AT 43, ANNIE WESLEY’S striking good looks are slowly fading. Despite her jet-black hair and impish smile, the toll of raising seven children and one grandchild on $1,200 a month is starting to show. Four grown children have already left home, though, offering some relief. Life on the reserve is difficult, but for Annie it is doubly so. Now single after splitting with her long-time husband, Philemon, and still grieving the loss of her parents, she’s struggling to raise a new generation of grandchildren.

The latest addition to Annie’s family is Harlem, born to her 17-year-old daughter, Bethanie ““ the result of a liaison with a “druggie” from another reserve. Harlem clings tightly to her mother’s neck in the family’s cramped kitchen. With her older relatives, Harlem lives packed into Annie’s small house in Kashechewan, one of Canada’s most desperate and neglected reserves.

In 2005 the conditions there became a national scandal. Visitors from outside said they couldn’t believe that such Third World surroundings could exist in a country as rich as Canada. Newspapers reported on dirty water laced with E. coli, rampant sickness and overcrowded, poorly built houses. But few commented on how these conditions affect families like Annie’s.

In fact, Annie has spent almost her entire life living on the reserve in surroundings that would make most Canadians blanch. Many of her neighbours have boardedup windows. (Plywood is harder to break and cheaper to replace than glass.) Crime is rampant, the police are considered almost totally ineffective, there are frequent teenage suicides and alcohol and drug abuse is ravaging the youth.

It takes only a short stroll along Annie’s street to get a sense of the neglect, decay and hopelessness that characterizes Kashechewan. Dozens of Russian Prince Vodka bottles lay discarded on the roadside along with potato-chip wrappers and soda cans. Nearby there are broken-down cars and snowmobiles, the hulks left to rust into the ground. Dozens of stray dogs run loose day and night.

Annie knows her family is living in slum conditions. She says the government has known about it for years, too, but has failed to act because aboriginals simply have no voice. “There’s garbage everywhere,” she says. “The housing is poor and in the springtime the sewage backs up.” That’s due in part because, despite band leaders’ forceful and continued complaints, the government built the reserve on a known flood plain.

Even aboriginals from the outside, inured to the poverty of Canada’s reserves, are often shocked by what they see. “It’s like in the 1950s and ’60s out here,” says Carol Laronde, 49, a band member of the Temagami First Nation who teaches at Kashechewan. “I’ve never seen anywhere still like this.”

IT IS LATE AUTUMN 2005 and the first snow is on the ground. Annie’s kitchen feels hot and steamy after the cold air outside. This is a new home with six small bedrooms, given to her by the band leadership after her dilapidated three bedroom burned down in 1998. It’s a fate common to many
dwellings in a town where all the fire hydrants are knocked over or dry and the only fire truck lies broken next to the small municipal airport.

Annie is sitting at the table, crowded around by children, waiting for a town meeting in the nearby school that will help decide Kashechewan’s fate. This evening the government, under pressure from activists and opposition politicians alike, will decide whether to accede to local demands that the community be relocated to higher ground.

Annie seems of two minds—pleased at the prospect of better buildings and land, but saddened by the idea that she might have to leave behind the town she has spent her whole life in. “Both my parents are buried here and I won’t forget them,” she says. “I’ve got three grandchildren buried
here, too.”

Annie didn’t want to dwell on the death of her grandchildren. But there’s no hiding the fact that infant mortality in Kashechewan is far above the national average. On the road to the airport there is a nursing station, but the nearest hospital is in Moose Factory—the better part of an hour away by small plane. Doctors visit the reserve regularly, but the demand for their skills is so high and many patients have such serious ailments that patient lists are very long.

At the town’s small cemetery, which stands close to the dump on the way to the airport, the tiny graves suggest a poor level of pediatric health care. One has a single, plastic pink-and-white rose lying on it and a cross with its crossbeam missing. The occupant of a second, who died last June 23 at 4:29 p.m., survived only hours.

Not all health concerns in Kashechewan are dire, but many are certainly unpleasant. The squalor and regular flooding each spring mean that basic hygiene is a problem. The situation has been exacerbated by years of dirty water that, although technically safe to wash in, was often so brown and foul-smelling that few residents wanted to take the chance. The result is that there have been outbreaks of scabies and contagious conditions, such as head lice, that quickly spread among the children of the reserve.

