When the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic in March 2020, Indigenous communities in the Canadian province of Manitoba were quick to respond.

“When it came to movement, a lot of our communities shut down their borders. They instituted a shut down [that restricted movement to] essential services,” says Carla Cochrane, the regional research coordinator at the First Nations Health and Social Secretariat of Manitoba.

“Our communities took actual steps to close down their borders prior to the [lockdowns]. That was our First Nations’ communities trying to keep their communities safe,” Cochraine tells Global Citizen.

In 2009, when the province was impacted by the H1N1 virus, Indigenous people were overrepresented among those hospitalized, admitted to intensive care units, and who died as a result of the virus.

“We ended up getting hit hard in Manitoba for First Nations peoples in regards to H1N1. So based on that experience, that's why as soon as the pandemic was called, the Pandemic Response Team was formed right away,” she says.

Cochrane helped coordinate a province-wide response to the pandemic that focused on supporting Indigenous communities.

Together with regional organizations, the First Nations Health and Social Secretariat of Manitoba created the Manitoba First Nations Pandemic Response and Coordination team, which consisted of sub-groups such as the harm reduction committee and domestic violence task force.

At the time, the province did not have any cases of the virus, but Cochrane says people were on high alert, concerned that the virus would have a disproportionate impact on Indigenous communities.

It wasn’t until September 2020 that the virus reached First Nations communities in Manitoba. That’s when Cochrane, who is Ojibwe and Cree, began sharing data on how COVID-19 was impacting Indigenous communities across the province.

Read the full article about Indigenous communities in Canada during COVID-19  by Jacky Habib at Global Citizen.