University of British Columbia Press
No Home in a Homeland
Indigenous Peoples and Homelessness in the Canadian North
Distributed for University of British Columbia Press
No Home in a Homeland
Indigenous Peoples and Homelessness in the Canadian North
The Dene, a traditionally nomadic people, have no word for homelessness, a rare condition in the Canadian North prior to the 1990s. Julia Christensen documents the rise of Indigenous homelessness and proposes solutions by interweaving analysis of the region’s unique history with personal narratives of homeless men and women in two cities – Yellowknife and Inuvik. What emerges is a larger story of displacement and intergenerational trauma, hope and renewal. Understanding what it means to be homeless in the North and how Indigenous people think about home and homemaking is the first step, Christensen argues, on the path to decolonizing existing approaches and practices.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1 “Homelessness” Is an Outside Word: Understanding Indigenous Homelessness
2 Before Contact My Ancestors Travelled Constantly: Mapping Uneven Geographies of Settlement, Development, and Opportunity
3 Never Felt at Home: Pathways to Homelessness
4 It’s So Easy to Burn Your Bridges around Here: The Policy Landscape of Housing and Employment
5 They Want a Different Life: Rural-Urban Movements and Home Seeking
6 Our Home, Our Way of Life: Home, Homeland, and Spiritual Homelessness
Conclusion
Notes; Bibliography; Index