Indigenous Homelessness

Evelyn Peters, Julia Christensen, Evelyn J. Peters, Julia Christensen

• Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780887555268
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Native American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Being homeless in one's homeland is a colonial legacy for many Indigenous people in settler societies. The construction of Commonwealth nation-states from colonial settler societies depended on the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their lands. The legacy of that dispossession and related attempts at assimilation that disrupted Indigenous practices, languages, and cultures—including patterns of housing and land use—can be seen today in the disproportionate number of Indigenous people affected by homelessness in both rural and urban settings.

Essays in this collection explore the meaning and scope of Indigenous homelessness in the Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They argue that effective policy and support programs aimed at relieving Indigenous homelessness must be rooted in Indigenous conceptions of home, land, and kinship, and cannot ignore the context of systemic inequality, institutionalization, landlessness, among other things, that stem from a history of colonialism.

Indigenous Homelessness: Perspectives from Canada, New Zealand and Australia provides a comprehensive exploration of the Indigenous experience of homelessness. It testifies to ongoing cultural resilience and lays the groundwork for practices and policies designed to better address the conditions that lead to homelessness among Indigenous peoples.

 

 

 

Part 1

CANADA

CHAPTER 1

Indigenous Homelessness: Canadian Context

JULIA CHRISTENSEN

Recent years have brought about a growing call to political action from Indigenous governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and researcher-academics alike. They recognize that the overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples among Canada’s homeless is a matter of urgent concern, and a matter that represents the significance of colonial continuities in the social, health, and material aspects of Indigenous peoples’ lives. This brief overview can in no way do justice to the diversity of Indigenous peoples in Canada, nor to the many social, economic, cultural, political, and health issues bound up within Indigenous geographies of homelessness. Nevertheless, by way of introduction and context, it offers the key threads necessary to understand the current landscape of Indigenous homelessness in Canada.

Indigenous peoples in Canada include the First Nations, Inuit, and Metis.1 There are approximately 1,400,685, Indigenous people in Canada today, accounting for 4.3 percent of the total population. This number includes 851,560 First Nations people, 451,795 Metis, and 59,445 Inuit (Statistics Canada 2011). The legal identities and rights of the First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples are set out in the repatriated Canadian Constitution of 1982.2 Each Indigenous group in Canada is unique in terms of its history of European contact, as well as its historical and contemporary relations with the state.

Several treaties between First Nations and the Crown were signed after the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and before Confederation in 1867. However, after Confederation, a series of eleven treaties (known as “numbered treaties”) were signed between First Nations and the Crown from 1871 to 1921. Under the treaties, First Nations gave up large areas of their traditional homelands to the Crown. In exchange, the treaties were meant to provide First Nations with such things as reserve lands, annual treaty payments, and certain hunting and fishing rights. However, systemic failures of the government to live up to their agreements, evidenced by chronic housing need and widespread issues with water quality and sanitation, as well as policy that relinquishes treaty rights when one leaves the reserve, have led to poverty and dependency among many Indigenous peoples on- and off-reserve.3

Where numbered treaties were not signed, or where it has otherwise been proven in court that traditional Indigenous land rights were not extinguished, comprehensive (or “modern”) land-claims agreements may be negotiated. These modern land claims encompass a much broader range of rights and benefits, and are negotiated directly between Indigenous and Canadian governments. Modern land claims have been settled, or are still under negotiation, in many parts of British Columbia and across most of northern Canada. Some, but not all, claims include self-government responsibilities.

