The southern outskirts of Sarnia, Ontario are notable for the petroleum refineries, chemical plants and energy facilities that have given the area its dubious nickname: Chemical Valley.
Nestled within this grim forest of industrial plants lies the territory of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation. A small parcel of the land was turned into a reserve when the British government appropriated the entire area in 1827, although the Chippewa people had already been living, hunting and fishing there for 350 years.
Starting in the late 19th century, the people of Aamjiwnaang were forced to watch as one plant after another was built around them. Today, the plants of Chemical Valley account for 40 per cent of Canada’s petrochemical industry.
These plants are regularly subject to accidents such as flares, spills and fires, leading to constant pollution and measurable health threats such as respiratory illness, cancer — even a major imbalance in the number of male and female babies born on the reserve, said to be caused by endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Since 1999, the Ontario government has required industries to notify residents of accidents when they happen. But such notifications are "brief and uninformative," leading residents such as Vanessa Gray to believe they are "next to worthless."
“For over a hundred years, companies were not required to be transparent about safety measures,” says Gray, a member of Aamjiwnaang First Nation who is also a grassroots organizer, land defender, educator, and co-director of the Environmental Data Justice Lab within the Technoscience Research Unit at the Faculty of Arts & Science.
“Now, companies are allowed to regulate themselves. And their notifications aren’t helpful unless they give us actual information. They don’t let us know what the impacts of exposure will be, and they often come after the fact of the so-called events. They don’t prevent anyone from the impacts of exposure.”
Chemical Valley’s proximity to Aamjiwnaang is an example what Gray and M. Murphy call "environmental racism" — a global phenomenon where the environmental harm caused by industry disproportionately afflicts communities of colour. All over Canada today, Indigenous people are regularly burdened by health and safety concerns arising from damage caused by pollution from the mining, petroleum and chemical industries.
Murphy is a professor in the Department of History and the Women & Gender Studies Institute in the Faculty of Arts & Science. They are Red River Métis and co-founded the Technoscience Research Unit in 2007 to examine issues of science and technology through a social justice lens. Ten years later, they started the Environmental Data Justice (EDJ) Lab with Gray after a major pollution flare involving a refinery in Chemical Valley.
“The majority of the EDJ lab’s members are Indigenous — it’s a combination of people from the University, community researchers and land defenders,” Murphy says. With Gray as lead author, the lab recently issued a new report entitled Data Colonialism in Canada’s Chemical Valley: Aamjiwnaang First Nation and the Failure of the Pollution Notification System. “It’s an example of the kind of Indigenous-led, community-led work that I’d like to see more of,” Murphy says, adding that such work is fortunately becoming more common at U of T.
A collaboration with the Yellowhead Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University, the new report illustrates how the companies of Chemical Valley — mostly large multinationals — have failed to inform the community about potentially harm-producing events, offering notifications that Murphy says are actually becoming shorter with each passing event: “they are designed not to be useful. And they have achieved their goal.”
Using data collected over ten years by Gray and her sibling Beze, the team made an interactive map and graphics that reveal the astonishing density of polluting incidents occurring over a period of ten years in the region.
Since they were teenagers, Vanessa and Beze Gray have been tireless in their efforts to teach people about the reality of life in Chemical Valley, even taking visitors on what they call “toxic tours” of the 30-kilometre complex. They were inspired in part by the actions of Aamjiwnaang community member Ada Lockridge.
After attending many funerals and hearing an alarming number of stories of young people stricken with cancer, Lockridge “had just heard and seen enough,” Gray says. “She started going door to door, asking questions. And this is research that only a community member could do; people might not be willing to talk to researchers from outside. So we have a lengthy history of doing this work for ourselves.”
Two years ago, the federal government signed on to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). In June of this year, it unveiled an action plan with respect to its implementation.
But Murphy says that if politicians are serious about affirming Indigenous rights, they, along with the polluting companies themselves, need to take situations of environmental racism seriously. “We need to ask, what’s the responsibility of government? It can’t sign on to UNDRIP, then allow a situation to continue that lets companies determine the content of pollution incident information, and how it should be shared.”
There is evidence that the work of Indigenous activists such as the Gray siblings and Ada Lockridge is paying off. Aamjiwnaang has developed a vital program of community outreach, education and community health. Bill C-226, designed to develop Canada’s first national strategy on environmental racism and justice, is now before the Senate. And since the coal-fueled Lambton generating plant in Chemical Valley was decommissioned, Sarnia’s air quality is no longer the worst in the country — as it was in 2011.
Gray notes that Imperial Oil began in 1880, at exactly the same time the residential school system came into being. But while residential schools are no longer in operation, the plants of Chemical Valley very much are.
“I hope the Canadian public reads this report,” she says. “And that people who read it are able to be more precise about their concerns and their demands for a healthy and safe environment that will benefit everybody. Indigenous people are the ones who have to deal directly with industry and with the multigenerational impacts of these exposures. But we’re just trying to heal: to be with the land, with our culture and our language. That’s a full-time job in and of itself.”