Dr. Myrle Ballard: How Policy Impacts Our Traditional Lands

Water…we use water form everything from cooking to bathing. There is hardly anything we can do without water. We live in a culture where take perhaps certain things like water for granted.Water…it’s a good thing right? But what happens from a mental and physical perspective when a human made flood forces people, families, entire communities off their land. In this episode Dr.Myrle Ballard talks about how, as a young girl growing up on Lake St Martin First Nation, she witnessed, through human made flooding, the destruction of her families land where they farmed and kept cattle. She witnessed school buses taking families away from their homes as the human made flood rose higher and higher forcing their evacuation which the families thought might be days or a week. Over 7 years later some families still have not been able to return to their homes. As an Indigenous Scholar and Associate Professor, University of Manitoba, Dr.Myrle Ballard is a proud member of Lake St. Martin First Nation and her research focusses on how policy and legislation impacts traditional lands.Click here for a transcript of this episode.