Good afternoon. “Laurie” is fine.
I'm actually speaking to you from Vancouver, and I would like to recognize that I'm speaking to you from the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh first nations. I thank them for allowing me to speak to you from their territory.
I'd like to present to you today information about two projects I've been involved with in relation to disaster and emergency management and Canadian indigenous people. I'd like to address the challenges as well as the opportunities.
The first project, which was funded by INAC, has to do with research that I undertook along with my colleagues Dr. Brenda Murphy and Dr. Annette Chrétien from Wilfrid Laurier University. It involved working with the oversight of an indigenous committee and an indigenous member of the research team to explore, through talking circles and interviews, the experiences of first nations communities from British Columbia to Nova Scotia who were evacuated as a result of a disaster and/or who served as a host community to those who were evacuated.
Our findings were disturbing but not unexpected, as they were supported by an extensive literature review. Indigenous families and communities faced continued suffering during evacuation and post evacuation. Displacements resulted in social isolation, lack of access to traditional food, repeated moves, job insecurity, lack of or inconsistent access to education, and poor psychological health outcomes.
There are three critical areas that I would like to address.
First, indigenous people have strong ties to the land, and having to leave that land to be placed in an alternate location for what may be weeks or months, especially if it's in a large urban centre, can result in additional and unnecessary trauma.
Second, by definition, disasters require the involvement of outsiders to assist a community that cannot manage the impacts of a disaster alone. This can result in outsiders arriving with little or no knowledge of the existing community, its culture, and the importance of that culture in regard to traditional foods, ceremonies, and healing practices.
The third issue is by no means an issue that only affects first nation communities, but it is one that, given the challenges faced by many first nations communities, may have a disproportionate effect on them. It is the issue of capacity. Many first nations people are responsible for two, three, or four different roles in their community, often without adequate disaster and emergency management training and resources.
What does that translate to? The first nations people who spoke to us through the talking circles and interviews told us it means that when outsiders come in and tell you to line up, take a number, and leave your home, it can trigger the trauma and memories of residential schools and the sixties scoop and add to the trauma of potentially losing or actually losing their home and possessions.
It means, for some, a sense of loss of control when there is not a sense of having a lot of control to start with. It means having to comply with the policies, rules, and regulations of other organizations. It can mean having security personnel watch your every step 24-7 while you are in a hotel, and being told who can and cannot come to visit with you. It can mean being told that your pets can’t be accommodated with you and will have to be left behind. For some, we were told, the experience of the evacuation and displacement was worse than residential school. It means that when people are used to hunting and fishing and living off the land, when evacuated because of approaching wildfires, they're given vouchers to eat in greasy diners or fed pasta day after day with no fresh vegetables or fruit, and they get sick.
Culture provides protection and security, a buffer from trauma, and when evacuated populations are not welcomed into host communities and there are no opportunities to practice smudging, burning of sweetgrass, or forming healing circles, their culture is not there to support them in times of hardship. It can mean living in a hotel room, day after day, week after week, month after month, often with a number of children, and with little or no access to activities for those children or parents, in a strange community, with little connection to one’s family or clan and little ability to engage in the repair and rebuilding of one’s home. It means being moved multiple times from hotel to hotel and receiving no emotional, psychological, or psychosocial support for those families.
For a youth, having lost their mobile phone in the disaster and now losing their connection to friends, being in a big city for the first time may mean being lured to the street and the inherent dangers of drugs, alcohol, and gangs.
It means being responsible for the general maintenance on your reserve, such as fixing fences and arranging for garbage pickup, and the next day suddenly being put in charge of the rebuilding and repair of the homes of hundreds of people, with no disaster or emergency management training for recovery. It means having a fire truck, but not having enough people trained on reserve to serve as firefighters or not having the funds or skills to maintain the fire truck.
It also means that everyone is too busy to look for existing strengths and capacities, such as engaging with elders to have the knowledge and wisdom to support others. It means that enduring the trauma of evacuation, whether from fire, flood, tornado, or other disaster, is just that much worse.
Despite these challenges, there are opportunities for positive changes. One of the outcomes of our research project is a guide, “From Displacement to Hope: A Guide for Displaced Indigenous Communities and Host Communities”, which provides numerous recommendations and strategies to minimize the trauma of evacuation and displacement. The bilingual guide will be distributed across Canada by the end of the fiscal year to all first nation communities and can serve as the first step to working with provincial and territorial governments, along with local government and non-governmental organizations, to work towards better solutions.
As well, one of the next steps already under way is the enhancement of the videos located on the Canadian Risk and Hazards Network site and the development of additional videos, which can be downloaded and used in training and awareness sessions to underscore the issues facing first nations people who are facing evacuation.
In addition, my colleagues and I will be developing a training curriculum to bring together in a workshop setting all of the key stakeholders to work on developing collaborative strategies for individual first nation communities before, during, and after fires and other disasters.
Disasters don't recognize political boundaries, and because they quickly overwhelm local resources, it's important to reach out to other communities prior to a disaster to identify opportunities for mutual aid. Communities can become sister communities, share training funding and opportunities, share resources, be of support, and serve as host communities should evacuation be necessary.
A guide, “Mutual Aid and Service Agreements: Wise Practices for First Nations Communities”, is designed to support first nation communities in meeting with other non-indigenous or other first nation communities to develop mutual aid agreements to support fire and emergency management efforts, along with those for other disasters. Mutual aid is widely used in urban centres for fire response and now needs to be extended to first nations communities. While the potential is there, outstanding issues related to diminished first nation capacities and strained settler-first nation relationships must first be addressed. No longer can fire crews stand by, not responding until the fire leaves the reserve boundaries.
Another project that I and my colleagues from Wilfrid Laurier University have been involved in is the aboriginal disaster resiliency planning tool, ADRP, which is a web-based tool developed collaboratively with staff from and hosted by the Justice Institute of British Columbia. The ADRP provides communities with a comprehensive capacity and strength-based process to identify potential hazards that could lead to disaster and tools to identify those hazards that are of potentially high or low risk, as well as identify where there is little disaster resiliency in place and where existing community strengths exist.
The ADRP further provides tools for communities to assess their overall state of resiliency and the state of their disaster and emergency management plans, resources, and processes. Communities are provided with extensive resources to help them complete the process, such as the steps to build a community profile and carry out a skills and knowledge inventory, as well as a series of videos to support the process and identify how traditional knowledge can be integrated into disaster and emergency management planning to increase buy-in and validity.
Although it's not completely finished and there are a few processes still to be added to the ADRP, nevertheless, since 2016, as a JIBC faculty member, I have used the ADRP tool to teach 266 students who have taken the JIBC hazard, risk, and vulnerability analysis training, supported by Emergency Management BC. That was mostly in B.C., but also in Quebec. It's important to note that these students are from both mainstream and indigenous communities, hopefully encouraging both communities to work collaboratively.
In addition, supported by Indigenous Services Canada, JIBC staff have been supporting the piloting of the ADRP process with two first nations communities, Eskasoni in Nova Scotia and Tzeachten in B.C.
As well, since 2015 members from 71 different indigenous communities have received a one-day train-the-trainer workshop to assist them in carrying out the ADRP.