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Urban Water TMU as Allies and Advocates for Safe Drinking Water for Indigenous People

Urban Water TMU has committed to building relationships and collaborating with Indigenous communities to improve access to safe drinking water for Indigenous people in Canada. This commitment was submitted as Urban Water TMU’s Official commitment to the UN Water Conference in March 22-24, 2023. Details are here.

As part of the framework for the commitment, Urban Water TMU co-hosts a Steering Committee dedicated to moving the needle forward on safe drinking water for Indigenous people in Canada. The Steering Committee (named the Apathy to Empathy Steering Committee) is led by Elder Joanne Okimawininew Dallaire, Senior Advisor on Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation at TMU.

The Steering Committee produced an education module for undergraduate students on the realities of being an Indigenous person in Canada called ‘Apathy to Empathy: First Nations Water Crisis.’ The learning module was integrated into the curricula of 4 undergraduate courses in the disciplines of civil engineering, chemistry, geography, and social sciences in 2021.

Researchers in Urban Water TMU are building bridges with Indigenous communities and developing relationships in which traditional and western knowledge is shared, and researchers collaborate with communities to undertake research and solutions to community-identified needs to resolving safe drinking water in Indigenous communities.

This includes the work of:

  • Dr. David Atkinson who uses spatial analytical tools to predict the impacts of a changing Arctic climate on Inuit source water quantity and quality. Dr. Atkinson is building relationships and learning traditional knowledge from the Inuit and First Nations communities and sharing knowledge and tools to deepen community-based research capacity for resiliency in addressing climate change in their water and landscape. See more here.
  • Dr. Patricia Hania a social-ecological-legal scholar and expert in legal water governance regimes in Canada, who is elevating the voices of indigenous women through research and consultation in participatory water governance arrangements and other legal regimes.
  • Dr. Fatih Sekercioglu a public health expert who is elevating First Nations voices through relationship building and learning from knowledge holders to assist First Nations toward resiliency and safe drinking water. See more here.
  • Dr. Roxana Suehring an environmental analytical chemist who is co-creating research on water security rooted in the concerns and interest of communities, with members of the community as equal partners (co-principal investigators, research collaborators, and students).

Urban Water TMU will continue to build relationships and collaborate with Indigenous communities to move the needle forward on access to safe drinking water for Indigenous people in Canada. 

For more information please contact Angela Murphy, Director, Urban Water TMU at angela.murphy@torontomu.ca