Finding a solution to Canada's Indigenous water crisis

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Many First Nation communities across Canada have been under long-term boil water advisories. One community is trying some innovative solutions. Graduate students from the University of British Columbia report from Lytton, British Columbia. This project is in collaboration with the Global Reporting Centre.

Karen Dunstan lifts a large metal pot up to the sink and turns on the tap. The water is crisp, cold and clear, but it isn't clean.

When the pot is nearly full, she puts it on the stove to boil. Only then can she and her children have a drink.

For more than 20 years, this was part of her morning routine.

"You would have flu-like symptoms and have diarrhoea and vomiting from drinking the water [without boiling]," says Dunstan, 53. Like many in her community, she lived under a boil water advisory for decades.

Dunstan lives in Lytton First Nation, a rural on-reserve Indigenous community of 945 people in British Columbia, Canada's westernmost province.

Lytton is just one among hundreds of First Nations that have suffered from a water crisis in Canada.

Despite the fact that Canada has the world's third largest per-capita freshwater reserve, the water many Indigenous communities depend on is contaminated, difficult to access, or at risk due to faulty treatment systems.

Nestled deep in the Fraser Canyon, the community of Lytton is centred around the confluence of two mighty waterways.

It's here the dark blue-green waters of the Thompson River mix and quickly disappear into the muddy-brown water of the Fraser, British Columbia's longest river.