Listening to our Mother, Learning from our Matriarchs

Climate displacement is a pressing global issue with acute local outcomes. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, since 2008, an annual average of 21.5 million people have been forcibly displaced due to floods, storms, wildfires and extreme temperatures.

In Canada, First Nation communities are 33 times more likely to be evacuated due to wildfires and 18 times more likely to be evacuated due to any disaster than people living off-reserve, while fire-related fatalities are more than 10 times higher. In the US, research shows that race and wealth strongly impact disaster evacuation patterns, with disadvantaged minority populations less likely to evacuate than wealthier white residents.

Disaster impacts in Indigenous communities are further compounded due to gaps in emergency management practices and insurance disparities. A lack of self-determination in disaster response results in externally imposed culturally unsafe practices, further deepening marginalization, trauma, and conflict within Indigenous communities. Given these disproportionate inequities, there is an acute need for collaborative, culturally safe, and gender-responsive evacuations. 

To be safe, we need to listen to our mothers and the matriarchs of our communities, and we need to listen to Mother Earth. As Lyla June an Indigenous musician, scholar, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages shared: "We must remind ourselves that we are the Earth — inexplicably interconnected with all life around us."

Led by an Indigenous Circle of Matriarchs, this project focuses on cultural safety in evacuations and displacement. Building on lessons learned through Indigenous health, cultural safety is about addressing the power imbalances inherent in the disaster management industry to create services and environment in which people feel safe.  Our team brings 400+ years of lived experiences as Indigenous women and our unique capacities for addressing displacement through colonialism, disasters, and climate change. The outcome of this project is educational training for the mainstream disaster management industry about culturally safe practices designed to alleviate the negative outcomes of disasters and help prepare for climate change relocation. 

Currently, there is no Indigenous-led training in this area, an industry which is dominated by white male and command-and control approaches. Indigenous communities are often forced to subscribe to these models or remain excluded. 

The training will be offered online (initial modules) and in-person (final module) through the Preparing Our Home network. This will be a paid training that ensures the long-term financial stability of the initiative. We know there is a market for this training as over the years the disaster management industry has been reaching out to the Preparing Our Home program for such training. 

This project seeks to improve disaster outcomes in Indigenous communities with a focus on gender. Across Turtle Island, Indigenous communities are faced with disproportionate impacts of disasters and climate change due to historical and ongoing racists policies (such as the Indian Act in Canada) that dispossessed land, attempted cultural genocide, and forced people onto reservations in hazardous locations. Climate change is exacerbating disaster risks, forcing further displacement and necessitating relocation. Throughout the displacement, as the research shows, the burden of care for children and the elders often falls on the women, as does the burden of domestic and lateral violence in disasters.

Our project will benefit Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island impacted by disasters and climate displacement. By educating the disaster industry (a multi-billion dollar political economy of suffering), we will unlock the potential of trauma-informed and culturally safe evacuations and displacement management practices. This change will not happen over night. We have the patience, experience and endurance for this work. 

We are a group of Indigenous women with over 400 years of collective lived experience as Indigenous girls, women, mothers, and grandmothers representing Blackfoot, Diné, Secwepemc, Bashkir, Cree, Mi'kmaq cultures, rights, and responsibilities. Professionally, we are leaders in Indigenous health, Indigenous policy, Indigenous firefighting, Indigenous emergency management, and youth empowerment.

Our team brings together an exceptional group of Preparing Our Home leaders who made history/broke glass ceiling through many ‘firsts’, a group of matriarchs, elders and youth with lived and professional experience in disasters and climate change. 

Darlene Munro is a Siksika Elder; she is the oldest of 10 children. Darlene has served her community as a community nurse, Treaty 7 Zone Director, Medical Services Branch and first female Chief in Treaty 7.  Darlene came out of semi-retirement in 2013 to assist Siksika Nation with the 2013 flood. She commenced as a night shift volunteer and became the Manager of Dancing Deer Disaster Recovery Program and the Project Manager for the Community Wellness (Psychosocial) Recovery Program. Her role as Manager overlapped in many areas of the 2013 flood response and recovery. Darlene is the Elder in Residence for the Preparing Our Home program.

Sheri Lysons is a Secwepemc leader, Daughter, Mother, Grandmother, former Fire Chief, Adams Lake Indian Band and Elders and Youth Council Coordinator, Shuswap Nation Tribal Council.

Michelle Vandevord (Day Star Woman) is an active member of the Muskoday First Nation Volunteer Fire Department and is the longest serving female firefighter in the department’s history as well as its first female captain. She started her career in Prince Albert as an officer delivering fire prevention programs to communities and is now the associate director of Saskatchewan First Nation Emergency Management in Prince Albert. She is the current President of the National Indigenous Fire Safety Council Project. She is a member of the Saskatchewan Fire Chiefs Public Education committee and was recognized by her inclusion in the National Fire Protection Association Rising Star Program. She lives in her community of Muskoday First Nation and is the mother of three daughters and three adopted sons. She is a very proud Kookum to four smart, handsome and funny grandsons.

