THUNDER BAY, Ontario – Within a span of a week and with no warning, the Namaygoosisagagun, Kiashke Zaaging Anishinaabek, Whitesand, Whitewater Lake, Lac des Mill Lacs, and Gakijiwanong (Anishinaabe) First Nations in Canada were devastated by wildfires that ravaged Northern Ontario. Thousands of Indigenous inhabitants were forced to barely escape by boat from the extreme fires, severing physical ties to a critical seasonal hub used for generations of hunting, fishing and cultural traditions, and negatively impacting the Anishinaabe people under U.S. and Canadian imperialist occupation. Smoke and fire engulfed the forests, and residents only had a few minutes to gather their belongings. The flames were so intense they destroyed much of the Whitewater Lake community in less than an hour.
Whitewater Lake, a remote community northwest of Thunder Bay, Ontario, lost homes and infrastructure vital to the social and cultural survival of the First Nation community, a direct consequence of the Old society’s worsening climate crisis led by world imperialism. Throughout Canada, fires were reported in Manitoba and Saskatchewan provinces as well.
The raging fires sent active and leftover smoke and soot blowing across much of the Great Lakes and Northeast regions of the U.S., including many Indigenous communities in the Midwest and New York, bringing record-breaking air pollution for the working class and Indigenous peoples alike. Heat and Air Quality Indexes have risen to severely dangerous levels, exceeding 300 in various cities and traditional lands. Milwaukee experienced an Air Quality Index of 640; in Detroit (home to over 10,000 Indigenous peoples) levels reached 724. Polluted air this concentrated with fine particles can enter one’s bloodstream and leaves workers and oppressed peoples at high risk of chest pains, shortness of breath, fatigue, heart attacks and asthma flare-ups by way of inflammation. On the Canadian side, Neskantaga First Nation residents reported their children suffered nosebleeds and lack of access to baby formula. The masses reported air smelling like burnt wood with a ghostly orange-white haze.
Ontario, home to 133 First Nations communities alone, has seen 200 wildfires in the province around the time the First Nations were devastated, not to mention 80 percent of the Indigenous inhabitants on the Canadian side reside in high-risk areas for wildfires on their land. First Nations make up around 5 percent of Canada’s population yet account for a disproportionate 42 percent of wildfire evacuations in the country. When displaced, they are forced to urban centers, detached from the food, medicine, and community they know, with lasting mental health consequences for evacuees; nearly all of those communities have been forced out seven times within a span of a couple of decades. Even worse, the Old Canadian government denied assistance to several communities because it does not recognize them as First Nations.
Public Safety Canada claimed to be working alongside the provinces and tribal leaders to coordinate evacuations and strengthen wildfire preparedness; however, these same communities went to the provincial and federal government with solutions in such emergencies, which were systematically ignored. Gull Bay Chief Wilfred King even never spoke to Thunder Bay-Atikokan MPP Kevin Holland, expressing strong distrust toward him. As is the case, the federal government has taken extra steps to abandon the Indigenous masses and pour salt on wounds; during a July 21 interview, Ontario’s Emergency Preparedness Minister Jill Dunlop cut short her staff’s response when asked to address backlash from community leaders for the government’s response. The First Nation communities, on the other hand, endure recent anti-Indigenous vitriol online, blaming the residents for starting the wildfires instead of their concrete social origins.
Many evacuees, with connections to nearby Anishinaabe and Chippewa nations on the U.S. side, are currently in refuge in Thunder Bay, where local organizations and collectives are working to support their basic necessities while displaced.
Since the beginning of British and French colonialism in what would become Canada and the U.S., Indigenous peoples have been conquered and separated on their lands, subject to arbitrary treaties and assimilation to the dominant society of the imperialists. Without self-determination, First Nations are not able to determine their own destiny on the traditional lands they inhabit, leaving them vulnerable to the worst manifestations and ills of the Old society, including alcoholism, blood quantum, reproductive and climate violence. From the 1493 Catholic Doctrine of Discovery to the Indian Act of 1876, Canadian Imperialism of today subjugates the First Nations to social, cultural and national erasure. The wildfires that have devastated these communities, as a result, are a highlight of the general crisis facing world imperialism, as the sadistic accumulation and fascistization of capital continues.
As the struggles of Peru, India and the Philippines have shown, self-determination and autonomy of Indigenous peoples and nations across the U.S. and Canadian Old States can only be truly realized through the unity of the proletariat and oppressed peoples of these countries, not separate from the world revolutionary movement, to crush the very conditions that have oppressed the First Nations peoples for far too long.
[Image Source _anishinaabekwe]
