
We've already started to talk about...
what would Boat Harbour look--
what will it look like in the future?
What do you want to see, you know, when we're able to revisit A'Se'K,
when we're able to reclaim that again?
Because we talk about, you know, we call it Boat Harbour,
you know, but that is the pollution name.
Boat Harbour is the pollution name of that.
You know, it was A'Se'K,
so when we get back to A'Se'K, what do you wanna see?
We talk about nature and we talk about, you know,
they just want to be able to reconnect with the land.
Something as simple as that is healing, you know, for people.
I want, you know, my grandfather to rest peacefully.
I want all the Boat Harbour warriors before us to rest peacefully.
And I want them to be proud
that we fought right till the end.
[Ellen] While Michelle and her community continue to push
towards Boat Harbour's closure date,
only an hour away, history could very well repeat itself,
with the government being influenced by corporate interests,
again at the expense of an indigenous community,
which brings me to my last stop,
where, in the town of Stewiacke,
they are fighting to keep that from happening.
The Alton Gas Corporation is proposing to build
an underground storage facility on unceded Mi'kmaq territory.
Alton Gas discovered underground salt caverns
near the Shubenacadie River
that could store natural gas.
In order to do that,
they've planned to dissolve the cavern's salt deposits with river water
and then dump that salt water mixture back into the river,
up to 3,000 tons per day.
The brine mixture carries salinity levels
six times higher than what's considered safe for fish to survive.
Naturally, community members and local leaders are not pleased.
Community is not happy about it.
[reporter] The Sipekne'katik Band is against the project.
Chief Rufus Copage says the latest environmental report
wasn't properly explained to his band council.
I was hoping we'd have a chance to talk to them,
but it don't seem like the government wants to give us an opportunity,
so I guess we'll have to fight.
They've never done this anywheres in the world before.
Why do they want to do it here in little Nova Scotia?
Why do they want to do it in our river
that our kids fish every year,
where they get their food from,
where our community members have gathered
for many, many, many generations?
The real public safety issue is Alton Gas.
[chanting]
[Ellen] I'm going to meet with the local Water Protectors
in the Sipekne'katik district,
who are known as the Grassroots Grandmothers.
They're leading the resistance
to prevent not only an environmental catastrophe,
but also a travesty of their treaty rights.
And several of them were arrested just a few days before our visit.
[protestors chanting]
[reporter] The Mi'kmaq women say they're protecting the land and water,
and when they wouldn't leave voluntarily, they were taken into custody
for civil contempt of an injunction order.
They say their movement is far from over.
We're going to always stand and protect the sacred.
We're not going to stop. Mark my words, Alton Gas...
you're not going to be successful.
[Ellen] I'm meeting Dorene and Michelle, two of the Water Protectors.
They're taking me to the main Alton Gas gate,
where they've been actively disrupting the project.
We're going to, uh, the...
the Alton Gas gate.
Where they arrested the ladies, yeah, the women.
[Michelle P.] They took the tobacco ties off.
-[Dorene] Yes, they did. -[Michelle P.] Oh, no.
I'm gonna ask them about those.
[Michelle P.] Why is there a police car right here?
I don't know.
[Ellen] Over the last four years,
this has been the front line of resistance,
resulting in almost daily conflict.
[Dorene] I just came down to check in on the tobacco ties,
those prayer ties that were on the gate.
[Michelle P.] That was done in ceremony.
We put those ties up in ceremony.
We did do our best to respect them.
We made sure the other side stayed up and we double-taped those.
I can give them to you now.
I... Can I just collect them? I'll just get them myself?
I can't let you over the gate, but I can bring them over to you.
[Michelle P.] That's not right, that's disrespectful.
[Ellen] Alton Gas even ended up creating a designated protest area
to keep them from disrupting the entrance.
[Dorene] So this is our cage.
This is the protest cage that they built.
I won't step inside of that cage.
'Cause my spirit won't go in that cage.
"Peaceful protestors can use this designated area
during daylight hours to maintain a safe and clean area for all.
Please remove all garbage.
Do not park vehicles, camp or light fires.
Note that the use of alcohol and drugs is strictly prohibited. Thank you."
The level of ignorance and disrespect
that those words convey...
[sighs]
What are you guys doing here?
[officer] We were talking to them about playing it safe.
She knows we're concerned.
I just don't recognize you, that's all.
-Oh. -Your faces.
