Jeewa Liske was four months pregnant in August 2023 when she had to flee wildfire smoke in Yellowknife and make a difficult 20-hour drive to safety.
“I was wanting to leave just ’cause it was so smoky and it was so hard to breathe,” Liske, now 23, recalled of the day the city issued an evacuation order. She said she was barely able to see the sides of the road asĀ she and three friends drove to Edmonton.Ā
When they arrived, LiskeĀ was torn between staying to be close to family in nearbyĀ Leduc, or living with her mother-in-law in Lkwungen territoryĀ on Vancouver Island.Ā After about five days in Alberta, sheĀ flew to Victoria. HerĀ anxiety was compounded by being separated from her spouse, a crew bossĀ working to fight the fires in the Northwest Territories.
Leaving her homeĀ meant she also struggled to get prenatal checkups, which she said was stressful. “I was crying a lot. The hormones just made my emotions 10 times worse.”
Eventually, she says birth workers in N.W.T. connected her with a Victoria midwife and she was relieved to learn her pregnancy was progressing normally.
Liske’sĀ experienceĀ is just one example of how Indigenous people in Canada are disproportionately impacted by wildfires, which researchers say are becoming more frequent and more intense due to climate change.
As a result, they say Indigenous peopleĀ are particularly vulnerable to being displaced from their communities,Ā andĀ that can take an immense toll on theirĀ mental health.Ā Psychologists who’ve studied disaster recovery and counselled those affected say it’s normal to feel fearful and stressed during wildfire evacuation andĀ there are ways to improve evacuations for Indigenous people.
Suzanne Stewart, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, says Indigenous communities impacted by wildfires disproportionately experience adverse mental health outcomes partly because they often live in affected areas.
That’sĀ on top of cultural trauma from being displaced,Ā she said, noting that aĀ relationship with the land isĀ integral to the identity and well-being of Indigenous people.
As wildfires persist in Canada, experts are concerned about the mental well-being of evacuees. Evacuations are underway across many northern communities and many of them have faced evacuations before.
Separation from family
“I’ve seen Indigenous individuals and communities spend months staying in temporary quarters in motel rooms hundreds of miles from their home with really no say in when they can return,” said Stewart, who has provided counselling and mental health supports to Indigenous people.Ā
“Evacuations, in the moment, are emergencies,” she said. “Those often cause anxiety.”
Stewart says the immediate needs of thoseĀ being evacuatedĀ include mental supports such as validating people’s feelings, as well as addressing emotional and spiritual needs. Even something as basic as accommodations can have an impact, which she sawĀ when her own familyĀ faced evacuations from N.W.T. in 2023.
“Many people were evacuated to Alberta and had to stay in places that they wouldn’t have chosen to stay if they’d had the resources to make their own decisions.”
AfterĀ Liske’sĀ evacuation from Yellowknife, sheĀ ended up staying in Victoria for six weeks with her Dene mother-in-law, KatÅÄÆĆ Lafferty, along with Lafferty’s mother and another family member.
Lafferty saysĀ she was concerned about how they would get her mother, who has a bad hip, out of her N.W.T. home as the wildfire approached, and they had to convince her to come to Victoria.
“If you’re getting put up in an evacuation site somewhere that you don’t know and you’re not with family, it’s really scary,” she said.
More than 200 wildfires are burning across Canada, forcing thousands from communities like Flin Flon, Man., and La Ronge, Sask. Some evacuees are struggling with basic needs as they wait to return home.
Long journeys from home
The 2023 Yellowknife evacuations were one of the examples data co-ordinator Elisa BinonĀ citedĀ in her report on internal displacements ā the forced movement of people withinĀ countries following disaster, violence or war.
Binon, who works with the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, recorded more than 190,000 internal displacements in Canada in 2023 due to disasters like wildfires. Of these, First Nations, Inuit and MĆ©tis accounted for about 30,000 displacements, a disproportionate trend that continued in 2024, she said.
The reportĀ also noted Indigenous Peoples living on reserves made up just five per cent of Canada’s population but represented more than 16 per cent of internal displacements due to disasters in 2023, mainly from wildfires.
That’s because Indigenous people have been historically marginalized, Binon says, noting they have often already been relocated from traditional lands to remote regions more susceptible to natural disasters.
“Being in disaster-prone areas means there’s more forest, which is kindling for wildfires,” she said.Ā
Stewart says evacuations canĀ reawaken past trauma from forced relocation due to the First Nations reserve system. Internal displacements can also impact a person’s sense of autonomy, Binon says,Ā particularly when they are long lasting and send people far from home.Ā
She notes that some Indigenous peopleĀ are leavingĀ their rural homes for cities for the first time in their lives,Ā whichĀ adds to the challenges of being displaced.Ā
Thousands of Indigenous people from northwest Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan have been forced to evacuate their homes and are being relocated to southern Ontario due to wildfires raging across the regions. CBCās Greg Ross spoke with evacuees who arrived in Niagara Falls to shelter.
In late May this year, Manitoba wildfires forced the evacuation of more than 21,000 people, many from northern First Nations. With hotels in the provinceĀ scarce, some evacueesĀ were relocated as far away as Niagara Falls, Ont.
Many First Nations leadersĀ urgedĀ the province to do more to relocate people closer to home,Ā and theĀ premier now says he’s considering using emergency powers to make more areaĀ hotelsĀ available.Ā
Because wildfire related evacuations of Indigenous communities are likely to continue due to climate change, Binon suggests there are ways to improve how they’re handled. They include:
- Allocating resources to ensure specific needs of Indigenous evacuees are met, such as having interpreters available for elders at reception centres.
- Forming and following Indigenous-based disaster plans, such as the Dene First Nation’s 2023 offer to help the Northwest Territories government identify vulnerable peopleĀ and communicateĀ evacuation plans with them.
First Nations in B.C. are in a race to protect themselves from wildfires, bringing back a tradition that had been banned for decades. CBCās Brady Strachan was invited to the front line of a prescribed or cultural burn to learn more about how itās done and why experts say other communities across Canada need to follow their example.
Binon also saysĀ governments are increasingly turning to the Indigenous practice ofĀ cultural burns ā controlled, slow fires āĀ to reduce wildfireĀ risk andĀ enhance biodiversity.
She says such “informed and inclusive policies” support recovery and reduceĀ the risk of internal displacement.
Liske now lives in Dettah, N.W.T., with her family.Ā Her mother-in-law, Lafferty, is in Victoria but recently visited Yellowknife.
“Whenever there’s a blue sky, I’m thankful,” said Lafferty. “We’re not breathing in smoke.”
Both say when they see smoky skies, it brings a sense of dread related to the 2023 fires, but also this wildfire season. Liske’s spouse, who is also Lafferty’s son, is currently fighting wildfires in Saskatchewan.