“Why would I want to leave such beautiful memories?”
Her family escaped unharmed, though her beloved cat, Missy, didn't make it out before a “fireball” dropped on the house in early May. But peony bushes passed down from her late mother survived and the blackened May Day tree planted in memory of her longtime partner is sending up new shoots — hopeful signs as she prepares to start over in the East Prairie Métis Settlement, about 240 miles northwest of Edmonton.
Fires aren’t uncommon on Indigenous lands, but they’re now occurring over such a widespread area that many more people are experiencing them at the same time — and some for the first time — stoking fears of what a hotter, drier future will bring, especially to communities where traditions run deep. In Canada, 5% of the population identifies as Indigenous — First Nation, Métis or Inuit — with an even smaller percentage living in predominantly Indigenous communities. Yet more than 42% of wildfire evacuations have been from communities that are more than half Indigenous, said Amy Cardinal Christianson, an Indigenous fire specialist with Parks Canada.
Ken McMullen, president of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs and fire chief in Red Deer, Alberta — a province where about 7,600 square miles have already burned, compared to just over 695 square miles in all of 2022 — said some places burning again this year haven't fully recovered from previous fires.
Indigenous communities “really want to be leaders in managing fires in their territory,” including a return to preventive burning that was long suppressed by the government, said Christianson.
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