Description
Indigenous Homelessness: Perspectives from Canada, New Zealand and Australia provides a comprehensive exploration of the Indigenous experience of homelessness. It testifies to ongoing cultural resilience and lays the groundwork for practices and policies designed to better address the conditions that lead to homelessness among Indigenous peoples. The 19 essays in this collection explore the meaning and scope of Indigenous homelessness in the Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They argue that effective policy and support programs aimed at relieving Indigenous homelessness must be rooted in Indigenous conceptions of home, land, and kinship, and cannot ignore the context of systemic inequality, institutionalization, landlessness, among other things, that stem from a history of colonialism. Being homeless in one’s homeland is a colonial legacy for many Indigenous people in settler societies. The construction of Commonwealth nation-states from colonial settler societies depended on the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their lands. The legacy of that dispossession and related attempts at assimilation that disrupted Indigenous practices, languages, and cultures—including patterns of housing and land use—can be seen today in the disproportionate number of Indigenous people affected by homelessness in both rural and urban settings. Evelyn J. Peters is Canada Research Chair in the Department of Urban and Inner City Studies, University of Winnipeg. Julia Christensen is is a social, cultural and health geographer, and works primarily with northern Indigenous communities in Canada and Greenland. Other contributors include: Paul Andrew, Tim Aubry, Yale Belanger, Cynthia Bird, Christina Birdsall-Jones, Marleny M. Bonnycastle, Deidre Brown, Rebecca Cherner, Julia Christensen, Patricia Franks, Susan Farrell, Joshua Freistadt, Charmaine Green, Kelly Greenop, Shiloh Groot, Darrin Hodgetts, Selena Kern, Pita Richard Wiremu King, Fran Klodawsky, Gabrielle Lindstrom, Paul Memmott, Daphne Nash, Julie Parrell, Evelyn Peters, Sarah Prout, Mohi Rua, Rebecca Schiff, Annette Siddle, Maureen Simpkins, Barbara A. Smith, Wilfreda E. Thurston, Alina Turner, David Turner, Jeanette Waegemakers Schiff, Tiniwai Chas Te Whetu, and Rob Willetts.