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This article was published 7/11/2011 (3250 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The bathroom facilities of Maurice N. Harper in Wasagamack First Nation. They live in a home with no running water and have to use a slop pail.

It's often said that many residents of remote Manitoba reserves live in Third World conditions, lacking basic services like indoor plumbing and clean drinking water.

Now, researchers from the University of Manitoba are testing that theory, comparing the tiny, impoverished Caribbean island of Dominica with two northern Manitoba First Nations.

Brenda Elias, a professor of community health, suspects Dominica is taking the issue of running water more seriously than Canada, even though Canada is the far wealthier, more technologically advanced nation.

"We're not a country with scarce resources, but this is still a struggle," she said. "We don't seem to have the wherewithal and the perseverance and the tenacity to supply water to the first peoples of this country."

Over the summer, Elias and her team completed their field work in Dominica, where they surveyed roughly half of the 625 homes in eight hamlets where the indigenous Kalinago people live.

Conditions were disturbingly similar to what exists in 1,400 remote Manitoba First Nations homes. Most homes had slop pails or latrines instead of indoor toilets, communal water taps were located a hike from many homes, and water quality was often unreliable. That meant women expended extraordinary time and energy on simple household chores such as washing clothes.

The survey found that 13 per cent of households reported someone recently sick from drinking the water. Seven per cent reported skin infections, and dengue fever is beginning to be a problem like never before.

But Elias said the country has made significant strides in recent years and recognizes clean water is a human right.

Next, as part of a batch of new research on First Nations water issues underway at the U of M, Elias wants to do similar household surveys on two Manitoba reserves, tweaked to reflect each community's interests and input.

Elias doesn't yet know which communities will eventually host the researcher; exploratory talks with several bands are underway.

If research funding comes through, and U of M staff are confident it will, fieldwork will likely begin in 2013.

Elias' research is one of several projects involving more than two dozen U of M experts, Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs and the university's new Centre for Human Rights Research. Over the next couple of years, researchers are focusing on water rights, looking at everything from ways to create effective advocacy campaigns to whether bands would have a legal leg to stand on if they were to appeal to the courts for clean water.

Annemieke Farenhorst, a professor in the department of soil science, is about to start working with high school students in the Sapotaweyak Cree Nation in northwestern Manitoba to test their own water

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca