The Kwadacha Nation, located 570 kilometres northwest of Prince George has declared a State of Emergency regarding its housing crisis within their remote community of Fort Ware.
According to the First Nation, members suffer from deplorable housing conditions including living with mould, overcrowding, cramped conditions, and structural issues.
Executive Director, Dennis Sterritt told MyPGNow.com they have close to 60 members living in Prince George as well as many others scattered across BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan who want to move back but won’t until conditions improve.
“They shouldn’t be accepting these poor standards of living. My advice to them is to get mad – get mad, pound the table and say no this is not good enough and we expect more, we expect better and equality.”
“Indigenous communities are held to a much lower standard, which isn’t fair. You look at municipalities and yeah there is a fair share of homelessness as well but the houses that are there are at a much higher standard.”
Sterritt noted it is not uncommon to see multiple generations of the same family living under one roof.
“Chief McCook is living in a two-bedroom house that is about 800 square feet and there is him, his wife and their five children living in this two-bedroom house and two of the children are teenagers. It’s not ideal.”
Furthermore, the gap between living conditions even in rural communities remains evident with some places better equipped than others.
“Even the smallest of municipalities. Take Hazelton for example, they are very small and it’s not on a railway line, it doesn’t have any industry or commercial activity so there is not a lot of tax revenue but still, the houses in Hazelton are in a much better state than they are in Kwadacha.”
“They have roads, paved, roads. Hazelton has street lights and sidewalks, these are basic needs and are not luxuries that are not consistent in most Indigenous communities – in fact, I would say very few,” said Sterritt.
The crisis is further emphasized by recent deaths in the community, with three homicides since January 2023.
Kwadacha has long struggled with poor and inadequate housing in Fort Ware beginning with the flooding of their territory in the 1960’s for the purposes of the W.A.C Bennett dam, where all members were displaced from their ancestral lands.
According to the band, this altered their traditional ways of hunting and gathering to a sedentary life, away from their homelands and ancestral burial grounds.
The Kwadacha Nation sent a letter to Federal Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu expressing disappointment over the lack of response to the crisis.
The Kwadacha Nation also submitted the Cost estimate for new builds within the community:
3-Bedroom House 1404 SF $897,677
4-Bedroom House 1456 SF $921,789
5-Bedroom House 2020 SF $1,015,800
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