[MUSIC] Inuit, Métis, and off reserve First Nation individuals constitute the fastest growing segment of the population in Canada. Today, over half of all Aboriginal people live in urban areas. In this lesson, we'll be talking about Indigenous individuals and families' movement into urban spaces over the last number of decades. This will allow us to discuss how the relationship between our people in the urban environment has been shaped and continues to evolve. There are prevalent ideas that most Indigenous people in Canada live on reserves or in rural areas. However, we can see from the census data that more than half of all Indigenous people in Canada live in cities or towns. For example, as many Indigenous people live in Winnipeg, as in the entire Northwest Territories, 70,000. This lesson will also touch on notions of what is deemed as authentic Indigenous culture and how Indigenous people living in urban spaces are often thought of as disconnected from their land, culture, and tradition. We will provide background on where these ideas come from, give some alternative perspectives on urban Indigenous identity and culture, and the growing presence and power of urban Indigenous populations. To begin, let's think a little about what identity means. Cultural studies theorist, Stuart Hall, asks us to think about identity as being the essence of who we are as linked to an underlying way of being, shared cultural norms and history, and also what we may become as a people. This last point acknowledges that identity is somewhat fluid, changing and evolving while remaining grounded in core ways of being and common histories. As discussed previously, we know that Indigenous identities are often tied to place and the land. Part of the challenge with understanding urban Indigeneity is that Indigenous people living in cities are not always connected to a land base. Does that make us less Indigenous? Here, we will try to begin to answer that question. We can think about urban spaces and Indigenous people in two broad ways. One, that urban places are neither safe or comfortable spaces for Indigeneity to flourish, such that cities are where Indigenous culture goes to die. Secondly, an alternative way to think about urban spaces is that they are what scholar Renya Ramirez calls native hubs, and what Métis scholar Chris Andersen refers to as engines of Indigenous cultural power. In short, cities are spaces where Indigenous culture and society can and does flourish. Let's explore this first idea a little further. In previous lessons, we learned about a number of historical government policies, including the Indian Act, that intentionally forced or at least encouraged the migration of Indigenous individuals and families off of reserves and into urban centres. Government officials thought that removing Indigenous people from their traditional subsistence lifestyle and culture would make them more likely to assimilate into settler society. This approach is based on the notion that Indigenous culture and urban life are incommensurable, or mutually exclusive, that Indigenous cultures simply cannot exist in an urban context. The second way we can think about the relationship between Indigenous peoples and urban places is by examining the ways in which Indigenous culture everywhere has been enriched by modern urban places, and how the coming together of diverse Indigenous cultures has influenced urban Indigenous identity. We will talk about these ideas in more detail later in this lesson, and how we can think in a critical way about how we conceptualize this relationship between Indigenous residents and urban spaces. Although most people are likely used to thinking about real Indigeneity as existing on reserves or in rural spaces, more generally, urban Indigenous communities have a number of distinct characteristics that make urban life different from that of reserves and other rural areas. In this section, using some of the research of Métis scholar, Chris Andersen, we will identify and discuss some key elements that help us think through some of the complexities of the urban Indigenous experience. Urban Indigenous residents are likely to be poorer than their non-Indigenous neighbours. There are, of course, variations from city to city, but this trend is demonstrated in nationwide data. This economic marginalization, existence on the economic fringes of society, can contribute to other elements of urban life. Indigenous urban residents tend to experience higher rates of unemployment, single parenthood, homelessness, and domestic violence, to only name a few. While this is not completely different from the experiences of Indigenous people living on reserve, the urban context within which it occurs in a majority of non-Indigenous residents is different. On reserve, the lower socioeconomic status of Indigenous peoples is equated to the lack of opportunities among other reasons. However, Indigenous people in the city are just as likely to experience disproportionate economic and social outcomes, even though there is a perceived increase in economic opportunities, economic opportunities that are enjoyed by non-Indigenous people within the city. More recent research into the social and economic status of urban Indigenous people has shown that there is a growing professional and middle class. Data from the 2006 Aboriginal people survey and the 2006 census indicates that about one-third of Aboriginal people were considered middle income earners, or those with the household income of between approximately 40 and $80,000. While on the surface this seems promising, the same data indicates that Aboriginal people, or more likely the non-Aboriginal of people to be low-income earners, and less likely to be high-income earners. Low-income earners are those earning less than $40,000, and high-income earners are those earning more than $80,000. In addition, there are still significant income disparities between Aboriginal people, and non-Aboriginal people. A current estimate suggests that it would take 60 years for the gap to close. Urban Indigenous populations are highly diverse. Indigenous individuals and their families arrive to urban centres from many different types of Indigenous communities, whether from reserves, or small towns, or other cities. Indigenous people who live in urban spaces have noted that they feel as much connection and attachment to other Indigenous people living in their city as they do to their home community or cultural group. Urban Indigenous residents fall into a complex mix of status Indians, Non-status Indians, Métis, Inuit, registered Indians, including those who belong to Indian bands and those who do not, treaty Indians, non-treaty Indians, and numerous cultural groups that are the product of the effects of what is often called “outmarriage”. This intricate legal diversity creates real challenges. What are the federal governments responsibilities? And what should other levels of jurisdiction be providing in terms of programs, services and funding to urban Indigenous residents? The notion