Municipal officials in Niagara Falls, Ont., met with Indigenous leaders from Northern Ontario on Tuesday to discuss comments made at a public council meeting last week suggesting evacuees from Kashechewan First Nation were becoming a burden on tourism.
Indigenous leaders have criticized the comments, calling for more care and compassion for the evacuees from Kashechewan, who have been living away from their homes since January because of failed water infrastructure.
The office of Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati declined to comment “until his scheduled meetings with the Chiefs take place.”
Chief Hosea Wesley of Kashechewan stands at a Niagara Falls traffic intersection on Monday.Georgina Wynne/Supplied
Wearing his traditional feathered headdress, Chief Hosea Wesley of Kashechewan stood at a busy intersection on Stanley Street Monday, holding a hand-written sign that read, “My people are not homeless, my people are displaced.”
“There’s an important difference,” Mr. Wesley said in a statement.
“Our Elders, parents, and children have homes. They have a community. They have a culture and a deep connection to the land. What they have lost – through no fault of their own – is the ability to safely return home because of the critical infrastructure failures.”
Last week, during a city council meeting, retired Niagara Falls chief administrative officer KenTodd presented his recommendations for tackling homelessness in “Vegas North.”
He took issue with how Ottawa and Ontario have handled the evacuations of First Nations, and what he said was a negative impact on tourism.
“The whole evacuee situation with the Indigenous is not being handled properly by the federal and provincial governments,” Mr. Todd told council, adding he believed those levels of government had failed the evacuees.
“We want to be the jewel of tourism in Ontario, and unfortunately, a lot of the residents and people will see Indigenous people on the streets walking around, thinking they’re homeless people from this community, and they’re not. And I think they deserve better. I don’t think children deserve to be playing their recess time in a parking lot beside the casino,” Mr. Todd said to council.
He suggested evacuees be relocated to “some purpose-built kind of facility in the province where they can go and have a sense of community and not be forced to relocate into hotel rooms across the province.”
Mr. Todd recommended the municipality demand the federal and provincial governments reimburse the municipal and regional governments for the costs of hosting the emergency evacuees, including for “enforcement and emergency services, social and public health services, municipal operations.”
National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak of the Assembly of First Nations said in a statement Monday that she was deeply disappointed by the remarks.
“This evacuation is already traumatizing, and many now feel unwelcome in the city that was supposed to be a refuge,” Ms. Woodhouse Nepinak said.
She said the real issue is “the unacceptable infrastructure gap facing too many First Nations.
“Decades of underfunding and neglect by the federal government are leaving our people and communities vulnerable. The mayor, council and all city staff should be joining us in our call to close this gap.”
Joseph Sayers is the chief executive officer of Missanabie Cree Emergency Management Services, an agency based in Sault Ste. Marie that has managed evacuations on a similar scale.
In such situations, he said, urban centres are usually the preferred destination for evacuees. Many of them are high-risk people, often with chronic health conditions, and so they need access to hospitals and other essential services.
Mr. Sayers said the real problem facing Niagara Falls is a lack of cultural understanding. He scoffs at the notion that evacuees don’t belong there, especially during a crisis.
“Yeah, sure, it’s inconvenient if they want to be the Vegas of the North,” he said, “but they’re also on Indigenous lands, and Indigenous people have a right, to be fair, as in any place, whether it’s on a reserve or off reserve, in their own homeland, like in their own territory.”
Karl Dockstader, a Niagara Falls resident, co-hosts a local radio show called One Dish, One Mic, and is also part of the urban Indigenous community that organizes clothing and fundraising drives for the evacuees. He said it’s important to ensure that such efforts are Indigenous-led.
“These are non-Indigenous people that own hotels. It’s clear that it’s non-Indigenous people that are sitting on the Niagara Falls council,” Mr. Dockstader said.
He also wonders why the money from the lucrative emergency management industry isn’t instead being invested into the failing community infrastructure that is causing the evacuations.
“It just feels illogical to me,” he said.