When Yvonne MacDougall learned about the body bags, she sat down and wept.
She wept for her chief, father to his people, who channelled their collective rage by returning the body bags to Winnipeg. And she wept because she can do so little to protect the 14 members of her home from a virus that stalks people like them.
With no running water, no sewer and no money to buy supplies such as hand sanitizer, she's had but one precaution at her disposal.
“We stopped keeping a slop pail inside,” she said. “You have to go, you go to the outhouse. Doesn't matter how cold it is.”
It is our culture to accept hardship. And as I pray the worst is over, I know in my heart it's not. — Victor Harper
Many residents throughout this 2,000-member reserve have removed the buckets, one of the few H1N1 prophylactics within their means. For months, native chiefs in this area, a hive of lethal flu activity in spring, have implored the federal government for help in stocking homes with sanitation supplies.
When Health Canada instead shipped up to 200 body bags to Wasagamack – where preparing for death is a cultural taboo – the mix of humiliation and rage quickly boiled over.
The chiefs' continued protests have become a federal political issue, prompting indignation from opposition leaders, a rare government apology and Health Canada's assurances that northern communities are well equipped to fight the autumn resurgence of H1N1 – an absurd claim to anyone who has taken the 600-kilometre plane and water-taxi trip here from Winnipeg. As this remote town influences the national agenda, the nation's influence here is negligible.
“It is our culture to accept hardship,” said Victor Harper, Ms. MacDougall's brother. “And as I pray the worst is over, I know in my heart it's not.”
On a recent weekday, most of the town had emptied out for moose-hunting season as Mr. Harper bucked his creaky Blazer over rutted roads. The school was closed. The band office was locked. Just two people sat in the waiting room at the local nursing station. “It's a bad day to talk to people, but a good day to get in touch with the land,” he said.
Wasagamack chief George Knott signed onto this land, Treaty 5, in 1909, after his people had endured two centuries of smallpox, measles and tuberculosis.
Victor Harper next to a moose hide he's drying to make snowshoes.
Recent centennial celebrations were held to mark what many residents referred to as “100 years of misery, of promises unkept,” according to Mr. Harper.
Today the average annual wage here – at least for the 30 per cent or so who work – hovers around $15,000.
The body-bag issue only fomented this sense of historical injustice and underscored the harsh reality of life on remote reserves, a reality where Ms. MacDougall's decrepit home – with its plywood-covered windows, blue rain tarps and drafty gaps between mouldy wall and water-damaged floor – is the norm.
Of 240 homes on the reserve, 140 need major repairs or demolition, according to Indian and Northern Affairs.
When Mr. Harper visited his sister around noon last week, the local waterman was filling up 40-gallon drums on Ms. MacDougall's porch, a $30 expense, leaving the four families inside with enough water to last four days.
Bare mattresses leaned against every wall, and two wash basins sat in a corner next to shampoo bottles. In one bedroom, two boys sat on mattresses watching cartoons, steps from a wall engulfed in inky mould.
“Respiratory problems are rampant here,” said Chief Jerry Knott, a descendent of the founding chief. “Hand sanitizer, even if we had it, wouldn't even scratch the surface.”