Santana Dreaver is a Salteaux and Plains Cree woman from the Kinistin Saulteaux Nation and Mistawasis Nehiyawak in Saskatchewan. She studied political science with a minor in sociology at the University of Saskatchewan while obtaining a certificate in Indigenous governance and politics. Currently, Santana is interning as a policy advisor with the Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness in British Columbia on the Indigenous People's Policy team. As the granddaughter of Chief Mistawasis, a key negotiator of Treaty 6 and as an Indigenous woman, the last demographic granted suffrage in Canada only 63 years ago, Santana is passionate about treaty relationships, land advocacy, and empowering Indigenous youth and women.

Alanna Syliboy is from the Sipekne’katik First Nation. She is the proud mother of three children, Mia , and Dominick and Sage. She is the daughter of Bernie Syliboy and the late Audrey Syliboy.  In her free time Alanna loves to spend time with her family and friends. She also loves to be creative and does bead work. In the summer, you may find Alanna at one of the many pow wows around Mi’kma’ki. Alanna is the Community, Education & Engagement Manager, the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq. 

We are looking to grow our knowledge base and experience in Indigenous-led social enterprise with a focus on training in particular. We aim to create a long-term financially sustainable model that benefits Indigenous women and their communities. We are looking forward to meeting our peer innovators, solution creators, connectors and disruptors. 

As a program and a team, we have a broad experience in curriculum and training  development. For example, check out this fabulous work by Casey Gabriel and Sandy Henry of the Lil'wat Nation. 

We are Indigenous women with lived and professional experience with disasters. We are applying a decolonial approach to this project by having two co-leads based in Canada and the U.S. We will support each other throughout this experience to ensure the best outcome for the project. 

Rosalita (Rose) Whitehair is a senior policy consultant who has over 29 years of working in Public Safety, including 19 years working in Disaster Management and Homeland Security. Ms. Whitehair’s disaster management experience includes large-scale incidents related to wildfires, floods, tornados, drought, hazardous chemical response, and pandemic response and recovery. Throughout her career, Ms. Whitehair has also assisted state, and local and tribal governments in managing and closing out thousands of multimillion dollar federal projects. Additionally, Ms. Whitehair’s expertise includes analysis and interpretation of FEMA and U.S. Treasury regulations and guidance, reporting, recordkeeping and compliance policies, including federal, state, and tribal legislative research and analysis, and drafting legislative committee testimony.

Prior to her policy consultancy work, Ms. Whitehair served as the State of New Mexico’s State Coordinating Officer (SCO), Recovery Unit Manager, and Emergency Operations Center (EOC) Director at the NM Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. In these critical capacities, Ms. Whitehair activated the State’s EOC and all related protocols for multi-agency emergency support functions. Ms. Whitehair also drafted successful disaster declaration requests to the White House for the COVID-19 Pandemic, wildfires, floods, and winter-freeze conditions.

Ms. Whitehair’s tribal emergency management experience includes working as the Director for the largest Native Nation in the United States. The Navajo Nation spans New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah and has a population of over 400,000 tribal citizens, which provided Ms. Whitehair invaluable experience coordinating across multiple federal, state, county, and tribal jurisdictions. The Navajo Nation is the first tribal nation to receive federal emergency aid from the Stafford Act. Additionally, Ms. Whitehair is one of only two Native Americans to be inducted into the International Women in Homeland Security and Emergency Management Hall of Fame. She served as a tribal advisor to the National Domestic Preparedness Council, and volunteers with Team Rubicon where her EMT, Firefighting, and Trauma Team background are critical in the disaster field.

Ms. Whitehair is a certified yoga instructor and works with Native American communities and organizations to improve physical and emotional health for Indigenous people who experience some of the highest health disparities and trauma in the Nation. She works with the renowned non-profit organizations Native Strength Revolution, Rising Hearts, and Running Medicine. The focus of her yoga practice is whole-wellness and healing through “Movement as Medicine.” A recent highlight of her practice is completing an intensive training in Vinyasa Yoga For Youth (VYFY) a non-profit program based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Rose shares VYFY’s vision to foster self-awareness, encourage an enhanced capacity for compassion, and promote healthy living choices for our youth and our communities.

Ms. Whitehair is a citizen of the Navajo Nation. She comes from the Water Flows Together clan, which traces its maternal lineage to Window Rock, Navajo Nation more than sixteen generations. Rose enjoys road trips and time in the mountains and near rivers with her family and dogs, Angel, Ruby, and Rocky. 

Lilia Yumagulova is a Bashkir woman born and raised in the Soviet Union, in a low-income area prone to recurring floods on the outskirts of a large urban centre. It was witnessing these regular disasters affect her community that influenced her choice of profession. With an academic and professional background in engineering and emergency management, a Masters of Science in risk analysis, and a PhD in climate resilience planning, Lilia brings over 20 years of experience in government, NGOs, media, Indigenous communities and supranational organizations in Europe and North America. As a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, Indigenous Studies, University of Saskatchewan, Lilia’s research focuses on Indigenous self-determination and the role of women in disaster risk reduction, climate displacement and planned relocation. She is the Founder and Program Director for the Preparing Our Home , a global and national award-winning program that empowers Indigenous youth leadership in community resilience.