More than 1,600 elementary school students from across Canada have prepared “Water Drop” messages to Prime Minister Trudeau: hand-written notes and drawings asking that he finally put an end to Drinking Water Advisories on First Nations reserves.
The messages are searing, frank, and moving. And on October 27th, we took all of them to Parliament Hill.
With the help of some of the young students who created them, we displayed hundreds of the colourful Water Drops on the fence surrounding the House of Commons. Then we delivered a box containing all the messages to the Prime Minister’s Office just across the street.
After decades of neglecting the deplorable quality of drinking water on First Nations reserves, the federal government has recently made some progress on this issue – but only thanks to constant pressure from civil society. The messages from these children will help keep up the pressure on the Trudeau government to resolve the more than 30 drinking water advisories that remain.
We thank all our supporters who have, for years, helped us in advocating for the right of First Nations to have the sovereignty, resources, and tools they need to ensure their communities have access to safe drinking water on reserves.
See more images from the event here.
