Keynote speaker Angela Robertson addresses the audience at the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness conference in Toronto last week. --PHOTO BY JOLYNN PARENTEAU
On a low hilltop on the shore of Lake Ontario towers a 30-foot Inukshuk, a stone figure weighing 50 tonnes in mountain rose granite. Inukshuks are historically built in the Arctic at 7-8 feet tall to be seen at a distance, pointing the way for travellers to shelter and good hunting.
This great Inukshuk stands in Toronto facing the historic Beanfield Centre, where this past week helpers from around the country and across the globe met to discuss new and best practices to support our most vulnerable citizens; how to build on naatamooskakowin in our communities. The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness’ annual conference drew 1,400 frontline workers, agency leaders and government policy makers for three days of peer instruction and discussion of sector challenges and successes. A leader in the national movement to end homelessness in Canada, the CAEH supports municipalities and community agencies to make transformative change through programs and policy.
In a message to conference attendees, host city organization the Toronto Alliance to End Homelessness executive director Kira Heineck and chair Mark Aston wrote, “We’ve been inspired by the community champions who have amplified the needs of those most marginalized and worked together to build grassroots networks of mutual aid and support. All that we’ve learned will come together to strengthen our work across the country to create a future where homelessness is truly rare.”
Toronto itself is a word that originates from the Mohawk word Tkaronto, meaning “the place in the water where the trees are standing.” Located on Treaty 13 Territory, Tkaronto is a traditional gathering place for Indigenous peoples: the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, the Wendat, and many others whose cultures, histories and languages continue to influence this city. While Tkaronto feels alive with a palpable energy to visitors, its unhoused residents occupied more than 8,100 shelter bed spaces on the last night of the conference.
As Medicine Hat and Miywasin Friendship Centre’s Indigenous homelessness navigator, this writer had the privilege of joining our community’s housing sector leaders in attending the conference for professional development and networking, taking in as many of the nearly 100 concurrent lectures as possible. I felt encouraged by the many Indigenous Elders, knowledge keepers and sector staff in attendance who were on hand to provide spiritual support, teachings and mentorship respectively throughout the week.
In a session on centering lived experience voices, Leo Moose shared, “The most important thing is to know who we are, and have access to family, land and our spiritual medicines.”
Moose lived in Tataskweyak Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba for 25 years before experiencing homelessness during the pandemic in Thompson, Man.
“Everyone has a future, everyone has a voice,” Moose reminded his audience.
Opening a lecture on for-Indigenous, by-Indigenous housing programs, an international team from Aotearoa (New Zealand’s Indigenous Maori name) offered a moving prayer and hymn sung in the Te Reo language. In her presentation, Ali Hamlin-Paenga defined homelessness as “when you are no longer Tangata Whenua on your own Whenua,” translated to “no longer people of the land on your own land,” a concept that resonated with Turtle Island’s (Native North America’s) attendees, familiar with hundreds of years of generational displacement after colonization.
Hamlin-Paenga is the CEO of Kahungunu Whanau Services, a Maori housing and social support service serving the wider Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington, NZ) region. In reply to my audience question asking her to identify the greatest challenges to Maori economic success, be it barriers to attending post-secondary or fewer career opportunities outside the tourism industry, Hamlin-Paenga instead replied, “What is your definition of wealth? The creation of wealth is about our people thriving and living with the lands.”
Reflecting on her Canadian conference experience, Hamlin-Paenga’s colleague Rayleen Hirini’s biggest takeaway is “The First Nations people going through the same challenges of Maori in New Zealand.”
During an evening tour of a trailblazing Tkaronto facility, executive director Steve Teekens of native men’s residence Na-Me-Res says his organization is “focused on bringing people to prosperity.” The sober living residence connects Indigenous men to culture, resources and housing supports, providing 25 bachelor units onsite to promote independent living.
In a passionate call to action, conference keynote speaker and activist Angela Robertson said that “Being without a home is not a personal failing, it is a failure of economic structures and leadership.” Addressing the urge to point fingers at those in leadership who may not be contributing to solutions, Robertson encouraged the audience to build alliances. “Rather than calling people out, call people in with radical love. Change happens at the speed of human trust.”
“There’s opportunity for leadership to progress the conversation even further around the impact of policy and housing development. Over the last 10-15 years, communities, organizations, leaders and frontline workers have done a phenomenal job in housing and looking at opportunities to make change in communities,” says Jaime Rogers, manager of homeless and housing development at Medicine Hat Community Housing Society. “Now we have to actually grit down and demand policy change.”
This vocation of helpers brings people together around a shared vision. With determination to find solutions at every level, we can see an end to homelessness, and a way to wikiwin for all.
JoLynn Parenteau is a Métis writer out of Miywasin Friendship Centre. Column feedback can be sent to jolynn.parenteau@gmail.com.
