YouTube video
APTN National News
Nine-year-old Jada Hill has a message for the people of her community on the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory.
How many more children have to get sick?
In a video uploaded on YouTube on Nov. 10 the little girl reads from a letter about the growing concerns of children being diagnosed with leukemia.
There have been three cases on the reserve and two more just north in the Tyendinaga township. One child has died, as previously reported by APTN National News reporter Delaney Windigo Nov. 6.
“Hello my name is Jada Hill and this is a message that I have to say,” Jada says addressing her letter to the people of the Tyendinaga community. “We should think very careful about all the sickness happening in our community. … How many people have gotten sick? How many people that we know have gotten sick? How many more people do you think is going to get sick if we don’t do anything about it?”
Dawn Sero’s daughter died several weeks ago. She had been diagnosed with leukemia earlier this year.
The family first got the devastating news two days after taking Paula to the hospital with a nose bleed.
Sero soon found out her daughter wasn’t the only child with leukemia on Tyendinaga about 2 hours east of Toronto.
“We met another family. Their daughter was three and we just come to find out they didn’t live too far from us. She was diagnosed in December, the month before. We met another little boy, just by fluke, who happened to be my nephew’s neighbor and he was also diagnosed a month before Paula, same area,” Sero said in a previous interview with APTN National News. “Paula, she was very quiet, reserved. She was a homebody. She was a good student.”
Jada said she is worried she or someone in her family will get sick too.
“I try every day to keep myself healthy and stay away from all the germs because I don’t want to get sick,” she says. “I’m kind of scared I’m going to get sick.”
The community has raised concerns about water quality as a potential cause for the cancers.
But Chief Don Maracle said in conversations with APTN National News tests have been done and have come back negative. He said a committee is being organized made-up of doctors, Health Canada, Aboriginal Affairs and the band council to try and determine why children on the reserve are getting leukemia.
