Homeless in Regina: Effects on the Indigenous community – 620 CKRM

Mar 22, 2023

As we take a deeper dive into homelessness in Regina, most of those living on the streets are indigenous.

Erica Beaudin, the executive director of the Regina Treaty Status Indian Services (RT/SIS), said that indigenous people aren’t homeless, as the land they live on is considered their home. Instead, many of them are houseless.

A term she learned from the late Darren Okemaysim.

“He said to me, we are not homeless. This is our home, regardless if we’re in the city. Wherever we live, we are in our home. We have no place else to go. We are not settlers. We are the original peoples of the land, and so this is our home.”

Beaudin said that so many indigenous people are houseless in Regina, with its roots beginning with the colonizing of their lands:

“It’s being brought into a system and being born into systems that were never meant for our survival and our thriving within them.”

Beaudin referred to how former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have called what has happened to indigenous people “genocide.”

Read More: https://www.620ckrm.com/2023/03/22/wed-homelessness-in-regina-effects-on-the-indigenous-community/