The federal and provincial authorities were so embarrassed when the conditions at Kashechewan caused national outrage that they threw money at the problem in a bid to try and make it go away. The provincial government ordered an evacuation of hundreds of residents and housed them for weeks and months in hotels in Timmins, Cochrane, Sault Ste. Marie and several other host cities in southern Ontario.

Federal authorities sent in the army with a special reverse osmosis machine capable of producing thousands of litres of fresh water a day from the nearby river. And, fighting for his political life, Andy Scott, then minister of Indian and northern affairs, finally agreed to cough up funds to relocate the flooded homes upstream to drier ground. The same night, which happened to coincide with the day the welfare cheques were handed out, many of the townsfolk got roaring drunk to celebrate, charging around till all hours on atvs, shouting and singing.

I TALK TO ANNIE AGAIN the next day. She is standing on her stoop and drying her hair as one of her daughters, 19-year old Kelli Ann, hangs clothes on the line to dry. Annie is pleased with the announcement of a new settlement that could mean new housing and new schools for her children.
But she’s the first to admit that relocating Kashechewan will not solve all its woes.

She says the struggle of putting food on the table is probably an even greater burden than the housing crisis and one that’s unlikely to go away. Part of the problem is transport costs. Goods must be brought in by air or winter road, and by the time they reach Kashechewan their prices have often doubled or more. Each month Annie receives $800 in welfare and $100 each from her four grown-up children. Out of that money, she pays $480 for rent. From the remainder she must feed Kelli Ann, 19, Bethanie, 17, Hezekiah, 16, Alfred, 14, Jonathan, 12, Rhonda, 9, and Tianna, 3. Six-month-old Harlem is still breastfeeding.

Annie shops at the Northern Store, a commercial chain that serves many remote northern communities. She says she has to rely mostly on frozen junk food even though she knows it’s bad for the children. Occasionally she might buy a leg of moose from a hunter or a goose at $20 a go. “We eat twice a day and I do all the cooking,” Annie says.

Annie’s husband, Philemon, is of little help, especially since she kicked him out. An unemployed carpenter, his work status is typical in Kashechewan. Other than the band office, the police service and a few maintenance jobs, there’s very little work to be had. On welfare day the queue to pick up cheques stretches out of the band office and down the road. But for many, only some of their monthly cheque goes toward necessities for the family. The rest ends up in the hands of bootleggers and drug dealers. “Many people here drink – they don’t save, they just drink,” says Mathias Wynne, 25, a neighbour of Annie’s who’s been admitted into detox clinics several times, and now lives in a boarded up house with his mother and brother.

IF THE RELOCATION of Kashechewan goes ahead as promised, one benefit to the community is that it should bring with it new jobs. At the first ministers meeting with aboriginal leaders in Kelowna, B.C., last November, plans were laid to train many native peoples as carpenters and provide them with much-needed money to improve housing.

Chief Friday, a Kashechewan leader, believes that a decade of work could help transform this 1,400-strong community and increase its independence. (Government-funded repairs to the water-treatment plant mean that day-to-day living should also improve in the meantime.) Rebuilding on better land, locals say, will also give a psychological boost to the community and, perhaps, sow the seeds of a brighter future. But communications from Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) remain vague. Funding will be made available for building 50 new units in 2006 and for up to 50 new units in subsequent years, says Tony Prudori, a senior information officer with INAC, before adding: “Relocation of the community remains an option, but it’s still premature to speculate precisely how long such a process may take, what steps may be involved, and what facilities will be included in any new settlement,” he says.

It’s hoped that Kashechewan will have a new school, at least. At present the schools are contaminated – the secondary school with asbestos and the now-condemned elementary school with mould. The conditions are deplorable, says Lloyd Macdonald, principal of the elementary school and a key figure in agitating for the relocation. “It’s breaking my heart what’s going on in the First Nations,” he says.

As for Annie, she’s seen too much to believe in easy solutions. She no longer follows politics and has no interest in the ideological debate over the future of First Nations in Canada. For her, the most pressing struggle is putting food on the table for her kids and grandkids. “Sometimes life is hard, especially without my parents,” she says. “All we need is a cheaper food store…we need more money.” Still, she hopes that moving to a better location may cure some of the reserve’s ills. No matter what happens, she holds on to one proud certainty: “I raised my family.”