Indigenous peoples are navigating the slow collapse of winter roads — and an even slower pace of help.
It was the last night of February and a 4×4 truck vaulted down the 103-mile winter road to Cat Lake First Nation in northern Ontario, a road made entirely of ice and snow. Only the light of the stars and the red and white truck lights illuminated the dense, snow-dusted spruce trees on either side of the road. From the passenger seat, Rachel Wesley, a member of the Ojibway community and its economic development officer, told the driver to stop.
The truck halted on a snow bridge over a wide creek — 1 of 5 made of snow along this road. It was wide enough for only one truck to cross at a time; its snowy surface barely 2 feet above the creek. Wesley zipped up her thick jacket and jumped out into the frigid night air. She looked at the creek and pointed at its open, flowing water. “That’s not normal,” she said, placing a cigarette between her lips.
Wesley, who wore glasses and a knit cap pulled over her shoulder-length hair, manages the crews that build the winter road — a vital supply route that the community of 650 people relies on to truck in lumber for housing, fuel, food, and bottled water. In the past, winters were so cold that she could walk on the ice that naturally formed over the creek. Now it no longer freezes, and neither do the human-made snow bridges. “It’s directly caused by global warming,” she said, lighting the cigarette.
For the rest of this article: https://grist.org/indigenous/ice-road-canada-truck-northern-ontario-first-nations-mining/