Indigenous peoples are navigating the slow collapse of winter roads — and an even slower pace of help.

More than 50 First Nations in Canada — with 56,000 people total — depend on approximately 3,700 miles of winter roads. There are no paved roads connecting these Indigenous communities to the nearest cities. Most of the year, small planes are their only lifeline. But in winter, the lakes, creeks, and marshes around them freeze, allowing workers to build a vast network of ice roads for truck drivers to haul in supplies at a lower cost than flying them in.

Despite their isolation, the ice roads are community spaces. They guide hockey and broomball teams from small reserves to big cities to compete in tournaments. They enable families to stock up on cheap groceries. They bring people to medical appointments in cities and facilitate hunting and fishing trips with relatives in neighboring communities.

But the climate crisis is making it harder to build and maintain the ice roads. Winter is arriving later, pushing back construction, and spring is appearing earlier, bringing even the most robust frozen highways to an abrupt end. Less snow is falling, making the bridges smaller and more vulnerable to collapse under heavy trucks.

The rising temperatures give trucks only a few short weeks to bring in supplies — and often with half-loads due to thin lake ice and fragile snow bridges. Last year, chiefs in northern Ontario declared a state of emergency when the winter roads failed to freeze on time, and in March this year, rain shut down the ice roads to five communities.

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