Aboriginal Peoples in Canadian Cities: Transformations and Continuities

Since the 1970s, Aboriginal people have been more likely to live in Canadian cities than on reserves or in rural areas. Aboriginal rural-to-urban migration and the development of urban Aboriginal communities represent one of the most significant shifts in the histories and cultures of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The essays in Aboriginal Peoples in Canadian Cities: Transformations and Continuities are from contributors directly engaged in urban Aboriginal communities; they draw on extensive ethnographic research on and by Aboriginal people and their own lived experiences.

The interdisciplinary studies of urban Aboriginal community and identity collected in this volume offer narratives of unique experiences and aspects of urban Aboriginal life. They provide innovative perspectives on cultural transformation and continuity and demonstrate how comparative examinations of the diversity within and across urban Aboriginal experiences contribute to broader understandings of the relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Canadian state and to theoretical debates about power dynamics in the production of community and in processes of identity formation.

1

Transformations and Continuities: An Introduction to Aboriginal Peoples in Canadian Cities

Heather A. Howard & Craig Proulx

This chapter provides a comparative analysis of the diversity within and across urban Aboriginal experiences represented in the contributions to this volume. The chapter situates the volume’s work within the
context of broader understandings of the relationship between Aboriginal people and the Canadian state, and to theoretical debates about power dynamics in the production of community and in processes of identity formation.


2

Urban Life: Reflections of a Middle-Class Indian

David R. Newhouse

Through a narrative of his personal experience as a proud Aboriginal urbanite, Newhouse challenges the stereotypical and essentialist notions that equate Aboriginality with rural living and poverty, and beliefs that Aboriginal people living in cities “lose” culture to assimilation. Based on a politically engaged life in three vibrant urban Aboriginal communities, Newhouse’s analysis is situated within a lucid critique of class and national representative politics.


3

Nomadic Legacies and Contemporary Decision-Making Strategies between Reserve and City

Regna Darnell

Movement back and forth between London, Ontario, and local Reserves destabilizes the notion of Aboriginal identity as urban or rural. Darnell uses Aboriginal experiential narratives about residential choices to discuss their movement in search of opportunities for education, employment and social services, modeled as a nomadic legacy of resource exploitation to reflect on the definition of Aboriginal citizenship arising when dispersed residence is combined with active homeplace engagement.

4

The Papaschase Band: Building Awareness and Community in the City of Edmonton

Jaimy L. Miller

According to the federal government the Papaschase Cree Band from Edmonton, Alberta, does not exist. The band is not entitled to Treaty rights as these were ‘surrendered’ with their reserve in 1888. While dispersed among Metis settlements, reserves, and urban centers, the Papaschase Band argues that the surrender of their reserve was illegal, and since the 1960s, the band has been politically and culturally active in the City of Edmonton. This chapter explores the band’s resistance strategy and actions to maintain identity and political agency within and against the city.

5

“Regaining the childhood I should have had”: The Transformation of Inuit Identities, Institutions, and Community in Ottawa

Donna Patrick, Julie-Ann Tomiak, Lynda Brown, Heidi Langille, and Mihaela Vieru

Through personal experiences, this chapter examines some of the social, geographical, and cultural complexities of the urban Inuit community in Ottawa. State processes overlap with local cultural and social practices to shape social institutions, networks, and communities in particular ways. With a focus on linguistic and cultural issues and community (grass-roots) initiatives, the interaction of institutional structures with everyday life is discussed in relation to the construction of new forms of Inuit identity and community.

6

The Friendship Centre: Native People and the Organization of Community in Cities

Heather A. Howard

This chapter examines the socio-political history and culture of the Native Friendship centre, the organization which most often serves as the focal point of urban Native communities in Canada. An ethnographic perspective on the history and formation of one of the first Friendship centres, the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, provides a case study through which transformation of Native socio-political and cultural organizing is discussed in relation to the dialogical character of local and national Aboriginal issues as they impact Native people who live in cities.       

7

Neoliberalism and the Urban Aboriginal Experience: A Casino Rama Case Study

Darrel Manitowabi

Casino Rama, located on the Mnjikaning First Nation near Orillia, Ontario, was lauded as an ‘Aboriginal’ solution to Aboriginal poverty within the framework of neoliberal reform led by Ontario in the 1990s. However, as a consequence of latent colonial membership structures and of disparities and social divisions generated by the casino, many Aboriginal casino workers have taken up residence in the city of Orillia. This chapter examines the challenges and particularities of the urban Aboriginal experience of these workers as conditioned by the interactions of Aboriginal symbolic capital and neoliberalism.

8

Challenges to and Successes in Urban Aboriginal Education in Canada: A Case Study of Wiingashk Secondary School

Sadie Donovan

This chapter examines urban Aboriginal education through a study of Wiingashk Alternative Secondary School in the city of London, Ontario. Against the backdrop of the history of urban Aboriginal educational jurisdictional politics, and factors that impede urban Aboriginal student success, including the various ‘risk’ factors attributed to them by policy-makers and administrators, Wiingashk uses holistic educational strategies, and culturally sensitive staff who value and validate the experiences of their students, to reverse damage caused to Aboriginal students by mainstream systems.


9

A Critical Discourse Analysis of John Stackhouse’s “Welcome to Harlem on the Prairies”

Craig Proulx

This chapter uses critical discourse analysis to reveal underlying interpretative repertoires involved in newspaper representations of Aboriginal peoples living in Canadian cities. Focusing on coverage of political pronouncements related to Aboriginal peoples in cities, representations that oppose the authenticity of Aboriginal peoples in cities to those on reserves this chapter shows how newspapers continue to represent Aboriginal peoples in a simplified, stereotypical manner that is not reflective of Aboriginal realities within cities.


10

Urban Aboriginal Gangs and Street Sociality in the Canadian West: Places, Performances and Predicaments of Transition

Kathleen Buddle

In the shadow of Aboriginal treaty rights and land claims struggles, a different order of "turf wars" is taking shape.  Native gang members are currently engaged in mortal combat over street corners, "stables," schools and local community centres as they vie for dominance in the street drug trade.  This chapter addresses urban Aboriginal gang formation as a response to perceived crises of "place" among Native youth in Western Canada.


11

“Why is my People Sleeping?”: First Nations Hip-Hop between the Rez and the City

Marianne Ignace

Based on a collaborative project with youth in the Secwepemc Nation, this chapter examines issues of self-representation and identity among Aboriginal youth between the small city and the “Rez.” In music and art, young people express themselves through urban hip hop and graffiti art, and draw on representations inspired by the artists’ living traditions. This chapter demonstrates how listening to the voices of youth through these media of expression provides a sense of their complex experiences, identities and destinies.



12

Plains Indian Ways to Inter-tribal Cultural Healing in Vancouver

Lindy-Lou Flynn

At a time when one of the only meeting places for Aboriginal people living in cities were the skid row “Indian bars,” four dynamic brothers formed the Arrows To Freedom Drum group, the beginning of an ongoing phenomenon of sobriety, cultural healing, and of constructing new social and spiritual ‘spaces’ for all Urban Indians in the City of Vancouver and its suburbs. This Plains-style or ‘inter-tribal’ healing movement initiated has become legendary in Vancouver, and is a model for other Aboriginal people in towns and cities across Canada. This chapter presents ethnographic and theoretical explanations for how and why this seminal grassroots ‘Urban Indian’ healing society came into existence, and how its legacy persists today.