The challenges of making disaster response both appropriate to the unique identity of and respectfully representative to the Indigenous community is an ongoing issue for the DR industry and a new development in Canada may help.
A system set up for five Mi’kmaq communities in Nova Scotia will be able to send alerts in Eskasoni, Membertou, Potlotek, Wagmatcook, We’koqma’q and English by text, phone and email, reports The Canadian Press (CP)/Turtle Island News. “We get to be the first to release it, but I’m willing to bet that this is going to catch on and you’re going to see it pop up, not just in First Nations communities,” Jennifer Jesty, emergency management co-ordinator with the Mi’kmaq union, told CP. The system puts the decision and messaging in the hands of chiefs directly, rather than through the RCMP.
“This decision can be made amongst the community itself and community leaders,” said Jesty.
A roundtable discussion in The New Humanitarian on pandemic measures and the role of Indigenous knowledge and experiences in disaster prevention and response talked about the issue of making disaster response useful to Indigenous communities by incorporating their own voices and knowledge. “In recent years, humanitarian organisations and governments have slowly woken up to the importance of traditional Indigenous knowledge in preparing for and responding to disasters such as earthquakes, floods, storms, wildfires, and health crises,” reads the lead in to the discussion. “But Indigenous leadership and experience during disasters are still often overlooked or misunderstood.”
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