Residential School and Child Welfare Systems

Many scholars have argued that intergenerational trauma resulting from such colonial practices as Indigenous displacement and dispossession is indelibly tied to Indigenous experiences of homelessness in Canada (see Belanger, Awosoga, and Weasel Head 2013; Berman et al. 2009; Leach 2010; Menzies 2009). The Indian Residential School System was one of the most tragic, destructive, and defining moments of colonial intervention in Canada (Milloy 1999; Thornton 2008). Beginning in the nineteenth century, the Canadian government developed a policy of aggressive assimilation to be implemented by residential schools, which were church-run but funded by the federal government. A parallel objective of this system was to facilitate the displacement of Indigenous people from their lands (De Leeuw 2009). Attendance at the schools was mandatory, and strictly enforced by government agents. Once in the schools, few children received an adequate education. Instead, many were taught to be ashamed of their languages and cultural identities. Indigenous families were delegitimized, and the knowledge of parents and grandparents was undermined by teachers and administrators (Lavallee and Poole 2010; Ruttan, LaBoucane-Benson, and Munroe 2010). Many children were also physically and sexually abused, and the rates of disease and mortality at the schools were also extremely high (Brasfield 2001; DeGagné 2007).

A second “phase” in the assimilation of Indigenous children began in the 1960s, as large numbers of Indigenous children across Canada were removed from their families and placed up for adoption with non-Indigenous families in Canada, the United States, and Europe (Kirmayer, Simpson, and Cargo 2003). This period lasted three decades, but was termed “the Sixties Scoop.” Though the practice of removing Indigenous children from their families for the explicit purpose of cultural assimilation has now ceased, the legacy of this period is alive and well: there are currently more than three times the number of Indigenous children in state care than there were at the height of the residential school system (Blackstock 2008). Experience in the child welfare system figures prominently as a contributing factor to homelessness among Indigenous youth (Baskin 2007) and is often highlighted by homeless Indigenous adults as integral to their homelessness (see Christensen 2013; Menzies 2009).

Poor mental health, substance abuse, violence, and other risk factors for homelessness are linked to intergenerational trauma resulting from colonial policies like the Indian Residential School System (Brasfield 2001; Hawkeye Robertson 2006). Likewise, the disproportionately high number of Indigenous people in Canadian prisons is tied to intergenerational trauma and institutionalized racism (LaPrairie 1997; Waldram 1997), and explains well-documented prison-to-homelessness pathways (Gaetz and O’Grady 2009; Walsh et al. 2011). Though factors like crime, violence, and substance abuse are framed by neo-liberal policy as matters of individual agency, scholars have argued that for Indigenous homeless men and women in Canada, and across settler societies, individual traumas are bound up in, and further complicated by, the broader dynamics of collective, intergenerational trauma (Belanger, Awosoga, and Weasel Head 2013; Christensen 2013).

The Extent of the Knowledge on Indigenous Homelessness in Canada

Across Canada, Indigenous people are overrepresented among rural and urban homeless populations (see Beavis et al. 1997; Belanger, Awosoga, and Weasel Head 2013; Christensen 2012; Golden et al. 1999). While there are no official data on the national state of Indigenous homelessness, the Native Counselling Service of Alberta estimates the rate of Indigenous homelessness to be “about 40 percent [of the total homeless population] Canada wide” (NCSA 2000, 3). Further complicating the lack of enumeration is the prevalence of hidden homelessness and high mobility in Indigenous homeless people’s experiences (Distasio, Sylvestre, and Mulligan 2005). After combing through data collected by researchers in cities across Canada, Belanger, Awosoga, and Weasel Head (2013) calculated that on any one night in Canada, 6.97 percent of the urban Indigenous population is homeless, compared to the national average of 0.78 percent. Many community-based support providers and researcher-academics in Canada have called for a more expansive definition that accounts for the multi-dimensionality in Indigenous homeless experiences, including the role of colonialism, intergenerational trauma, and the socio-cultural and material conditions of “being displaced from critical community social structures and lacking in stable housing” (Menzies 2005, 8).

The history of settler and Indigenous relations and the resulting settlement patterns frame the social and material inequalities that drive the high mobility of homeless Indigenous people. In 2009, Peters and Robillard illustrated the socio-spatial tensions between rural reserve life and urban life, and the movement between them. In particular, they found that certain circumstances experienced by interviewees (i.e., lack of social and economic opportunities, strained personal relationships) often motivated them to leave rural reserves for urban areas. However, once in the city, interviewees were confronted by a lack of economic, social, and cultural resources as well as a longing for the important social networks left at home on the reserve. Christensen (2012) examined similar geographies in the homeless pathways of Indigenous homeless people in northern Canada, where chronic housing need and unemployment motivates or forces already-vulnerable people to leave smaller settlements for larger centres. Social networks are also key to rural-urban movement among Indigenous populations and in the experiences of Indigenous homeless people in the city (Bruce 2006; Christensen 2012; Peters and Robillard 2009). In some cities, the urban spatialization of such social networks has resulted in ghettoization (see Belanger 2007; Cohen and Corrado 2004; Walker 2005).

