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Written by Freya Podlasly, Tāłtān and Nlaka’pamux (First Nation), Community Intern for FIRST UNITED

To begin this two-part series, I would like to begin by introducing myself. My name is Freya Podlasly, I am a Tāłtān and Nlaka’pamux (First Nations) youth and a UBC student. The purpose of this is to reflect on recent developments in the City of Vancouver’s approach to housing policy with a focus on the implications for Indigenous people. My research as an intern with FIRST UNITED takes place within the context of our ongoing work of reconciliation in matters of housing justice. At its foundation, FIRST UNITED’s allied work includes listening and documenting the disproportionate impact of eviction, homelessness, displacement, and tenancy laws on Indigenous communities, and working toward Indigenous rights and respectful relations, including accountability under the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

Statistics Canada says Indigenous people make up at least 33% of the DTES while we make up 2.4% of the Canadian population. The overrepresentation of Indigenous people within a neighbourhood struggling with homelessness, extreme poverty, generational trauma, and mental and physical health issues is a burgeoning issue for FIRST UNITED, other organizations, and the greater activist communities. Many are demanding a spotlight on this issue. Still, I want to preface this with the statement that I speak for myself as an Indigenous person—not for either of my home communities, let alone Indigenous people throughout Canada.

The first issue I want to discuss is on the recent 6-3 decision by the Vancouver City Council to move forward with Mayor Ken Sim’s decision to push back on supportive housing in the Vancouver core. As one of the three members “against,” Councillor Pete Fry dryly put it, this motion will mean that “people will die.”

In general, members “for” argued that this motion will change the status quo for the better. In the words of the mayor, “[setting] the city up on a path to long-term success.” This rhetoric is all-too familiar for those who understand the implications of gentrification. Still, there are aspects of this proposal that expel one’s plausible deniability in terms of willful ignorance when reading it. What stuck out the most in the October 2024 memo leaked by the Globe and Mail (that the motion was generated out of) was the stated “solution” to Indigenous homelessness is sending Indigenous peoples back to their communities. This is nothing short of race-based violence. Besides the stated goals to move the homeless populations outside of Metro Vancouver, the targeted nature of removing Indigenous peoples from land is reminiscent of every form of forced colonial removal and land usurpation from Gaza, to the plight of so many “illegal” migrants right now to the south of our border,  to the history of reservations at home in Canada.

The mayor states that, “health outcomes are better when you are in your community,” but in a country where potable running water and medical services are known to be the scarcest in rural Indigenous communities, where Indigenous community members end up in metropolitan centers such as the DTES because of the persistent trauma that comes from the colonial, this is as transparent of a lie as the notion that the root of this motion was to repair, renovate and replace unsafe SROs.

Beyond the well-argued points by many critics of the approved motion (including FIRST UNITED’s Amanda Burrows), I want to use this platform and this case study to begin to describe the effects and patterns such a motion reiterates and capitulates for Indigenous realities in the DTES and Canada as a whole—starting with how it ties in to the myths entrenched in the federally-pushed concept of reconciliation.

Glen Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition is arguably the most well-known articulation of the colonial nature of the reconciliation movement, but his contemporaries (including Audra Simpson, David Gaertner, and many others) discuss similar principles. Reconciliation, many of these scholars argue, exists as a movement to place Indigenous struggle in the past, to “move on.” The reality is, as the leaked memo and subsequent affirmative vote are just two examples that we are in a colonial-oppressive state and thus, we cannot move on. There is no reconciliation without real change. What Mayor Sim and the other five who voted “for” this motion are reaffirming is that what is afforded to Indigenous communities today is recognition instead of reconciliation—we are acknowledged, but ultimately actively facing attempts at modern destruction, or at the very least totally ignored.

The notion that what’s essentially deportation could be a future for Indigenous DTES residents is a terrifying reality for more reasons than the above-stated hypocrisy/blissful ignorance. “Health outcomes” do not necessarily improve in home communities for Indigenous people, and the principle of shipping people anywhere (especially with the history of the Sixties Scoop and residential schools) has a long, dark and ongoing history on this continent. The DTES becomes a community in itself, with made families. Separating them only incurs worse outcomes, and when the largest demographic of the DTES is Indigenous peoples, any removal–sudden or gradual–negatively affects that community. Furthermore, the removal of supportive housing only increases the homeless population, an act that only increases the Indigenous homeless population. There is also an Indigenous reality that is not often touched when discussing the implications of Indigenous homelessness and that is the connection we have to land. For those that have spent years in the DTES, there is a sense of belonging on the land that has provided for you in its own way—not every Indigenous connection to land is as simple as a deep desire to return home, especially when trauma comes into play and it is a known fact that the DTES Indigenous homeless population is comprised of many Sixties Scoop and residential school survivors.

Though it has yet to be seen what exactly was meant by proposing to move Indigenous back to their home territories, the principle of such an act and the possible futures it creates are bleak. In an era so commonly defined by the successes of #LandBack movements, we are facing a future that feels as though it is taking two steps backward in terms of Indigenous support and anti-racism efforts. Any attempt at Indigenous successes within the capitalist housing framework such as the Sen̓áḵw development are highly criticized, yet efforts to build Indigenous housing through organizations like FIRST UNITED’s partnership with Luma Native Housing Society that rely on public funding are trod on by Vancouver City Council motions such as this one. How we move forward requires the kind of real support given to all homelessness populations, and also access to trauma support, healing and community support that are especially important for Indigenous peoples. Moreover, targeted projects for Indigenous communities may be the best way to solve and prevent Indigenous homelessness as a whole—addressing cracks in the foster care system and the MMIWG crisis are intrinsically linked to homelessness ways that are not always fully conceptualized or understood. This intersectionality is something that will be revisited in the second part of this series, but I do hope my readers—that’s you—have a feel for where I am going with these pieces. Housing legislation has a profound impact on Indigenous populations because we are so disproportionately represented in homelessness, and it is so often not explained in a way that is built for learning. I want to try to change that, and hopefully help would-be allies comprehend the best ways to bring Indigenous homeless people—which at times has comprised my own family members—the support needed to succeed in what the mayor is catapulting us towards: an increasingly unstable future that needs advocates for change more than ever.