'Everybody is a fighter in Grassy'

"William Bill Fobister remembers when things changed, seemingly overnight. The 79-year-old had grown up fishing across the sprawling English-Wabigoon River system. And the deep blue waters that lap the shores of his Ojibwe community - Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinabek, better known as Grassy Narrows - had fed his people since time immemorial. [My dad] was a commercial fisherman, and I helped him. That's how we survived, Bill recalls, sitting at a yellow picnic table in his backyard on a rainy August morning."

"William 'Bill' Fobister, 79, sits at a picnic table in his backyard [Jillian Kestler-D'Amours/Al Jazeera] Bill, then in his 20s, remembers the first signs that something was wrong. We noticed the fish were floating in the bays, and then we reported it, says the soft-spoken Indigenous community elder. They tested the fish. Sure enough, they found mercury in the fish."

The English-Wabigoon River system was contaminated by mercury that a pulp and paper mill in Dryden dumped beginning in the early 1960s. Authorities later confirmed more than 9,000 kg (20,000 lb) of mercury entered the river, contaminating fish and shutting down commercial and subsistence fishing in 1970. Community members reported floating fish and experienced mercury-related illnesses thereafter. The Ojibwe community of Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinabek (Grassy Narrows) relied on the river for sustenance and cultural practices for generations, and the contamination devastated livelihoods and health, becoming one of Canada’s worst environmental and health disasters.

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