Yellow Quill Crisis

Reserves today continue to be important land bases for First Nations across Canada, often contained within their ancestral and spiritual homelands. Yet, on average, reserves present some of the most alarming conditions in Canada. They are typically isolated communities with high instances of poverty, substance abuse, suicide, unemployment, and mortality. Some reserves exhibit what has been controversially described as Third World conditions, due to inadequate housing and contaminated water supplies, among other things. As Globe and Mail reporter Christie Blatchford wrote regarding the Yellow Quill First Nation in 2008, “The reserve water supply was so poor that until 2004, when a new water treatment system began operating, residents lived under a boil-water alert that lasted fully eight years. Would any community in Canada—but for one on a reserve—have had to endure such an alert for eight years?
However, it is widely accepted that the cultural genocide and social disruption perpetrated over generations through displacement, discriminatory legislation such as the Indian Act, and federal programs such as the residential school system created enduring hardships among Aboriginal peoples and hindered the re-establishment of social networks and the development of stable