Hidden Homelessness and Core Housing Need

The high levels of hidden homelessness characteristic of Indigenous homelessness in Canada makes an accurate assessment of and effective response to the phenomenon very difficult (Distasio, Sylvestre, and Mulligan 2005). Hidden homelessness is a sweeping category and includes those who are in transition homes, jails, and detoxification centres; living in overcrowded, unstable, or inadequate housing; “couch surfing”; and at risk of becoming homeless. Overcrowding is a particularly common experience among the Indigenous hidden homeless, and is associated with social strain, poor mental health, domestic violence, and acute respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis (Clark, Riben, and Nowgesic 2002; Tester 2006, 2009; Kovesi et al. 2007; Orr 2007). Indigenous people experiencing hidden homelessness comprise a demographically diverse group, ranging from families (especially single-parented ones) to youth and elders. Nevertheless, hidden homelessness among Indigenous people in Canada remains distinctly gendered. According to Hulchanski and co-authors, Indigenous women are more likely to be single parents, and almost half (47 percent) of Indigenous single parent families experience core housing need.4 Moreover, for Indigenous women, violence, poverty, and poor housing are often closely interlinked (Hulchanski et al 2009).

Overall, roughly 20 percent of Indigenous households in Canada experience core housing need, compared to 13.5 percent of non-Indigenous Canadians. Rates of Indigenous core housing need exceed those of non-Indigenous households in every province and territory (CHFC 2007). The numbers tell a story that is even more dire for those Indigenous people living on-reserve or in Arctic Canada: 24 percent of Indigenous households on-reserve nation-wide and 40 to 50 percent of households in Nunavut and Nunavik are in core housing need (CMHC 2006).

Key Areas ...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Part 1: Canada
• 1. Indigenous Homelessness: Canadian Context
• 2. “They Don’t Let Us Look after Each Other Like We Used To”: Reframing Indigenous Homeless Geographies as Home/Journeying in the Northwest Territories, Canada
• 3. The Importance of Hidden Homelessness in the Housing Strategies of Urban Indigenous People
• 4. No Dumping: Indigenousness and the Racialized Police Transport of the Urban Homeless
• 5. Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Respondents to the Health and Housing in Transition (HHiT) Study: An Intersectional Approach
• 6. The Inclusion of Indigenous Voices in Co-Constructing “Home”: Indigenous Homelessness in a Northern Semi-Urban Community in Manitoba
• 7. Community-Engaged Scholarship: A Path to New Solutions for Old Problems in Indigenous Homelessness
• 8. “All We Need Is Our Land”: Exploring Southern Alberta Urban Indigenous Homelessness
• 9. Rural Indigenous Homelessness in Canada
• Part 2: Australia
• 10. Indigenous Homelessness: Australian Context
• 11. Indigenous Fringe Dwelling in Geraldton, Western Australia: A Colonial Legacy
• 12. Looking through the Service Lens: Case Studies in Indigenous Homelessness in Two Australian Towns
• 13. “We Are Good-Hearted People, We Like to Share”: Definitional Dilemmas of Crowding and Homelessness in Urban Indigenous Australia
• 14. Enforcing “Normality”: A Case Study of the Role of the “Three-Strikes” Housing Policy Model in Australian Indigenous Homelessness
• Part 3: New Zealand
• 15. Indigenous Homelessness: New Zealand Context
• 16. Tūrangawaewae Kore: Nowhere to Stand
• 17. Emplaced Cultural Practices through which Homeless Men Can Be Maori
• Conclusion
• Contributors