Contemporary evacuation responses in a Northern Saskatchewan Cree community: the residential school analogy

In this article, we chronicle the experiences of a northern Cree community in Canada which undergoes an emergency evacuation due to threat by wildfire. Forced to leave their community under short notice as the fire encroached, individuals were triaged for "risk" and removed sequentially to different communities and temporary facilities. The process of evacuation prompts comparison with earlier processes of the forced removal of children to residential schools. The analogy is based on two experiential domains. First, families were fractured, with members being separated. Elders were placed in lodging apart from other family members, and in some case family members were sent to different towns. Second, the residents experienced a loss of agency in all aspects of the evacuation, from declaring the emergency to governing themselves in evacuation centers. We argue that disaster response policy as it pertains to Indigenous communities must embrace an acute awareness of the consequences of state oppression and forced assimilation, assumed to be only historical, that shape experiences involving emergency intervention by contemporary state authorities. Rather than replicating these historical processes, evacuations represent opportunities to engage with Indigenous knowledge and experience to ensure local needs are met in ways that are culturally and experientially safe.