Proud hosts of this Indigenous-led water quality monitoring program!

Our First Year Results

Update from Keepers of the Water Science Lead, Paul Belanger, for December 15th, 2022

Read the Athabasca Watershed Monitoring Program First-Year in Summary Report 2022.

Keepers of the Water have begun the journey to create educational resources for schools and communities that can serve as teaching tools on the importance of biodiversity in Northern watersheds. On September 28th, 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Canada’s commitment to protecting 25 percent of the nation’s lands and waters by 2025 and 30 percent by 2030.

Biodiversity loss and ecological collapse can only be mitigated if we keep habitats, ecosystems and waterways intact. Thirty percent is the absolute bare minimum needed to support global biodiversity, and scientists are arguing for even more protection. The main drivers in the loss of ecosystems are agriculture, forestry and natural resource extraction. We must ensure that the natural areas that provide essential benefits to humanity, such as food, clean water, clean air and a stable climate, are protected.

This program is an Indigenous-led, community-based water quality monitoring program that will allow Keepers of the Water to change how water data is reviewed, used and shared. This program will occur through an Indigenous lens guided by Traditional Ecological Knowledge Keepers, Creation storytelling and knowledge-sharing practices that teach us how to live in balance with the natural world during our physical time on Mother Earth. We believe that water should be drinkable from the source, not treatable because of a polluted source.

The Keepers of the Water’s focus for this project is to support Indigenous communities in having healthy and clean water, along with tools and educational resources that help our traditional science and knowledge of the territories that the Creator placed us in. Keepers of the Water stand firm and are committed to ensuring that colonized western science can no longer be the norm for environmental studies and that Indigenous Knowledge is critical and must be included.

With these new water monitoring tools, community members will measure oxygen, salinity, temperature, and water levels, supporting Keepers of the Water’s ongoing work demonstrating the impacts of tar sands mining, including the tailings ponds and its impacts on the Athabasca River. More than a trillion litres of toxic waste are stored in tailings ponds near Alberta’s Athabasca River that we know by recent reports (*see below) are leaking. There are many cumulative impacts due to open pit and in situ mining, including water quality and quantity, deforestation, land disturbance, and ecosystem contamination that includes land, air, water and living beings.

Every tributary in the Arctic Drainage Basin is vital to the Indigenous Peoples living within their watersheds. These sacred places allow Indigenous Peoples to exercise our right to hunt, fish, trap and exist in our territories. This also includes freely practicing our ceremonies and seasonally gathering food and medicines from the rivers, lakes and surrounding lands.

Climate change induced by human activity is the number one driver of lakes and rivers drying up. We are in a time when water is being commodified while simultaneously being contaminated. Access to clean water in Indigenous communities is our first priority.
You can help us sustain this ongoing work and expand this program by donating to the Keepers of the Water. Let us know if you want your donation directly to the Community Water Monitoring Program. To learn more about this program, contact our science lead, Paul Belanger, at science@keepersofthewater.ca.

This is a growing project, and we wouldn’t have been able to expand this far without the support from funders like NDN Collective and Alberta EcoTrust.

Publicly Available Tailings Reports:

Report by Environmental Defence: One trillion litres of toxic waste and growing: Alberta’s tailings pond - Read the report

Report by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation: Alberta Tailings Ponds II, Factual Record regarding Submission SEM-17-001. Read the report