No Home in a Homeland
Indigenous Peoples and Homelessness in the Canadian North
- Publisher
- UBC Press
- Initial publish date
- Feb 2017
- Subjects
- General, Native American Studies, Social Work
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9780774833974
- Publish Date
- Feb 2017
- List Price
- $34.99
Library Ordering Options
Description
The Dene, a traditionally nomadic people, have no word for homelessness, a rare condition in the Canadian North prior to the 1990s. Julia Christensen documents the rise of Indigenous homelessness and proposes solutions by interweaving analysis of the region’s unique history with personal narratives of homeless men and women in two cities – Yellowknife and Inuvik. What emerges is a larger story of displacement and intergenerational trauma, hope and renewal. Understanding what it means to be homeless in the North and how Indigenous people think about home and homemaking is the first step, Christensen argues, on the path to decolonizing existing approaches and practices.
About the author
Julia Christensen is a geographer and creative writer born and raised in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, on the ancestral homelands of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation. She is an assistant professor at Roskilde University in Denmark and a research fellow at the Institute for Circumpolar Health Research. She was previously a Trudeau Foundation Scholar.
Editorial Reviews
Within the stories [included in the book] lie accounts of home seeking that paint an important picture of agency, Indigenous home, and the ways that many Indigenous lives are unrecognized and unsupported through dominant social policy approaches. A key strength of the book is that it challenges southern, urban, and non-Indigenous peoples to face what Christensen terms “the discomfort of positionality,” and to not turn away from the spiritual homelessness of Dene people… Summing Up: Recommended.
CHOICE
No Home in a Homeland represents a significant, unique, and timely contribution to the literature on homelessness experienced by Indigenous people in the Canadian North.
ARTIC, Vol. 71, No.2