Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Tara McGee, Professor, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta
Nearly every summer over the past decade, the story has been the same across many parts of Canada: wildfires rage out of control and skies are filled with smoke. Communities are often forced to evacuate.
Wildfires disproportionately impact Indigenous communities. Over the last four decades, 42 per cent of wildfire evacuations across Canada have been of Indigenous communities.
Thirteen years ago, there was little understanding of evacuation experiences of First Nations’ communities, despite them being so frequently impacted. That’s when we partnered with seven First Nations in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario, as well as 16 departments and agencies involved in wildfire evacuations, to establish the First Nations Wildfire Evacuation Partnership (FNWEP).
Since 2013, the FNWEP has explored the evacuation experiences of First Nation residents, identified factors that affect experiences in positive and negative ways and recommended ways to reduce negative impacts of wildfire evacuations.
In 2021, we published our book, First Nations Wildfire Evacuation Experiences: A guide for communities and external agencies. The book is laid out so that each chapter is a stage of a wildfire evacuation, all the way from seeing smoke in the distance to returning to the community after the event is over.
We summarized findings from our research in each chapter, along with practical recommendations and steps that communities and external agencies can take to better prepare for wildfire evacuations.
Evacuation challenges
Through our research, we learned that many First Nations often lack adequate resources to prepare for and respond to wildfires, and many do not have anyone devoted full-time to emergency management.
Specific factors that complicate the evacuation of Indigenous Peoples from their community include:
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Being out on the land when the decision to evacuate is made, making it difficult to notify people and arrange transportation
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The fear of home loss compounded by existing housing shortages
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A lack of media interest in the evacuation of Indigenous communities, so it’s harder to get information
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Language issues and lack of translation
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Poverty caused by colonization
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Large multi-generational families living in one home, making transportation coordination difficult
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Health concerns
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Worries about the costs of evacuation and reimbursement
Additional challenges include short warning times, transportation challenges including multi-stage evacuations, inadequate information available for evacuees, crowded accommodation, culture shocks, family separation and racism.
Read more:
Evacuations of Indigenous communities during wildfires must prioritize keeping families together
Separated families
One of the most severe cases of family separation occurred in 2011 when people from Sandy Lake First Nation were sent to 12 different host communities, which led to reduced support for evacuees. In some cases, community leaders and a select group of residents stayed behind in the community to communicate with government agencies and evacuees, provide advice, deal with problems and look after the community.
We documented other things that just didn’t make sense. For example, when âmaciwîspimowinihk (Stanley Mission) in northern Saskatchewan was evacuated in 2014, car seats were not allowed on evacuation buses. Evacuees had to hold babies for the entire journey to the host communities. One host community was Regina, with evacuees on the road for almost 12 hours.
The most inappropriate case of accommodation for evacuees was when Deer Lake First Nation was accommodated in the Rideau Regional Centre in Smiths Falls, Ontario in 2011.
The centre was built to house people with developmental disabilities in 1951 and closed in 2009, two years before the evacuation occurred. The site and its condition were inappropriate. Some evacuees slept on the floor because they were not given a cot, some rooms were not cleaned and the shower stalls in common washrooms had no curtains or doors.
Community resilience
We found many other cases where evacuation experiences were improved because of the resiliency of people from the communities. Community leaders played the critical role of liaisons between their own and the host community, attended agency meetings, communicated what they learned to evacuees, advocated for evacuees and dealt with problems that arose.
In Sandy Lake First Nation, the chief who remained in the community recorded videos in Oji-Cree and English so evacuees could see community leaders and their community and receive daily updates during their evacuation.
Youth in Mishkeegogamang Ojibway Nation and other First Nations set up private Facebook groups so evacuees could share information. In addition to community liaison roles, First Nation community members volunteered to help in many ways, including sitting with Elders, organizing and picking up prescriptions, providing child-care services and security, and dropping off meals.
Recommendations for better evacuations
An overarching factor that affected all evacuations was jurisdiction. Wildfire management and emergency management are under provincial jurisdiction, but First Nations are under federal jurisdiction. This adds significant complexity to every wildfire evacuation. We documented examples where community leaders did not know which external agency to call to initiate an evacuation.
However, despite consistent research findings and advocacy, many of the communities we worked with who were evacuated between 2011-15 have been re-evacuated since, and again experienced many of the same issues we documented.
In 2025, the Auditor General of Canada again pointed to consistent failures in emergency management by Indigenous Services Canada, despite a dramatic increase in funding over the last decade from $13 billion in 2019-20 to almost $24 billion in 2023-24. The auditor general also found that evacuation services standards have only been met in one province: Ontario.
Federal and provincial governments should increase and provide long-term funding directly to First Nations for emergency management. They can also support the construction of buildings with air scrubbers and purifiers so that people do not have to evacuate their communities only because of air quality. In addition, they could simplify reimbursement processes to make post-wildfire recovery a less daunting process.
Governments must also increase investment in wildfire prevention and mitigation to reduce the need for evacuations including FireSmart programs. They should also fund and support Indigenous fire guardian programs across Canada, where Indigenous Peoples are employed year-round to do fire prevention, mitigation, response and recovery.
As wildfire season becomes more severe year after year, governments can take concrete steps now to ensure the most affected communities are well-equipped to deal with evacuations — and recover from them.
Tara McGee receives funding from Natural Resources Canada for the First Nations Wildfire Evacuation Partnership. The partnership previously received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Amy Cardinal Christianson is affiliated with the Indigenous Leadership Initiative. She previously worked for the Canadian Forest Service (Natural Resources Canada) and Parks Canada. Her association with the First Nations Wildfire Evacuation partnership over the last decade has been through in-kind contributions.
– ref. How governments can help Indigenous communities disproportionately impacted by wildfires – https://theconversation.com/how-governments-can-help-indigenous-communities-disproportionately-impacted-by-wildfires-275198