ONE YEAR LATER: Church on Tsuut’ina Nation land's new roof funded by YOU!

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• By Adam Soos

PETITION: Indigenous Communities Need Clean Water

If you agree that all Canadians have a right to safe and clean drinking water, sign this petition.

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Goal: 15,000 Signatures

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In a misguided response to the rapidly crumbling and potentially inaccurate reports of mass graves at a residential school in Kamloops, bigots across Canada participated in targeted hate crimes against Christian communities last summer, which included mass vandalism and arson at places of worship.

Rebel News wanted to speak to the indigenous people to garner their responses on both the reported mass graves and the resulting attacks on churches.

Ruby Starlight is a proud indigenous woman who was serving as a cultural guide at the indigenous focused Elbow River Camp section of the Calgary Stampede when we first met.

Ruby condemned the acts of hatred that were plaguing churches across the nation, and proudly share her story before inviting us to meet with her and her uncle Bruce in Tsuut’ina Nation land so that we could learn more about their experiences and so that we could see the Catholic church that her grandfather, Dick Starlight helped build.

While the Tsuut’ina church was not targeted with arson or vandalism, as we toured her grandfathers' church, it was hard to think that nearly 70 churches that fell victim to vandalism or arson. The church that Dick had built in the 60s was modest and served its community well, but with a leaking roof, some pest problems and a few broken windows were jeopardizing the structure of the building.

With Trudeau too busy posing for selfies to do anything meaningful and no help coming from the government we wanted to take action to help the church out.

When all was said and done the church had a new roof, a pest-control plan in place and some windows repaired, all thanks to your support at RepairTheChurch.com.

I wish repairing one church building could meaningfully heal the wounds caused by residential schools, could ease the hurt caused by the flurry of sensationalist headlines emerging from Kamloops for both indigenous and Christian communities, could write all the wrongs, but it can’t.

So what can we learn from this experience? What can we do next? In my opinion, we must take immediate action to address the clean water crisis in this country now.

From onset to completion, the entire process to fix this building took less than a month. I am fully aware of the vast difference in scale of a clean water project compared to doing some much-needed upkeep work on one church building, but there is an indigenous community in Canada that has lived with long-term boil-water advisories since 1995. It is not acceptable.

After decades without clean drinking water and more than enough funds already having been spent to address this issue, the governments inaction is indicative either total corruption, total ineptitude, or both.

You helped us repair the church, now you can sign our petition at CleanWaterNow.ca to help fix the clean water crisis in this country.