Kahnekanoron presents WATER TALKS! town hall and zine launch

Land-based learning group Kahnekanoron hosts WATER TALKS! event to share calls to action and encourage discussion on water quality and access in Hamilton

Kahnekanoron commemorated the first issue of their WATER TALKS! zine with a town hall event on Sept. 6, 2024 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. outside Hamilton City Hall. The 19-page zine contains reflections, poems, songs and calls to action about water quality.

The evening began with a few speeches, followed by a collaborative activity. Attendees were invited to respond to a series of questions including “What can you do to help protect water?” and “How has your access to clean water changed over the years?” To end the event, the group sang Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee water songs to honour and heal the water.

In an interview with the Silhouette, Sonia Hill, founder of Kahnekanoron explained that they started the organization in 2019 with a group of their fellow Indigenous students. Hill completed an Honours B.A. in Indigenous studies and sociology in 2017 and is currently completing a masters degree in Indigenous studies. They were born and raised in Hamilton and are Mohawk, Lebanese, Scottish, Irish and Tuscarora.

The name Kahnekanoron is from the Mohawk language Kanien'kéha and translates to “water is precious.” “The water is connected to everything and the water is our first sustenance. When we talk about our creation stories, they’re centred around water. Water is the first element. It’s what’s here before everything else. It’s in everything. And without it nothing exists,” said Hill.

“That’s what I want people to walk away from the town hall with and from the zine as well. This idea of if we treat the water as sacred and precious, how would we act differently? How would we walk in the world differently knowing that water is part of every single being, knowing that water is part of every single person and knowing that every single body of water is sacred?” said Hill.

When it was first founded, Kahnekanoron hosted a series of workshops in partnership with McMaster Elder-in-Residence Renee Thomas-Hill and wellness counsellor Brittany Vincze. The sessions focused on understanding and healing our relationship with water and the Earth. This program was based around reclaiming sustenance skills and building community. Registration was limited to Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQ+ students.

Hill discussed the need for accessible sustenance programming, a term which encompasses traditional food and medicine practices. “It was a bunch of Indigenous girls and gays who were living in Hamilton going to McMaster University. We were all students at the time and we were looking for on-the-land sustenance programming that we didn’t have to pay for,” said Hill.

Kahnekanoron is no longer based at McMaster and is open to Indigenous community throughout and around Hamilton. “That was a conscious choice by the group as we all aged out of being students, to be honest, and our lives became centred elsewhere,” said Hill. Specific events such as community days are also open to non-Indigenous folks.

In Aug. and Sept. of 2023, Kahnekanoron organized a town hall for Indigenous people in Hamilton to discuss water quality and access, in addition to grief and healing ceremonies. The first public town hall on water, which was open to non-Indigenous people, was held on Sept. 6, 2023.

The zine launch and town hall this September was intended to continue the discussion surrounding water, specifically surrounding the city of Hamilton. “We were really just hoping to be able to share Indigenous folks’ experiences around water quality or access. That hasn’t really been done, not only in Hamilton but within urban Indigenous communities in general. A lot of the time when we see research with Indigenous communities it’s with on reserve communities. And it’s great that we have so much research with on-reserve communities but we also need research with urban, Indigenous communities,” said Hill.

Hill said that Kahnekanoron has conducted some community-based research and water testing, but had inconclusive findings. “We’re still working on water testing in Hamilton. I want to focus on open water sources,” said Hill.

Water quality and access is not limited to drinking water. It also includes having clean bodies of water to swim, fish, and practice ceremonies. “As Indigenous people, our relations with the natural world are so important to us. Growing up not being able to touch water is pretty messed up. You think how that impacts your psyche, you think how that impacts your wellbeing. I’m 29 years old and fished for the very first time this past spring because our water is so unclean. If our water was clean, we would have grown up with those practices,” said Hill.

At the time of publication, the City of Hamilton website reports the beach at Pier 4 Park on Hamilton Harbour is closed due to toxin-producing blue-green algae. According to the Hamilton Public Health Services 2023 beach monitoring report, Hamilton Harbor is on the Great Lakes areas of concern list. The report also details that 2020 was the only year in the last decade that the beach remained open for more than 80% of time.

The zine calls for greater education and research into the impact of human action such as sewage spills and stormwater runoff. In 2022 and 2023, the City of Hamilton discovered leaks that resulted in 337 and 59 million litres of sewage flowing into Hamilton Harbour since 1996. The zine also calls for Hamilton city council to take accountability for the state of the water.

“A lot of our city leaders, a lot of researchers at public institutions seem to not care about water in Hamilton because they’re not affected by it. They get to leave, they get to go enjoy water elsewhere, whereas Indigenous folks who are here in Hamilton, we don’t have that luxury of going elsewhere and enjoying water elsewhere, so we kind of have to care about the water here,” said Hill. They mentioned that water access becomes a class-based issue because car and property ownership can greatly increase access to water.

The zine also included lyrics and QR codes that link to YouTube videos for two water songs, “Wichita Do Ya” and “Kahnekanoron.” Hill explained that these songs are used as prayers and offerings to the water. “We shared those songs so that people could learn them and bring them to water because that is helping the water to heal as well. We hope that people access these to learn them in good ways and share them with water and within Indigenous communities,” said Hill.

In addition to water songs, the zine listed other ways to care for water including contacting local politicians about water-related issues and attending events like the Hamilton Water Walk. “That’s kind of what we were hoping to tell while also sharing teachings and also empowering people to care about water. It’s not too late, the damage isn’t completely all done,” said Hill.

Hill stated that Kahnekanoron will release a new issue of WATER TALKS! annually. Contributions from this year’s town hall will be incorporated into the next issue, which is planned to be released in Sept. 2025. Copies of the zine were available at the town hall by a pay-what-you-can donation and $100 were raised to support the Hamilton Water Walk. Donations will also be used to pay for printing future zines.

Copies of the zine will be available for donation at the Hamilton Anarchist Bookfair on Sept. 28, 2024. If you are interested in learning more about Kahnekanoron, you can visit their Instagram page.