‘ I feel like we have no home’
After two years, little progress on Stoney reserve flood restoration
Inside a small room at the Elder’s Lodge on the Stoney Nakoda Reserve, Henry Ear lives with his wife and four children.
For the past five months, the six of them have eaten, breathed and slept in the same room. Before that, they spent a year living in a trailer after a previous four- month stint at the lodge in late 2013. But two years since floods ravaged their home on the reserve, it doesn’t seem like they are any closer to living normal lives again.
“It’s exhausting,” Ear said. “It seems like I’m left behind on some world that’s been just going and I’m stuck in one place.”
Staff at the lodge say the Ears are one of more than 10 families living there temporarily as they await restoration or replacement of their homes.
Approximately 130 homes on the reserve — composed of the Chiniki, Bearspaw and Wesley bands — have been fully repaired since the flood, according to Chiniki First Nation CEO Lindsay Blackett. But two years on, many residents are still stuck in temporary housing as 450 homes are yet to be fixed or replaced, according to Blackett, a former culture minister with the Progressive Conservatives.
“It’s been emotionally and physically stressful. I feel like we have no home,” said Hannah Ear, the eldest of the four children between the ages of 11 and 20. “There’s no place to go back to. They told us three months.”
Many families have come and gone from the lodge over the past two years.
Henry Ear said he’s seen his neighbours grow frustrated and have gone back to live in their damaged, mould- filled homes, despite instruction not to.
Ear quit his job as a security guard after the flood to take care of his family and says he is feeling very worn out.
He says he’s been promised a replacement home for his family, but has received few details.
“Nobody knows when. I don’t even know how it looks like,” Ear said. “It seems like it’s another year coming for us.”
The Alberta government, in a memorandum of understanding with the Stoney Nation, agreed to fund the redevelopment of these homes, a process that should be completed “sometime in 2016,” according to Veronica Jubinville, a spokeswoman for Aboriginal Affairs Minister Kathleen Ganley.
In June 2014, $ 345 million over five years was approved for repairs, rebuilds, relocations and interim housing for both Stoney Nakoda and Siksika nations.
In an emailed statement, Jubinville said the government has completed 312 basement repairs and 109 full- home repairs to date on the Stoney reserve. She said three homes have been fully replaced and 21 more will be by the end of the year.
Jubinville says the timeline for this process has been longer for the Stoney Nakoda because of the wide area of land in which three separate bands live, weather delays and the type of flooding experienced on the reserve. The government decided to inspect all houses because the reserve experienced ground swelling, making it more difficult to determine who was affected by the flood.
Blackett said the restoration has been slow, but the process is now moving “full speed ahead.” He expects construction to be completed in the next 12 to 18 months.
“It seems that there’s a lot of people that came in at the onset of the flood who are no longer involved. There was a lot of analysis, there was a lot of money spent on studies and looking at assessing this and that,” Blackett said. “Not a lot of time spent in those first couple years to actually go and rectify the problem of repairs and replacements themselves.”
Stoney Nation members have felt a sense of disorganization since the flood.
“Be patient, is what they said,” according to Philip Chiniquay, who lives at the lodge with his wife, Samantha Abraham, and their kids aged 10 months to 13 years old.
After their home was destroyed two years ago, the family settled into the lodge for a few months, but were then told they had to move into the interim housing trailers that had been set up to be eligible for a replacement home.
“They told us the sooner you move down there, the sooner we’ll get started. So we did,” said Abraham. “The trailers were beyond small. Imagine me, pregnant last year in those little trailers. No A/ C. It was a tiny space.”
They stayed there until this past January, when they were told the government was shutting down the trailers.
“We heard that the government said it costs too much to operate the camp there,” Chiniquay said. “If it’s going to cost lots, they could have just fixed our houses or get our replacement homes instead of spending the money on those camps.
The family of eight have lived in three rooms in the basement of the lodge ever since. With little privacy nor air conditioning, Chiniquay says he hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in months.
“It’s been hard emotionally and trying to be strong for the kids,” he acknowledged.
Chiniquay and Abraham say their ruined home has been designated for demolition and they will eventually receive a replacement. The when- of- it- all is another story.
“We don’t know. That’s the answer we need. It seems like every time I try to get answers it’s like always getting the door shut in my face,” Abraham said. “It’s always, ‘ We don’t know,’ ‘ We’ll see,’ ‘ No time frame, no promises.’
“It’s dragged along too long for us,” she said. “Luckily, we’re still hanging in there.”