Peguis First Nation declared a state of emergency Tuesday over a housing shortage that has prevented hundreds of people forced out during a series of floods from returning to the Cree and Ojibway community in Manitoba’s Interlake.
Manitoba’s most populous First Nation declared the emergency in order to place pressure on the federal and provincial governments to provide Peguis with more housing as well as permanent flood protection, Chief Stan Bird said during a press conference in the band office.
Peguis filed a $1-billion flood-damages lawsuit last week against the federal and provincial governments, as well as two municipalities upstream along the Fisher River. The suit argues the feds and province failed to protect the First Nation, and the municipalities allowed land drainage that exacerbated flooding.
“Our community has endured repeated, devastating floods, with the most recent in 2022 leaving a lasting impact,” Bird said during the news conference.
A total of 784 Peguis residents remain displaced due to floods in 2014, 2017 and 2022, mainly because of a shortage of adequate housing in Peguis, where hundreds of homes have been condemned because of mould and hundreds of others require repairs or replacement, Bird said.
The chief said he is frustrated by the pace at which other levels of government have assisted Peguis with food protection, flood recovery and the construction of new housing. Too much effort has been spent on recovery from previous Fisher River floods instead of preventing damage during future events, he said.
The federal government, he suggested, is quicker to respond to floods elsewhere in the world.
“When you look at other countries, when an event of a catastrophic nature happens, there’s some form of intervention,” Bird said.
CBC News requested comment from Indigenous Services Canada.
An emailed statement from Manitoba Municipal and Northern Relations Minister Ian Bushie said the province “understands the difficult situation that Peguis First Nation is undergoing in respect to housing and flood mitigation,” and has committed $1.5 million to a flood mitigation plan.
The province is “working directly with chief and council to support Peguis” and “we want to work in collaboration with the federal government,” Bushie’s statement said.
In addition to displacing residents, the housing shortage at Peguis has led the community to house eight people within a condemned former school that has a leaky roof and smells of mould.
Shania Stevenson and Aaron Cooke moved into a room in the makeshift shelter Tuesday. They did not yet have a bed.
Cooke said he wished Peguis had more housing for couples without kids. Stevenson said it’s particularly tough for her to live in the former school because she has asthma.
Young adults in Peguis are not the only residents affected by the housing shortage.
Alice Thomas, an elder living in a home with a shifting foundation and basement mould, told CBC earlier this year she hopes she can get a new house on a ridge, so she won’t have to spend any more time living in Winnipeg hotels during future floods.
“It’s hard living in those hotel rooms. The last time we flooded, I was moved five times in one month,” she said in January, sitting in the kitchen of her home on the west bank of the Fisher River.
“It was chaos. Every time I was settled in my room, I had to move.”
Bird said the housing shortage has had spinoff effects on Peguis, including an increase in mental-health crises, domestic abuse and delays in education.