I recognize this. [laughs]
But not your faces.
A lot of money is being spent by the province...
to allow, aid and abet the real criminal.
And the criminalization of our own people...
has not, uh, been really spoken about.
The real criminals are the company that's trying to come in here
and dump salt in this river.
They're the real criminals, but yet they're being protected
by, uh, the police services. It's...
it's incredibly, uh, disturbing.
Look, another one.
[Ellen] Dorene is taking us to meet the other grandmothers
at their second site of resistance,
the treaty truck house,
where she accidentally stumbled upon the start of the Alton Gas construction
three years ago.
By building the truck house,
the Water Protectors actively asserted their treaty rights and occupied the area,
effectively delaying the company from moving forward
and impeding on unceded Mi'kmaq territory.
[Dorene] This is a public access road.
And there was a backhoe up here,
uh...
filling in this dike.
And I ran up, I ran up and asked them what they were doing,
and they said, "Oh, you're not supposed to be here.
This is for a construction site.
And, uh, we had to build up the dike
on orders of the Minister of the Environment."
And I said, "What? She ordered you to do that?"
I said, "When is she gonna order you to go the hell home, get out of here?"
And I went down to the river
and I was offering my tobacco and praying,
and, uh, two security guards came up behind me
and they stood there while I was singing to the water.
And then they escorted me back to my car.
And that's when I put that video out,
showing that there's backhoes up here and they were building.
And, uh, told people, "This is what they're doing to the river.
You better come."
And that weekend we came and built...
I'll take you over to the treaty truck house.
All right.
-All right. -[Ellen] You want me to grab this?
This is where it all began, as far as the occupation of this site.
It was women who were here that day.
And we also had a copy of our treaty that was rolled up like a scroll,
and we unrolled it and we put it up to them
and we said, we recited the clause,
number four on our 1752 treaty, that states,
"If the Indians shall decide,
a truck house will be built on the river Shubenacadie."
And we all looked at each other and we said, "We decide."
As soon as you get to the top of this step, one view...
In one view, in one instant, you'll realize why we are here.
This river is sacred to us.
This river is the superhighway of our nation.
It connected our whole territory.
From time immemorial.
And we continue to do that.
And we won't let this company destroy it.
[drums beating, protestors chanting]
One of the things I think is really important
is, uh, to know that women are carriers for the water.
And the reason why women are given this responsibility
is because women are the life givers.
It's passed down to the women, the females in our families,
that the water is sacred and it's our responsibility.
We are given a gift,
but we also have been given a responsibility.
[Ellen] With their water endangered, their treaty rights violated,
and the country's environmental laws ignored,
these grandmothers have begun confronting the very politicians
sworn in to protect them.
Honor our treaties, Mr. McNeil!
[Michelle P.] Talk to us, talk to us!
-[woman] Why won't you speak to us? -Roll your window down. [tapping glass]
Roll your window down. Come on. Roll your window down.
-Don't block that car. -I'm not blocking it.
Step back or you're gonna get arrested.
Do not block the car. You can protest all you want...
[woman 1] You need to learn to honor the treaty!
[woman 2] Respect...
-[Michelle P.] Speak to the people. -[woman 1] Honor the treaty!
[Michelle P.] Stop Alton Gas!
No, you are federal government,
you are the one that puts this through our laws.
You are poisoning our waters.
You're allowing other companies to come into our wa...
No, no, no "thank you" yet.
I'm thanking you for being direct with me.
-I'm a very straight-up grandmother. -I really appreciate that.
While you're [indistinct] forward, the regulations...
No regulations, we don't want gas under our ass!
We're gonna be working with the indigenous leadership, working with the province...
Why don't you work with the grandmothers?
Take Alton Gas out of our province now.
[protestor] And the legislation that Trudeau is trying to pass
needs to be stopped.
Because he's changing the legislation
so that Alton Gas can dump brine in the river.
They're not in compliance with the regulations as it is right now,
and the federal government proposes to create and design new regulations
to make them... be in compliance, I guess, which has just...
[protestor] Moved them up.
Yeah, it's just--
It's just another example of their contempt
and their disregard for our rights.
They're doing it, and they're not even tricking us.
They're just doing it now, you know, blatantly.
And here we have the Department of Fisheries, for one,
of the opinion, I guess, that they're not able to step in
unless and until something actually goes into the water.
You know?
