Kashechewan First Nation, locally known as Kash, is a Cree First Nation located on the northern shore of the Albany River in Northern Ontario, Canada, within territory covered by Treaty 9. The community is located on the west coast of James Bay. Kashechewan came into being when most of the Anglican families of the Fort Albany First Nation (Fort Albany) on the south shore of the river moved north in 1958–1961. Kashechewan was granted its own band council under the Indian Act in 1977, though the two still share a reserve, Fort Albany 67. The population was estimated to be about 2,000 as of 2024, according to the CBC, and as of October 2024, the total population of Kashechewan and Fort Albany, which are reported together by CIRNAC, was 5,597.
The First Nation was the subject of international media attention due to the discovery of E. coli in the community's water in October 2005, which brought popular consciousness to the health, housing, and economic crises facing the community.
Kashechewan is prone to flooding during the annual spring break up of ice on the river, and has built dykes to mitigate the damage caused, but these have been repeatedly found to be insufficient. The community has often had to be evacuated during flooding season. Proposals have been made in the 21st century to move the community further inland to a less flood-prone area.
The community is connected to other towns along the coast of James Bay by the seasonal ice road. Otherwise, it is only accessible by air or boat, having no permanent roads that connect outside the First Nation.
Kashechewan is a member of the Mushkegowuk Council and the Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN), which represents 51 First Nations across Northern Ontario. NAN also provides services to its members, such as the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service, which polices Kashechewan.
Name When Kashechewan was established as a distinct community in the mid-twentieth century, its residents chose the Swampy Cree name "Keeshechewan" () meaning "where the water flows fast." However, when the sign for the new post office arrived, it had the misspelling "Kshechewan", and this became the official name of the community. This official name has no real meaning in the Cree language.
History
Before establishment of Kashechewan
The Mushkegowuk or Swampy Cree had lived on the west coast of James Bay and in the Albany River watershed from time immemorial by the time the first Europeans arrived in the 17th century. They and other Algonquian peoples organized themselves in loose patrilineal bands based around the extended family, which gathered into larger groups during the winter.
In 1679, the Hudson's Bay Company established the trading post of Fort Albany on Albany Island at the mouth of the Albany River in order to trade goods with the Indigenous people of the area.Alan Pope, "Report on the Kashechewan First Nation and its People" , October 31, 2006.
During the ensuing centuries of the fur trade era, the Mushkegowuk did not sell or give away any land, but traded furs and goods with the traders at the posts, who numbered no more than a few dozen at a time.
As the fur trade declined in the late nineteenth century, the ancestors of the present day Fort Albany and Kashechewan First Nations established their first settlement in the area, near the Hudson's Bay Company trading post, and near the Roman Catholic mission on St. Ann's Lake on Sinclair Island. This site came to be known as Old Post.
According to community members interviewed in 2010, by 1900, the Crees of Kashechewan trapped over an area of 640 square kilometres in the James Bay region. On August 3, 1905, a ceremony was held at Fort Albany to sign Treaty 9. The treaty set aside reserve lands for the community and established a band government under the Indian Act, legally creating the modern reserve Fort Albany 67 and the Fort Albany First Nation government. The initial limits of Fort Albany 67 included the occupied area on the south shore of the river, where Fort Albany exists today, as well as 230 square kilometres of hunting land to the north of the river. Cree tradition does not recall an agreement to surrender land, rather that the treaty promised a sharing of land and resources, as well as infrastructure investment and employment for hunters.
In 1906, the federal government began funding St. Anne's Indian Residential School, which had opened under the direction of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Grey Nuns of the Cross in 1902 at the site of the Fort Albany Mission on Albany Island. The school was part of the Canadian Indian residential school system, and "was home to some of the most harrowing examples of abuse against Indigenous children in Canada," according to the Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada.
Establishment of Kashechewan Kashechewan was established as its own community separate from Fort Albany in the 1950s. Reasons offered for why the community split vary.
According to members of the community, the move was prompted by an Indian Agent who arrived in the summer of 1957, suggesting the community move closer to the Hudson's Bay store, despite community members pointing out how the location on the north shore of the river was unfit and prone to flooding. After nobody had moved for two months, RCMP officers arrived to enforce the relocation, and many community members were forced to move.
