Two years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many nations and communities continue to grapple with waves of infection and social fallout from pandemic fatigue and frustration. While we are still years away from realizing the full impacts of COVID-19, reflecting on our collective responses has offered some insights into the impact that various public health policies and decisions had on nations’ abilities to weather the multifaceted impacts of the pandemic. Widely believed to have the potential to be devastated by COVID-19, many Indigenous communities in Canada were extremely successful in managing outbreaks. This paper outlines one such example, Wapekeka First Nation, and the community’s formidable response to the pandemic with a specific focus on food mobilization efforts. Built on over a decade of community-based participatory action research and informed by six interviews with key pandemic leaders in the community, this paper, co-led by two community hunters and band council members, emphasizes the various decisions and initiatives that led to Wapekeka’s successful pandemic response. Proactive leadership, along with strong traditional harvesting and processing efforts, helped to take care of the community while they remained strictly isolated from virus exposure.

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was believed that Indigenous peoples in Canada would be disproportionately affected due to inequities across social determinants of health as a result of the ongoing processes of colonization. High levels of overcrowding, higher burden of chronic disease, reduced access to clean drinking water, healthcare, and food security in many rural and remote First Nations across northern Canada increased vulnerability to COVID-19. In the Nishnawbe Aski Region of northern Ontario, data from the Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority indicates that First Nations communities were able to limit COVID -19 infection and had an overall fatality rate that was lower than the general Canadian population. The focus of this research was to analyze public health data, media reports, and research to determine how the pandemic impacted First Nations throughout northern Ontario. The research highlights that as a direct result of rapid and strength-based responses, First Nations in Northern Ontario have managed the pandemic with limited serious illness, hospitalizations, and fatalities.