And we're saying, we're not gonna let that happen
because that risk is too great.
You can't unring the bell once it's been rung.
Right? Like once that brine goes in that river,
it will upset the salinity levels.
It will kill the fish.
You know, and then... and then what?
They're opening up our territory for business.
Whether it be Alton Gas or fracking companies
or rare-earth minerals
or gold mines,
those are all projects that affect our treaty rights.
So they're blatantly disrespecting our rights,
but they're granting Alton Gas the exemptions to these regulations.
Canada, Canada is not a nation.
Canada is not a nation,
let's get that straight, it's a corporation.
You know, doctrine of discovery.
They didn't discover nothing.
And each and every time we asked them, "Well, give us the proof,"
they can't show us no proof.
This is why we never get justice in this system,
because we're native, because we're indigenous.
And it's time for it to stop.
It's time for us as women to embrace who we are
as Mi'kmaqis,
remember our ancestors fought for this land,
and that we need to wake up.
We need to rise our spirits again.
We need to go and tell them to leave. They're not wanted here.
Right? And that's just basically what we've been doing,
is telling them to leave. They're not wanted here.
We don't want them here.
Now, you see that this not only happens here,
it happens in every part of the world.
Every part of the world.
When you look at where industry
is affecting the lives of people, those are indigenous people,
from those lands.
And those corporations, the majority of them,
are Canadian companies.
And they have the power
to have people killed.
They have had the power to assassinate grandmothers
and kill the people that are standing in front of their gates.
I said, "We're doing the same thing as what they did in Guatemala.
Standing in front of a corporation."
And people have been killed there.
If we were less visible, they would knock us off, too.
[woman] They are knocking us off.
Look at the numbers on the missing and murdered indigenous women.
They have been killing our women.
Our truth is that we don't have a choice.
This is who we are,
and this is who we are always meant to be.
It's in our DNA.
It's in our blood.
They cannot stop us
from being indigenous anymore.
[woman] It's our identities.
They cannot stop us from learning how to take care of the Earth,
what our relationship is.
And they cannot stop us from teaching,
not only our children, but everybody's children.
The prophecy that we're taught
was that, if we didn't start taking care of our Mother Earth,
our lands and our waters,
our food and our medicines,
and the animals and the flowers and everything that sustains us,
one day an ounce of water is gonna cost more than an ounce of gold.
It says that no matter how much money you have,
you're not gonna be able to buy that...
ounce of water
because of how precious it is.
It wouldn't matter if you had gold.
You can't drink gold. You can't drink money.
So it was a teaching for, not only indigenous people.
We carry the message.
It's for all human beings, all mankind.
Everybody who's living now, we have to be able
to tell our grandchildren and those that are unborn
that we did everything in our power to make a change
and to make a difference
and to stop the destruction, to stop the pollution,
and to stop it from persisting.
We're just regular people.
We're all rights holders here, sitting in front of you here.
And how we are connected to you is that you were born here.
You're from here, too.
You have that connection to the land.
When your feet touch on other territory, you're still from here.
Your spirit is from Mi'kma'ki.
And I hope what happened here today you'll carry with you
in your spirit, and that's powerful.
[no audible dialogue]
[Ellen] The picture-perfect image I had of my home growing up
was broken some time ago.
But I've come to realize I just wasn't seeing all of the pieces.
And that, behind the shadow of corporations,
beyond governments turning a blind eye
on the citizens it has made most vulnerable,
a love for nature and one another can prevail.
I was instilled with a sense of power and purpose
by the Grassroots Grandmothers,
and all the women I've met along this journey.
The truth is, even with their sacrifice,
there's no way we can know what the future holds,
for them or for our planet,
unless we look to each other and those in power
to be held accountable,
unless we start to shift our view to see beyond ourselves...
to see that what affects one of us
affects us all.
You share DNA with a fruit fly.
You are connected to every living thing on Earth.
You have the power of life.
Use it.
[water rushing]
And this is one of the hardest decisions that we as a government
have had to make.
The commitment I made to clean up Boat Harbour
was a serious one
and not something our government did lightly.
Many governments before us said they would clean it up,
but did not.
We will not repeat that pattern.
The Boat Harbour Act will be enforced
as of January 31st, 2020.
Northern Pulp will be ordered to stop pumping effluent into Boat Harbour.
And let me be clear.
There will be no extension.
[water rushing]