Katłįà (Catherine) Lafferty is a member of the Yellowknives First Nation. In an article in Policy Options, she illustrates how an aboriginal-led approach to child welfare would have made a big difference in her life. Lafferty recounts that child protection workers deemed her family home to be overcrowded and removed her to a foster home1.
As Lafferty points out, overcrowding is not a neutral idea. The standard that the child protection workers used did not take account of indigenous ideas or standards. Lafferty also notes the significant health risks associated with housing where many Indigenous people live. The issue wasn’t (and isn’t) so much overcrowding as inadequate housing.
Lafferty identifies the work of the Aboriginal Housing Management Association (AHMA), as a good example of taking account of Indigenous ideas and standards about housing. AHMA has been supporting Indigenous housing providers in British Columbia for 25 years. It recently released an Indigenous community-led British Columbia Urban, Rural and Northern Indigenous Housing Strategy, which provides an example that could be adapted and applied elsewhere.
Canada does not have a good track record when it comes to its treatment of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people. The country proclaimed the Indian Act in 1876, which guided policies and programs intended to erase, by assimilation into western civilization, the people who were living here when Europeans ‘discovered’ it. And although some of the most egregious aspects of the Indian Act have been repealed, it continues in force.
The Indian Act is based on a belief that western civilization is a higher form of evolution. But as climate change is making clear, western civilization on its present course is not sustainable. Indigenous world view recognizes that our existence depends on having a good relationship with the planet. As newcomers to Turtle Island (North America) we should be welcoming this wisdom rather than ignoring or dismissing it.
When learning about Indigenous world views, it quickly becomes clear that housing is a part of systems and structures that are related to other social ‘problems,’ including homelessness and urban poverty. And there are people who are thinking and writing about these ‘problems’ with an eye to introducing different ways to see and work on these issues, drawing on Indigenous world views.
For example, Evergreen has posted a Civic-Indigenous Placekeeping and Partnership Building Toolkit (the Toolkit). The Toolkit includes tools and teachings that document the harms that have grown in communities following the passage of the Indian Act. It provides decision makers and residents with the opportunity to become familiar with indigenous world views. It also includes some of Canada’s conciliatory efforts to remedy past harms.
As well, the Toolkit contains case studies in ‘placekeeping’ partnerships from six communities. These partnerships are specifically constructed to ensure that indigenous knowledge frames the way in which problems and projects are developed and delivered rather than being ignored or overlooked.
The second resource is Settler City Limits – Indigenous Resurgence and Colonial Violence in the Urban Prairie West (Settler City Limits), which is published by the University of Manitoba Press. The goal of the Settler City Limits is to expand and deepen ideas about social, political and economic events in prairie cities. It includes contributions from writers who draw on western political thought to examine and challenge ideas about urban development.
There are also contributions from writers who bring Indigenous based knowledge, which exposes assumptions about theories of urban development. For example, prairie city locations have long histories as sites of Indigenous trade and celebration. This calls into question the idea that prairie cities are a function of European ‘settlement’ as a response to European needs2.
Another writer challenges the idea that Indigenous life occurs only in rural ares (on reserves and reservations) and not in prairie cities. The reality is quite different. Indigenous people have developed many organizations and practices in urban and rural settings, which support an indigenous world views in urban spaces.
The diverse collection of resources discussed in this post are primarily intended for a Canadian audience, although Settler City Limits – Indigenous Resurgence and Colonial Violence in the Urban Prairie West discusses cities on the North American plains, including some in the United States. That said, readers from other countries may find the Indigenous world views and approaches to housing and urban issues beneficial to their own placekeeping, housing and homelessness challenges.
You can read Lafferty’s article in Policy Options: The need for Indigenous-led housing
AHMA’s web site is here, where you can read the British Columbia Urban, Rural and Northern Indigenous Housing Strategy
Here’s a link to the University of Manitoba Press with information about: Settler City Limits – Indigenous Resurgence and Colonial Violence in the Urban Prairie West
The Toolkit by Evergreen: Civic-Indigenous Placekeeping and Partnership Building Toolkit
Footnotes
- There was no Indigenous child protection agency where Lafferty lived when she was born. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated Canada’s residential school system, recommended reforms to the child protection system as a top priority. You can read more about this at the National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health: Indigenous Children And The Child Welfare System In Canada
- Riverside cities across all of Turtle Island have been quick to claim the transportation benefits of such locations. They indeed are and were beneficial — to Indigenous trade and culture long before Europeans arrived.
