Yes, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this wildfire 2023 had a great impact on a lot of people in the Northwest Territories, especially in my region.
Mr. Speaker, we cannot forget that 4 million hectares of land burned in the Northwest Territories. That is our way of life - our food, our medicine, our language. And we can't forget around that time animal babies -- small animal babies were also burned as well. For the first time, Behchoko and Wekweeti were evacuated. This happened so fast for many of my people that many were frightened. Many didn't know what to do or where to go because it happened so fast. And there was no communication with the people. In this whole process, vulnerable people, especially the elderly who were caught in the evacuation that were in Yellowknife, some of them went south without interpreters and some of the vulnerable people on the street, some of them did not return to Yellowknife or did not return to the North to their communities. So they are missing.
So we have to remember all the things that happened with 2023 wildfires. People want to be heard. They want to know what happened. We cannot forget. We cannot repeat. What happened, with fire 2023 what happened, we cannot let it repeat again.
In the whole process too, Mr. Speaker, none of the Indigenous government were consulted. They were not consulted. The GNWT had a lack of emergency coordination with the Indigenous government. For that reason, on August 28th, I introduced a private Member's bill, and that was to coordinate its emergency response activities with Indigenous government affected by the emergencies. And that is also related to the motion that we just introduced.
Twenty-eight communities were abandoned. The sad part, I just live down the road from here - a hundred kilometres, 104 kilometres. The Premier of the day drove by my community, did not even stop to talk to the leaders or to myself to see how the people are doing. Nothing like that. No communication. We have airstrips in my community. No plane was left behind for us to use, for people to use. Two fly-in communities were stuck for three weeks while the evacuation was in place. We had no groceries. We had no medicine. Medical travels were affected. We were cut off from Yellowknife when the fire was not near Yellowknife. So a lot of our people were going south to go get some groceries.
But the good thing out of the whole thing was because the evacuation happened so fast, the first weekend for a lot of people -- a lot of people in my communities are saying for the first weekend because the evacuation happened so fast with little notice, it was quiet in our community. No alcohol until people found ways, until they started going south to go get their groceries. So for many of our -- I've been talking to a lot of people and I've been talking to Indigenous government. They are supportive of this inquiry, a public full independent inquiries of this wildfire 2023.
Tlicho government, they also support this as well. They send -- they're vocal, and they're vocal about this because they did their own press release to support the public inquiries. And we know that we cannot move forward. We cannot move forward without the Indigenous government. So this motion to -- this motion will provide a full participation of the Indigenous government to review the process, and it is supported by Tlicho government and other Indigenous government as well.
So therefore, at this time, I am asking my colleagues to support the wishes of the Indigenous government to recognize the impact this wildfire had on Indigenous communities and to ensure equal participants in the review process. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.