B.C.’s Lytton First Nation still rebuilding in more ways than one, four years after wildfire

New houses being built to replace the ones destroyed by the 2021 wildfire are seen at the Lytton First Nation, in Lytton, B.C., on June 25, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

For many members of the Indigenous community that was displaced after a wildfire tore through Lytton in the summer of 2021, the process of rebuilding and returning home is one with a difficult, dual nature.

Alongside the B.C. village itself, multiple Lytton First Nation reserve lands – there are over 50 in the area – were ravaged by flames. The fire incinerated the ancestral land, uprooting the community and displacing hundreds of residents.

Troy MacBeth Abromaitis, a member of the Nlaka’pamux Nation and Lytton First Nation who has been one of many community members leading the rebuild process, says the fire was a double-blow for many of the residents. A large portion are all too familiar with the feeling of being torn from their home and their loved ones.

Abromaitis says a substantial number of members from the Indigenous communities in and around that area would have been victims of either the residential school system or the ‘60s Scoop, a colonial practice that took place between the late 1950s and the early 1980s that saw swathes of Indigenous children removed from their families and placed into non-Indigenous homes or institutions.

As a victim of the ‘60s Scoop himself, Abromaitis has been spearheading the reconnection process on all fronts in recent years. This June 30 not only marks four years since the devastating fire swept through the community, but also this year’s iteration of Indigenous Survivor’s Day, a day established by Abromaitis in 2023 to honour and uphold the survivors and call for better support.

He began advocating for the day in 2023 to honour and support the Indigenous survivors after realizing, a few years into his own reconnection journey, that there was little help for those who needed it. By 2024, various municipalities across B.C. began to observe the date, now also known as National Blanket Ceremony Day, and it has since been taken up by provinces across the country.

The work to establish Indigenous Survivor’s Day coincided with the rebuild of the scorched reserve lands, with Abromaitis throwing himself into fundraising mode in the months after the blaze, raising the money needed to support the community with food and shelter.

The Lytton First Nation has since teamed up with a modular housing supplier to provide temporary solutions to bring the displaced families home, with 39 homes, a community centre and a band office built thus far.

Abromaitis, who only reconnected with his own First Nations roots six years ago when he was aged 35, 30 years after his separation, says he hopes to lean on his own experience to help the community reintegrate. Abromaitis says he finds it difficult to put into words how important it was to him that he was able to feel “welcome, and part of the community,” when he returned, and he hopes to show the residents returning in the wake of the fire similar levels of warmth and support.

“I think that experience has given me the ability to better relate to the members of the community who are displaced. I know how to be extra sensitive, extra cautious and extra loving,” he says.

The community is making progress and is about “75 per cent of the way” towards reaching what it had been prior to the blaze, says Abromaitis. The reserve land rebuild project is progressing quicker than that of the village itself, which in comparison is around “30 to 40 per cent” through its recovery phase, he adds.

“It took many helping hands to bring the community back to where it is right now,” says Abromaitis.

“I’m grateful to be one of those helping hands, to have moved the rebuild and recovery forward to where it is now. It helped bring me closer to community, and to my family.”