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Written by Rev. Lauren Sanders (Prairie Band Potawatomi/mshkodéni bodewadminwen, Kickapoo Nation of Kansas/kiikaapoa, African American/Black), Indigenous Spiritual Care Chaplain, for Good Friday

The Downtown Eastside is our neighbour. But we often don’t see that reflected in our society or in government policies.

This Holy Week, as Christians remember the events that led to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, I want to share about what the church is called to do repeatedly through scriptures: justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly (Micah, Chapter 6, Verse 8).

From Leviticus 19:18 and Matthew 22:39, we are to love our neighbours as ourselves.

Our neighbours are the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger to our land, those who were exiled and chose to stay, sex workers, the people who are visibly sick, those with hidden ailments, those we cross the street to get away from, those who need multiple interventions, and more.

The Downtown Eastside is our neighbour.

I’ve been reflecting on this in light of the City of Vancouver pausing new supportive housing projects, and the City’s leaked memo with intentions to send Indigenous people, who make up over 30% of the DTES (compared to making up just 2.4% of Canada’s population), back to their communities.

As Freya Podlasly (Tāłtān and Nlaka’pamux), Community Intern for FIRST UNITED, lovingly educates in “A Crisis Within a Crisis”: “This is nothing short of race-based violence.”

As I am an urban Indigenous person, I am a part of the 2.4% of the Canadian population of Indigenous people, and I provide spiritual care for our DTES neighbours. A lot of the rhetoric in the leaked memo regarding Indigenous communities in urban areas isn’t based in historical fact and fails to consider that Indigenous peoples have always built communities in what we now know as urban spaces.

Before genocidal practices of colonization, and even in resistance to colonial practices continuing today, my Indigenous communities taught me that Indigenous folks have always gathered.

There have been times when multiple Indigenous communities have needed to live close to each other and needed to meet in places where territories overlapped, like Vancouver. These sacred places were places of trading goods, sharing resources, participating in each other’s ceremonies, places of storytelling and philosophical discussions, and where intercommunity conflicts could be resolved.

Urban-like villages within a short distance of one another have existed since time immemorial, particularly here in Vancouver. False Creek, Stanley Park, Marpole, and CRAB Park are just a few neighbourhoods where some villages of Indigenous communities were. Musqueam’s website names many, many more. Vancouver has long been a place of nomadic Indigenous communities, individual Indigenous neighbours, and immigrant Indigenous families, as well as the permanent homelands and unceded territories of Musqueam, Squamish Nation, and Tsleil-Waututh.

Colonialism didn’t make Vancouver an urban area. Many different peoples trying to figure out how to live together as neighbours … doing justice, working to embrace community, and walking humbly with Creator … that’s what made Vancouver an urban site since time immemorial.

Let us listen for truth this Holy Week. Let us recognize justice this Holy Week. Let us remember who our neighbor is this Holy Week.