Alan Pope's 2006 report of the community offered the characterisation that some community members decided to move from the formerly-occupied Albany Island (the site known as Old Post) due to particularly intense flooding on that island in the mid-1950s. As a result, many decided to leave and go to the current site of Kashechewan on the north shore of the river, while some opted to stay on Sinclair Island, the current site of Fort Albany First Nation.
Another version of the history suggests that in 1958, sectarian violence erupted between Anglican and Roman Catholic families in Fort Albany, which led one Anglican family to leave the main Old Post population centre on the south shore of the river and Sinclair Island, and relocate to the north shore of the river. This site would become known as Kashechewan. In the following three years, most of the Anglican families of Fort Albany moved to the north shore. By 1960, the Department of Indian Affairs recognized the new community as independent, but Fort Albany and Kashechewan continued to share the same chief and council.
In 1977, Fort Albany and Kashechewan came to have separate band councils. They are treated as separate bands, and function as separate bands today. The present-day Fort Albany First Nation is mostly a Roman Catholic community, while Kashechewan is mainly Anglican.
2005 water-quality crisis
Background In 2001, the Ontario Clean Water Agency conducted a survey, funded by the federal ministry of Indian and Northern Affairs and the Ontario First Nations Technical Services Corporation, of water systems on Indian reserves in the province. The survey identified 62 communities in the province, including Kashechewan, where severe problems affected the communities' water systems. These problems included broken treatment plant equipment, malfunctioning safety alarms, funding shortages, water sampling deficiencies and a shortage of trained water treatment plant staff.
In 2003, the community was placed on a boil-water advisory. A report by OCWA described the situation in Kashechewan as "a Walkerton-in-waiting," referring to the Walkerton E. coli outbreak in the southern Ontario town of Walkerton in 2000."Concerns over water on reserve ignored for years", CTV News, October 27, 2005. While the outbreak in Walkerton led to the passage of the 2002 Safe Drinking Water Act in Ontario, the act did not apply to the standards for water quality on reserves, being are under federal jurisdiction. As the water quality worsened, Indian and Northern Affairs began to fly bottled water in to the First Nation. From April 2005 to mid-October 2005, this cost roughly $250,000 CAD."Ont. reserve decries First Nations water crisis". CTV News, October 21, 2005.
Discovery of E. coli On October 14, 2005, Health Canada issued an E. coli warning to Kashechewan Chief Leo Friday. That same day, Health Canada called the field manager of Northern Waterworks Inc. to investigate the situation. Arriving the following day, he discovered that a chlorine injector in the nine-year-old water plant had broken and that the coagulant chemical aluminum sulfate (used to remove discolouration) was ineffective in the water's cold temperatures. The Northern Waterworks Inc. field manager fixed the chlorine injector and ordered a different coagulating agent, polyaluminum chloride, from Fort Albany and Attawapiskat, and it arrived later on October 15. By October 17, the field manager had been able to conduct an E. coli test, and found the water to be free of harmful bacteria, and the chlorine levels were "below Ontario's standard recommended maximum." Another test on October 19 confirmed the lack of coliform bacteria.
Response In the meantime, both local schools were closed while a team of community members formulated a response to the crisis. This "core committee" included the chief, deputy chief, the elementary school principal, the health director, the community crisis coordinator, and several teachers. Among their goals was to draw Health Canada's attention to the community's crises. They sent a press release to national media outlets, and the news of contaminated water was first published by the Timmins Daily Press on October 18. Much further attention from the media followed, including articles by The Canadian Press and Yahoo! News, highlighting the community's history of exposure to contaminated water and the harmful consequences to the population's health.
On October 19, Indian Affairs Minister Andy Scott arrived in Kashechewan in response to the growing media coverage. A community meeting was held about the situation with Health Canada and INAC officials in the gym of St. Andrew's Elementary School. By that time, the community's drinking water was clean. In an effort to impress upon the minister and the officials the dire nature of the crises facing Kashechewan, bottles and jars of brown water collected from the river were presented at the meeting as though they were infected tap water, with residents angrily telling the government officials during the meeting, "You drink the water." The meeting became an outlet for members of the community to raise the many issues that had been plaguing Kashechewan for years with no action from the Ministry. Upon hearing the community's concerns, the Minister told them, "I think that this situation has been neglected for too long and it needs to be fixed. And I want to work with your leadership to figure out the plan to do that. No more band-aid solutions."