One year after six adults and three children died in a house fire in the Pikangikum First Nation, indigenous leaders are demanding the province conduct an inquest into fire-related deaths on reserves in northern Ontario.

Last week, Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation — which represents 49 First Nations in northern Ontario — sent a letter to Ontario’s chief coroner, Dr. Dirk Huyer, asking for an inquest that would examine the causes of such tragic fires.

“It’s unacceptable, I think, for us to not do anything,” Fiddler said. “We need to take action, to try to find some of the reasons why this is happening, and why families are still in high risk situations.”

Earlier this year, a Star investigation revealed that at least 173 people have died in house fires in First Nation communities across the country since the government stopped tracking the deaths in 2010. At least 25 of them are children.

Read more:Fire and Death in Canada's First Nations

According to a database compiled by the Star, at least 21 people living in Nishnawbe Aski territory have died in fires over the last seven years.

Fiddler said this winter has seen a high number of house fires across Nishnawbe Aski’s territory, including too many close calls and another death in late February.

Fiddler was in Pikangikum on Wednesday to mark the one-year anniversary of the fire that claimed six-month old Amber Strang and eight others.

“It’s been a very difficult and challenging day for the community,” Fiddler said.

Pikangikum Chief Dean Owen said in a statement that the fire “shook our community to the core and we are still struggling to come to grips with it.”

“Overcrowding, unsafe building standards, and a lack of firefighting equipment continues to put lives at risk in Pikangikum and communities across NAN (Nishnawbe Aski Nation) territory,” he said.

“We experienced our worst nightmare with the terrible loss of nine of our members and today we honour their memory. We fully support an inquest to help prevent similar tragedies.”

In February, a resolution was passed at the chiefs’ assembly of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, demanding a coroner’s inquest into fire-related deaths.

In the aftermath of last year’s fire, Fiddler’s government also called for a full public inquiry into these deaths, a call that Fiddler said has gone largely unanswered.

“What we are looking for, it can’t just be your standard inquest. We want to look at the broader issues, similar to the inquest last year into the seven youth who died in Thunder Bay,” Fiddler said.

Huyer said he agrees that there are common and, in some cases, systemic factors contributing to the fires that need to be investigated.

“All of these deaths are a terrible tragedy. My condolences certainly go out to the community and the families involved,” he said.

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Huyer said his office is still in the early stages of deciding whether a formal coroner’s inquest is the best way forward, but committed that something will be done.

One of the challenges is that while a formal inquest has the potential to significantly raise the public profile of an issue, it can take up to a year or more to get started, Huyer said.

Given the urgency around these fires, another process may allow the coroner’s office to issue recommendations to help address the problems more quickly, Huyer said.

“In the letter they’re talking specifically about the Pikangikum fire, but I think I’d like to look more broadly at the issues than just the Pikangikum deaths,” he said.

The resolution demanding the inquest was moved by Mishkeegogamang Chief Connie Gray-McKay, whose community of about 1,000 people has been devastated by fires over the last several decades.

Gray-McKay said Mishkeegogamang has lost 26 people to house fires in the last three decades, many of them children. In 2014, four people were killed in a house fire, including a 30-year-old mother and her two daughters, just 3 and 6.

“These deaths are far too common,” she said.

Gray-McKay said an inquest will not only raise awareness about systemic issues with First Nation housing and fire infrastructure, but can potentially help make communities safer.

“Our communities deserve to have the same type of resources that any other jurisdiction in the country has,” she said.

“There is nothing more horrible than that helpless feeling of not being able to do anything while a house burns with people inside it.”

The Ontario Fire Marshal investigated the Pikangikum fire last year. Due to the near-complete destruction of the home in the fire, it was impossible to determine a specific cause, but investigator Manny Garcia told the Star in February there appeared to be no working smoke detectors in the home.

The Star’s investigation found that is a common factor with fatal on-reserve fires, in part because there is no legislation applying basic building or fire codes on reserves across Canada.

After the Star’s investigation, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett committed to implementing two long-standing recommendations that could help save lives: creating a national indigenous fire marshal’s office and tracking fire-related data again.

A much-anticipated report by the Aboriginal Firefighters Association of Canada, due to be released this spring, is expected to call for a third recommendation: creating national legislation that applies a basic fire and building code on reserve, which experts say would be a major step forward to reducing the number of fatal on-reserve fires.