As previously reported, the Chief and Council of Walpole Island First Nation announced the resignation of Councillor Amy White in a statement issued October 31, 2025 on social media.
The original story can be read, here.
White has provided the following response to the Sydenham Current, which can be read in full, below:
“I appreciate Chief and Council acknowledging my resignation. However, the public deserves context that a sanitized narrative obscures.
I was elected by my First Nation community to represent them, not providing “dedicated service” at council’s discretion. I resigned because I received death threats with no safe mechanism for Indigenous women to report threats originating from within their own communities. I documented my concerns in a deadman’s switch—the fact that council chose to sanitize my forced exit is itself a perpetuation of ongoing institutional violence.
My elected work included challenging lack of community consultation on industrial projects threatening the transboundary Kettle Point Aquifer system and impacting our unceded territory. In October 2023, Chatham-Kent’s Municipal Comprehensive Review identified Dresden specifically needing 56 hectares of industrial land expansion without naming the project or consulting Walpole Island First Nation. At a public meeting on May 5, 2025, I questioned Chatham-Kent officials about why they expanded this industrial/commercial capacity without consulting us on what appears to be a plan to accommodate York 1. The plan hasn’t been amended not to accommodate them. A “lateral kindness” training event subsequently appeared on my calendar. The video of that public meeting is available.
I also believe it is negligent to approve a $450-million hydro project with a 50% equity share without first conducting and publicly presenting comprehensive baseline water testing, and without bringing in qualified hydrogeologists or geologists to explain to our unceded membership how drilling 35 metres into a shallow aquifer—where the aquifer depth sits at 20 metres—and how will that affect these critical water systems. The public has not been shown the location or proximity of the more than 35 abandoned oil and gas wells near the Hydro One project area, which overlap with the Kettle Point Aquifer. These wells could be impacted by drilling and by the doubling of electrical capacity along those hydro lines.
Furthermore, the cumulative risks of this entire energy scheme has not been meaningfully assessed, especially considering that OPG instructed Atura to explore nuclear development at the Lambton site and withheld this information from First Nations rights holders, including Walpole and Aamjiwnong. This means there was no meaningful consultation on a project that would directly impact our drinking water. I could go on.
My advocacy also included protecting spaces for children to learn in. Based on community feedback, I made sound HR policy recommendations that other school boards have developed to protect children from child abuse in education. This appears to have resulted in me being disinvited from attending further HR committee meetings. These federal jurisdictional issues were raised to federal MP Lianne Rood (which were ignored). I’ve raised the same concerns to MP Marilyn Gladu after the issues have escalated.
When elected Indigenous women councillors raise questions about water protection, child safety, and consultation failures under UNDRIP, in which Canada signed into without condition, we face death threats with no institutional protection, then our forced exits are reframed as completed service rather than the removal of democratically elected representatives.
I continue my elected mandate’s purpose—rights, water protection and transparent governance—from outside these violent institutional structures.
Amy White, Former Elected Councillor, Walpole Island First Nation.”
