A water bomber aircraft battles a wildfire in southeast Manitoba in this handout photo provided by the Manitoba government.Manitoba government/The Canadian Press
Brendan Moore is the national chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples.
As wildfires raged across northern Manitoba this summer, communities were forced to flee their homes under harrowing conditions. For many non-status and off-reserve Indigenous people in places like Leaf Rapids, the trauma didn’t end with the evacuation. It deepened upon their return.
Families were sent back to their community in the middle of night. They stepped off those buses not to safety and relief, but to destruction and silence. There were no government reception centres waiting. No emergency teams to meet them. No supports to help them pick up the pieces.
With no electricity for days, fridges and deep freezers had become hazardous, filled with rotting meat and toxic mould. Some returned to find their houses infested by animals that had moved in during the evacuation, adding another layer of concern for health and safety. Parents carried their children into houses that were unsafe and unsanitary. Elders were left vulnerable. There were no clear lines of communication, no co-ordinated response, and no culturally appropriate supports. In effect, people were simply dropped back into a crisis, abandoned by the systems that are supposed to protect them.
This is not just a logistical failure. It is a systemic one.
Northern Manitoba wildfire evacuees’ return delayed because of mould, rotting food in homes
Time and again, governments and emergency services at every level fail to adequately plan for, and respond to, the needs of non-status and off-reserve Indigenous peoples during emergencies. Unlike First Nations communities with reserve lands, non-status and off-reserve populations fall through jurisdictional cracks. Federal programs often exclude them. Provincial emergency plans rarely include them. Municipalities are under-resourced and unequipped to address their specific needs.
Over and over again, non-status and off-reserve Indigenous people are treated as less-than-important in emergency responses, as though there is a hierarchy of who deserves protection: first Canadians, then First Nations on-reserve, and finally non-status and off-reserve peoples left at the back of the line, where help rarely reaches them.
This leaves thousands of Indigenous people – who are every bit as connected to their lands, cultures, and communities – without a safety net when disaster strikes. And it’s not a new problem.
The 2016 wildfires in Fort McMurray, Alta., the COVID-19 pandemic, Hurricane Fiona (which affected the East Coast in 2023), and repeated floods and fires have all revealed the same glaring gap. Yet governments have been slow to act, even as the climate crisis intensifies, and disasters grow more frequent.
In the face of government inaction, it has been local, Indigenous-led groups like the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of Manitoba (IPAM), along with private donors, who have stepped up to fill the void. With no dedicated funding or formal emergency support, volunteers have worked tirelessly to help people return home, providing transportation, basic supplies, and direct assistance where governments have failed to act. This grassroots response underscores both the strength of Indigenous communities and the glaring absence of public support. Quite simply, there has been no co-ordinated federal or provincial help to support these evacuees returning home.
The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP) has long raised the alarm about this dangerous oversight. Non-status and off-reserve Indigenous people make up the majority of the Indigenous population in Canada. In Manitoba alone, tens of thousands live in communities like Leaf Rapids. They deserve the same level of protection, planning, and respect as anyone else.
Emergency management cannot continue to treat these communities as afterthoughts. Governments must work with Indigenous organizations that represent non-status and off-reserve peoples to develop inclusive emergency-response frameworks. This includes ensuring equitable access to evacuation supports, clear communication channels, post-disaster resources, and security for evacuated homes.
The people in communities like Leaf Rapids have endured enough – first the fear of fire, then the shock of returning home to devastation, and now the frustration of being ignored. Their experience should be a wake-up call for governments to close the gaps that have been left open for far too long.
Climate disasters do not discriminate. Emergency responses shouldn’t either.