Hotel-weary evacuees guests at powwow
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SIOUX VALLEY DAKOTA NATION — Evacuees displaced from their communities in northern Manitoba were invited to Sioux Valley Dakota Nation on Friday for what the chief called a mental health day.
A hundred people were at the afternoon event when the Brandon Sun visited.
The event, which included live music, games and children’s entertainment, was a way to give a day of fresh air to evacuees, Chief Vince Tacan said.
Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun
Lynnianna Swan scrapes a bison hide during a family wellness day of cultural and entertainment activities at Sioux Valley Dakota Nation Friday, for families displaced by fires.
“We thought we’d give our relatives from the north a mental health day, because staying in hotels gets hard after a while,” Tacan said.
The event was combined with a recreation day for Sioux Valley residents.
Tacan did not know how many evacuees were expected for the day.
A charter bus from Brandon was going back and forth from the communities to transport evacuees, the chief said. He expected evacuees who were staying in Winnipeg to come out as well.
A mother from the Lynn Lake area, who did not provide her name, said she had been flown out of her community and was staying at a hotel in Brandon for nearly two months.
The woman said there may be a tentative return plan for late September, but wasn’t sure.
After getting off a charter bus from Brandon, the child evacuees spent the afternoon playing. A spray foam bubble machine was set up, mascots in superhero and princess costumes walked around, food and drinks were provided, and games had been set up on fields.
The games included volleyball, mechanical bull-riding and fighting with cushioned poles on a bouncy castle.
The mother said the day was welcome relief from staying at the hotel, where she said it can get crowded. Her family spent some of the summer in a hotel room with five people, but they were recently split into two rooms, she said.
Roughly 4,760 wildfire evacuees are staying in hotel rooms in Manitoba and Ontario, a spokesperson for the province said.
Sioux Valley Dakota Nation is one of several communities to welcome evacuees from the Lynn Lake area this summer. A Brandon group put on a powwow with a similar aim in June.
More than 2,600 hotel rooms had been secured in Manitoba by the Canadian Red Cross as of Thursday, the agency wrote in an online bulletin. So far this year, more than 800 flights have been scheduled, it said, carrying more than 10,000 passengers away from wildfires.
— Brandon Sun