When life-saving information is not provided in a language people understand, it can delay protective action and put communities at unnecessary risk.

This was evident during the 2023 Yellowknife wildfire evacuation, one of the largest climate-related displacements in Canadian history, when nearly 20,000 residents were ordered to leave the city of Yellowknife with little warning.

Despite the Northwest Territories (N.W.T) recognizing nine Indigenous languages under its Official Languages Act, emergency alerts were issued only in English and French. For Indigenous-language-first speakers from the Yellowknives Dene First Nation and neighbouring Indigenous communities — particularly Elders — this meant relying on relatives, radio hosts or social media to interpret urgent instructions during a fast-moving wildfire.

At the very moment when clarity matters most, official alerts are not delivering.

Indigenous languages, though acknowledged symbolically in legislation, are not implemented in emergency communication protocols. This structural imbalance reflects a longstanding colonial assumption that English and French are the default languages of safety, even in regions where they are not the languages most widely spoken.

The recent magnitude 7.0 earthquake in the Yukon was the strongest on Canadian soil in 79 years. While there were thankfully no reports of injuries or building damages, the incident highlights the urgent need for an efficient emergency communications system.

Emergency alerts through a colonial lens

For my master’s thesis on the inclusion of Indigenous languages in emergency messaging, I examined public communications, government documents and after-action records. I found that the absence of Indigenous-language alerts was not a technical failure, but a predictable outcome of systems designed without Indigenous-language access in mind.

The scale of linguistic diversity in Canada underscores why this matters. According to Statistics Canada, more than 189,000 people speak an Indigenous language at home and more than 243,000 report being able to speak one.

During the Yellowknife evacuation, many residents — nearly one in five of whom report an Indigenous mother tongue — waited for translated information to appear on Facebook or relied on community broadcasters to interpret English alerts, causing delays that can be significant when roads, flights and services are rapidly shifting.

Policy choices and communication strategies during emergencies can have immediate and profound consequences. But this isn’t just a technical gap, it’s part of a much longer history of exclusion — one that continues to undermine Indigenous safety.

People line up to register for a flight to Calgary in Yellowknife in August 2023 as residents of the city were ordered to evacuate because of an encroaching wildfire. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Bill Braden)

What international disasters teach us

After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, researchers documented that unclear or linguistically inaccessible messaging contributed to evacuation delays, especially for those relying on informal interpretation networks.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, civil defence messaging routinely includes te reo Māori as part of national commitments to shared authority and revitalization. In Hawaii, emergency communication systems were strengthened after the 2018 false missile alert, and alerts are now issued in both ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi and English.

While Canada’s context differs, the lesson is consistent: people act more quickly and confidently when emergency instructions are delivered in languages they understand. Nunavut, for example, issues emergency alerts in Inuktut using pre-translated templates and partnerships with Inuit broadcasters, demonstrating that multilingual alerting is entirely feasible with political will and basic planning.

Canada’s National Public Alerting System (NPAS), which sends alerts to phones, televisions and radios, currently supports message delivery only in English and French. There is no federal mechanism requiring or enabling translation into Indigenous languages or into widely used newcomer languages such as Punjabi, Mandarin or Arabic.

According to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, 1,307 broadcast and wireless immediate emergency alerts were issued in Canada between 2019 and 2022. Despite this volume, none were issued in Indigenous languages.

In recent years, in Lytton, West Kelowna, Manitoba and across the North, wildfire seasons have reminded us that climate hazards are accelerating. If alerts are to do their job, they must be intelligible to the people who need them most. That is what linguistic equity means in practice.

Officials often claim translation takes too long, yet the technology and methods already exist. Pre-scripted templates, partnerships with community broadcasters and training for emergency managers could all be implemented now.

What’s missing, it seems, is policy direction and the will to act.

Reimagining a safety system for everyone

The same logic applies to newcomers building lives in Canada. If a wildfire or flood order arrives in a language someone cannot read, people are not safe.

Multilingual communication is not political correctness; it’s competent governance. People cannot protect themselves from threats they cannot understand. A multilingual alert system would reimagine safety through inclusion, rather than just cluttering screens with text. Policies of exclusion, especially in this context, put lives at risk.

Responsible use of AI translation tools could also help generate alerts in multiple languages, but always under Indigenous and community oversight to ensure accuracy and cultural integrity.

Canada has committed to both reconciliation and climate resilience, yet neither goal can be realized if life-saving information remains accessible only to those fluent in English or French. Whether future wildfire seasons unfold with safe and timely evacuations may depend on whether Indigenous Elders, Indigenous-language-first speakers and multilingual families can comprehend the alerts intended to protect them.

No one in Canada should be left in danger because of the language they speak.