of status blindness refers to the idea that in the context of urban Indigenous service delivery, all services are available to any Indigenous person regardless of their legal identity as status, non-status, Métis, or otherwise. As we talked about earlier, the cultural diversity of urban spaces results in a sort of melting pot of Indigenous cultural practice and traditions. In urban Indigenous organizations and institutions all Indigenous residents are welcome to participate and share their unique cultural practice. The general approach that is taken in the development of public policy is referred to as a policy ethos. There has been much discussion about the policy vacuum in urban places around such program and service delivery. The federal government is generally responsible for providing funding for Indigenous programming. But, such obligation largely concerns on-reserve First Nations programs. It should be noted that federal dollars are also provided to provinces and municipalities for the delivery of a variety of services. Where then is the funding and administration for Indigenous people living in cities and towns? We can see that, from a policy perspective, this was not something that the federal government in particular expected given their assumption that Indigenous people who move to cities would not need specific programs and services unique from non-Indigenous residents. It has become clear, however, that Indigenous people require culturally relevant programs and services related to education, healthcare, and other social supports. The establishment of the many urban Indigenous institutions is a testament to that need. The funding and policy development, however, is still trying to catch up. Informal networks with family and friends play a powerful role in the general quality of life for urban Indigenous residents. For example, informal networks play a crucial role for Indigenous people in preventing the move from hidden to absolute homelessness, especially for those moving from First Nation reserves into cities. Unlike on First Nation reserves, where social networks might be comprised mostly of extended family, informal urban networks are less likely to contain family and more likely to contain friends. However, the presence of second and even third generation urban Indigenous residents, family, especially extended family continues to play a role in meaningful social attachments for urban Indigenous people. As we discuss next, this is evidence of the continued connections between urban and non-urban locales. Indigenous peoples migrate between cities and between the city and the reserve or community. The reasons for this are complex, but are a result of a number of push pull factors. A continued connection to the long-standing cultural communities is important to urban Indigenous residents. Feelings of well-being enter their overall sense of identity. Such movements can be interpreted in the context of attachments to land as we discussed previously. They can also be understood as a part of a revitalization of political and economic ties to other places. Surveys show that urban Indigenous residents maintain links to their home communities for a variety of reasons. These continued ties, though valuable for a number of reasons, have become strongly linked to more recent struggles over political representation. As such, Indigenous people are asking questions such as, who represents our urban Indigenous people, our home communities and our urban Indigenous institutions? A unified political voice for urban Indigenous residents does not exist. This is in part because of the diversity of the urban Indigenous population, as we have already learned about. Urban institutions also sometimes clash with more long standing political organizations, such as the Assembly of First Nations, the Metis National Council, and the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. Generally speaking, slightly more Indigenous women than man live in urban centres. We learned previously about the specific policies that contributed to the forceful or encouraged migration of Indigenous women in particular, including provisions in the Indian Act that had devalued the traditional roles of Indigenous women and forced them out of their First Nation communities and into Canada's cities. We also learned about Indigenous women and the disproportionate vulnerability to violence. There are however, some positive statistics as well. Indigenous women are more likely than our Indigenous men to be involved as decision makers in the institutions of urban Indigenous community development. It has also been suggested that Indigenous women have been the main drivers behind community development work within the urban context. This may be compared to the far lower rates of women's political power on First Nations reserves. [MUSIC] >> So, there have always been urban Indigenous people, since the 19th century onward, since the growth of the Canadian state, in many instances, Aboriginal people became urban when cities moved into their traditional territories. But in the post-war period, there was a movement of Aboriginal people into urban spaces. There's no set definition of what an urban Aboriginal person is. But there are things that are distinctive about being urban Aboriginal. Sometimes, they are city specific and sometimes they are specific just living in urban spaces more generally. There is something about the overall sheer numbers of Aboriginal people in urban spaces that allow you to do certain kinds of things politically and culturally. That it's less likely that you're going to be able to do on a First Nation, or on a settlement, or on a rural space more generally. One of the things that’s distinctive about urban Aboriginality is that for many people, adults and children, they may be second, third or even fourth generation living in a particular urban space. So many of these people aren't from a rural space whether it’s a reserve, or settlement, or just rural space in general have never been to a rural space of any kind, but have grown up and understood their Indigeneity as it gets created in the context of the city that they live in. [MUSIC] I think one of the great myths of thinking and talking about urban Indigeneity is the idea that urban Indigeneity and rural Indigeneity are separate. In many cases, they are separate, but in most cases, especially in places in Western Canada, the urban and the rural are traversed back and forth by people and by families and by kinship networks who move from rural spaces to urban spaces, and then back to rural spaces again. And cities themselves, you have to remember, are only relatively recent spaces. So if you think about Edmonton, the idea of Edmonton as a city has really only been around for 100 or 150 years. If you think about the earlier terms that were used to describe what we now call Edmonton, terms like pehonân or amiskwaciwâskahikan, it gives rise to thinking about different kinds of relationships and different groups of people that actually lived here. [MUSIC]
