Still waiting for the promised land
After being forced from their reserve by flooding, many members of the Lake St. Martin First Nation are living in lodgings in Winnipeg.
A mandatory evacuation forced residents of the Lake St. Martin reserve to leave without the chance to properly go through their belongings since they thought they would be returning.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Black mould, above, lines the walls leading to the basement crawl space beneath a Lake St. Martin home. For years, paint was used to disguise a problem but the 2011 flood brought the situation to a head.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
After flooding forced the evacuation of the Lake St. Martin reserve, Place Louis Riel in Winnipeg and others became home for many of the reserve members. Some found other rental accommodations.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Christina Moar in the Place Louis Riel room where her mother died last month: ‘She wanted to go home – and this is the only home she had.’Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Christina Moar, currently living in a rental unit, wants to return to Place Louis Riel to be closer to her father, William Beardy, who does not hear well and could, she fears, fall victim to unscrupulous strangers.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Chief Adrian Sinclair of the Lake St. Martin First Nation says the band has found a spot for a new home that is much better than what the province is proposing. `They shouldn’t have flooded us out in the first place – they left us hanging with nothing.`Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The two-bedroom house band councillor Mathew Traverse once shared with his wife, six children and three grandchildren is uninhabitable. The ceiling tiles are falling off, the floors are covered in the flotsam of a hasty departure, and the smell of mould is so strong that his fellow councillors will not enter.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The ground beneath the cemetery on the Lake St. Martin reserve in Manitoba is saturated. Graves become pools as quickly as they are dug.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail