Last week Bearskin Lake declared a state of emergency due to the high number of COVID-19 cases in the community. On Monday morning Chief Lefty Kamenawatamin issued a press release requesting the Government of Canada provide military assistance for the beleaguered community: “Currently, the majority of households are under quarantine and require food and water delivery, chopped wood for heating, and medication to relieve fever and pain.”
This is one of those rare moments in the Canadian media cycle where the public receives a glimpse of life in a remote, northern Indigenous community. Bearskin Lake is a town of about 450 people that lacks year-round road access to neighbouring communities, connection to the electrical power grid, and a resident physician or dentist. The community’s airport, located more than 10 km northwest of the town, was built in the 1940s; its gravel runway is too short to accommodate large cargo planes.
The remote Indigenous community of Bearskin Lake is seen from the air.
Chief Lefty Kamenawatamin
For power, the community relies on a diesel-generated system which is dependent on fuel trucked in during the short ice-road season. Operating the community’s aging road, water and sewer infrastructure is a year-round challenge for local staff. A long-term boil-water advisory has been in place in the community since February 2021.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
The town has a small health centre staffed by two nurses. Physician services are provided through telemedicine and by rotating visits from Sioux Lookout, located more than 450 km to the south.
Local volunteers assembling food and other essential household goods for distribution in Bearskin Lake.
Chief Lefty Kamenawatamin
Bearskin Lake is not alone in facing enormous hurdles to economic and social development. In Northern Ontario alone, there are 31 First Nation communities with similar infrastructure and service challenges. Across Canada there are 118 Indigenous communities defined as “remote.” Each year, the limited provincial and federal investments made toward improvements make few inroads in the gaps in health and living conditions faced by people living in these communities.
But at the moment, economic and social development are the least of their worries.
Local volunteers assembling food and other essential household goods for distribution in Bearskin Lake.
Chief Lefty Kamenawatamin
In Bearskin Lake, nearly half of the population has tested positive with COVID-19. Those who haven’t are exhausted from caring for their ill family and community members. Supplies of food, water and wood are diminishing, and people are too tired, ill or impoverished to replenish them. The town lacks hotels and food service to cope with an influx of volunteers, and so cannot accept their generosity for fear of depleting the town’s limited resources.
Bearskin Lake is in crisis, and the situation in other remote Indigenous communities is similarly dire. Chief Kamenawatamin has called for aid. Will Canada answer?
Tracey Galloway is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto Mississauga.
