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🏠 🌾 "If you had to choose between paying the rent or feeding the kids, what would you choose? For Louise and Charmaine, two Aboriginal women living in poverty and poor housing in Winnipeg, Manitoba, these are their daily life choices...Their stories are those of many Aboriginal women throughout Canada, and especially in Manitoba" (Miko & Thompson 2004).
Indigenous communities in Northern Manitoba face many barriers to having safe, sustainable communities, due to a lack of housing and food security.
Independent solutions to both of these problems exist, however, they are expensive to implement, difficult to maintain, and fall short of the current requirements of the Indigenous communities in Northern Manitoba.
Crowded, damaged homes are the reality for many Indigenous families in Manitoba, but the issue is especially pervasive for those living on-reserve. The 2011 National Household Survey found 41% of First Nation people living on-reserve in Manitoba lived in crowded homes (Statistics Canada, 2016). This is in stark contrast to the 5% of non-Indigenous people facing the same conditions in Manitoba (Statistics Canada, 2016). Further, 52% of First Nation people on-reserve lived in homes in need of major repairs (defective electrical wiring etc.), in contrast to 8% of the non-Indigenous population (Statistics Canada, 2016).
Food insecurity means having unreliable or insufficient access to enough affordable, healthy food, and it is an issue facing many Indigenous communities. A study across 14 Northern Manitoba communities found that 75% of households experienced food insecurity (Thompson et al., 2011). Northern Manitoba faces additional barriers of being isolated and relying on limited and unreliable transportation to import food. Furthermore, climate change threatens traditional hunting and fishing practices as ecosystems and the migratory patterns of animals change (Indigenous Climate Hub, n.d.).
Colonialism exists at the root of this issue, as the federal government displaced many Indigenous communities and forced them to live on government designated lands - often away from their traditional territory, or with restricted access - and failed to provide sufficient resources for the maintenance of these communities (Halseth 2018, Kendelle Romero-Fawcett 2019). While some movement has been made toward reconciliation these issues are unlikely to be sufficiently addressed in the near future, as many barriers exist, such as restrictive policies, systemic racism, and the effects of intergenerational trauma from residential schools (Halseth 2018, Kendelle Romero-Fawcett 2019).
Wellness and well-being are important to keep in mind with respect to engaging Indigenous beliefs, connection to land, nutrition, food, and financial security (Thiessen et al. 2020). The concept of holistic health is widely endorsed by Indigenous communities across Manitoba, focusing on balancing four elements of health: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual (Government of Manitoba 2021). Figure 1 illustrates this (Alison 2019). Colonial influences have reduced equitable access to resources, such as affordable and healthy food, causing the rate of diabetes to increase more rapidly in Indigenous populations than the general population (Halseth 2019), in addition to other health concerns (Halseth 2018).
Figure 1. Holistic and four elements of health.