Drawing by Doug Lafortune
This is the first in what will be a series of short pieces on First Nations housing. After a lifetime of living on a reserve (for over 30 years starting when I was a teenager), working in the on-reserve housing field as a Housing Manager, construction supervisor, policy analyst, workshop facilitator, curriculum developer and university instructor, working on various national and provincial First Nations housing committees and studying government on-reserve housing programs for a Phd, I am beginning to write a book on the topic, with my son Adam. My blogs are not necessarily finished thoughts. They are like sparks in the morning…that ignite after a few hours of studying…that turn into small fires…that I can’t put out until I write about them.
Not fully awake
Canada has just experienced an awakening: Government officials removed First Nations children from their homes and sent them to residential schools where they were often abused and sometimes even killed. Once we got over questioning the validity of the historical event Canada reluctantly admitted to the country’s disgraceful policies and practices. However, we are having a harder time acknowledging the far-reaching and deeply troubling implications the shared experience of residential schools had on First Nations people. We’d rather blame the uneducated for being uneducated, the depressed for being depressed, the unemployed for being unemployed than to accept what every expert says. There is a direct causal relationship between societal and individual dysfunction and the children’s experiences at residential schools.
Canada is now awakening to another nasty historical reality. During the 1960s and 1970s government officials removed more than 20,000 First Nations children from their homes and adopted them out to white families. To put a brighter light on the practice: many of the children were put in the hands of adoption agencies around the world (more than 25% were adopted outside of their home province) and sold to prospective parents for thousands of dollars. Flyers were distributed with pictures of cute, chubby-cheeked little First Nations kids advertising “A Child is Waiting.” Canada took part in human trafficking. The stories of this mass dislocation are beginning to be told while most Canadians don’t want to really listen.
Canada has yet to awaken to the current practice: Ministries of Child and Family are removing children from First Nations homes at a startling rate. According to the 2021 census in Canada, 53.8% of children in foster care are Indigenous, but account for only 7.7% of the child population. A higher percentage of First Nations children are in care today than were in residential schools. We have yet to fully comprehend the social consequences of this latest child removal scheme. We don’t yet have a long view. However, we know a few things. We know that between 25%-50% of youth exiting foster care experience precarious housing, along with high rates of unemployment, lack of permanent connections with family, disrupted education, and struggles with mental health.
Some Canadians ask “What is wrong with the Canadian government?” But from my experience most Canadians ask, what is wrong with those “Indians?” And while we fight that one out I have an answer. It’s not the whole answer but it’s a part of the answer few people want to consider—particularly government people.
There were several and varied reasons children were rounded up and sent to residential schools—isolation, deliberate disruption of culture, one aspect of a land grab, to be educated and/or indoctrinated, etc. But I want to look at one common justification Indian Agents used for taking children from their families.
Housing.
First Nations children living on reserves in the 20th century experienced the worst housing in the country. It is hard for Canadians to comprehend how unlivable and crowded those unlivable, crowded houses were. So, taking some of the children (often the oldest ones) out of the house seemed like one solution to the housing problem. Residential schools were seen as an improvement. There was more square footage of living space per child in the schools than in their houses on reserves. “Good” white homes are still seen as having better beds for First Nations kids or, at least, a bedroom all of their own.
Because of the nature of this claim, it can only be proved with anecdotal examples. There’s no statistical proof for how many children were taken specifically because of housing. However, one thing we all know to be true: If First Nations families were living in houses that met the Canadian standard, with space for all the children, with roofs that didn’t leak like sieves, with heating that kept the windows from freezing shut, with hot water for showers and laundry…houses that didn’t burn down at a rate 10Xs that of other Canadian houses…agents would have had a lot harder time ripping those kids from their homes and their families.
I’ve read hundreds of archival accounts of housing issues. Here’s one housing issue that started with a house fire. “Please help me get a house for my children, we are going to have to live in the woods this winter.” That turned into a residential school issue. “Six of my children were taken to the residential school 100 miles from our reserve.” That turned into a permanent adoption issue. “My youngest children have been taken by the ministry. I don’t know where they are.” That turned back into a housing issue. “They say I can get my children back if I get a house that they will approve of.”
It is records like this that make me certain that if First Nations housing was not, and has not historically been, so unconscionably unlivable First Nations families would not have been so ransacked.
Poor living conditions were also often used as part of the justification to scoop children in the 60s and 70s. It is still part of the reasoning for the current Ministry’s scoop. I know the justifications for dislocating and relocating First Nations children are more than housing. And as the generations unfold the whole problem appears to get increasingly complicated. But there is a common theme.
“They say I can get my children back if I get a house that they will approve of.”
“Why,” you ask, “Are Indigenous kids so overrepresented in the homeless population in every city and town in this country?” You can’t get to that answer without understanding housing on Indian reserves.
