First it was wildfires. Then a sewage leak. For Neskantaga First Nation, summer is a series of hotel rooms
You can’t simply pin all of this on global warming. It’s a factor, but not the only one.
Global warming wasn’t responsible for the sewage leak (sewage and water treatment issues leading to evacuation are very common on the northern reservations—Kashechewan was also hit this year—and they should be 100% avoidable). And it’s only partially responsible for the evacuations due to spring flooding that have been hitting some of these communities yearly for decades. Even if the temperature worldwide magically returned to preindustrial levels this instant, these communities would still need to be evacuated unreasonably often. They need firefighting and flood remediation and better options for infrastructure repairs and replacement.
Neskantaga in particular is only accessible by air most of the year, which means that it’s difficult to get people and manufactured goods into and out of the community. This makes everything from infrastructure repairs to getting any kind of mental health support for any reason more difficult.
