According to the latest Point-in-Time count in March 2023, 33% of unhoused residents of the Greater Victoria area are indigenous, even though they comprise only 5% of the overall population. Repression of the unhoused community disproportionately affects them.
More than most, indigenous peoples understand the impact of forced displacement. Land theft wrangled them into minuscule reservations. Residential schools have uprooted their progenies, decimated their populations, and nearly erased their cultures. To this day, their communities are further dispossessed by land seizures, while their women and girls keep being abducted and murdered. No wonder so many end up sheltering on our streets and in our parks.
The City of Victoria has issued a call to reconciliation and dialogue in accordance with the United Nation Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, yet in practice its commitment proves purely ceremonial. The Council has recently adopted a motion to invite an indigenous voice to testify how they are impacted by the homelessness crisis, one resolution among many which may never be implemented, and even if it were would prove just as perfunctory.
On the ground, racist bylaw officers go around telling unhoused people to go back where they come from, perhaps neither realising nor caring that a large proportion have nurtured a connection with this land for millennia, long before Her Worship Marianne Alto assumed office in the name of an overseas monarch, thus perpetuating the colonial enterprise. Council members know this, yet would rather keep a tight lid on the abuse than hold its hounds accountable.
To speak of reconciliation under these terms is pure hypocrisy. The Victoria Liberation Front would rather build a relationship with the region’s First Nations than with governments that only partner with them for the sake of public relations. Reconciliation isn’t dead, it merely needs committed partners.
