Volume 15, Number 1, 2024

EN:

Resolving urban land claims is an important facet of enacting sovereignty in cities and is occurring in the cities of settler states like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The creation of urban reserves is an important means by which First Nations in Canadian cities, especially on the Prairies, are settling outstanding land claims. Findings from interviews with key informants on the urban reserve creation process in Saskatchewan, Canada’s two largest cities, shows urban reserves as liminal spaces in dynamic tension between self-determination, jurisdiction, economic development, and colonial processes of property stipulation, government relations, and approval. This policy area can be enhanced at each stage of the process and offers a pathway toward active treaty relationships in cities.

EN:

Biocultural Community Protocols (BCPs) are environmental governance mechanisms for biodiversity that aim to establish, at the local community level, a normative framework for the central themes discussed in the framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity (biodiversity conservation, traditional knowledge, prior and informed access, benefit sharing, agro-biodiversity conservation, etc.). Taking into account the Guna history about the idea of biocultural diversity, but also the specificities of the Guna political system, this article aims to shed light on the local implementation of this type of protocol in the indigenous territory of Guna Yala (Panama).

We thus show that, despite the active role played by Gunas experts at the international, national, and regional levels, the Gunas have not adopted BCP's. Due to the pre-existence of research regulation mechanisms in GunaYala, but also to a certain mistrust of global environmental governance, the Guna authorities have for the time being not considered the BCP’s as being relevant enough. Beyond this particular example of unfinished institutionalization, BCPs must be understood as a localized mechanism serving the advancement of the more general idea of biocultural diversity.

EN:

Indigenous children and youth are overrepresented in settler-colonial child protection systems globally. They experience higher rates of homelessness and housing precarity when leaving care and searching for family and a place to call home. Missing from Canadian policy and research discussions is the role social housing can play to address these realities by providing a social safety net for permanent low-barrier housing. In this article, we highlight a community-based Solutions Lab that analyzed discursive policy constructions of ‘youth transition’ and explored the implications of austerity-driven social housing reform in a mid-sized metropolitan Canadian city. We illustrate potential challenges and opportunities for leveraging social housing by state governments and private markets which mediate housing precarity, belonging, and cultural conceptions of home.

EN:

Preventing people from experiencing homelessness is a complex task requiring the coordination of multiple actors. There are various frameworks for homelessness prevention; however, there is no published example of an Indigenous-led model. We present the Giiwe model for systems homelessness prevention led by M’Wikwedong Indigenous Friendship Centre in Owen Sound, Canada. Giiwe hosts regular in-person meetings that use ceremony, Indigenous Knowledges, discussion, and follow-up actions to increase service access among a network of over 20 organizations. Building on Giiwe’s experience, we discuss how Western and Indigenous worldviews impact inter-organizational collaboration. Giiwe’s success suggests funding and policy contexts mandating partnerships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous organizations could benefit from ceding space for initiatives affirming Indigenous collaboration approaches.

EN:

In settler-colonial contexts, the use of sport for reconciliation (SFR) has received increasing attention from national governments and their sporting agencies, though researchers have yet to track the development of SFR across settler colonial contexts. In this study, we examined how government sport policies in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa/New Zealand frame understandings of reconciliation. Through the application of both policy and frame analysis to 82 documents from 1970s to 2020, we argue that policy framings have shifted from presenting Indigenous peoples as a homogenous disadvantaged group to more inclusive considerations of Indigenous cultures. Nevertheless, an assimilative agenda continues to guide policy, as understandings of Indigenous self-determination are absent from sport policy documents and reconciliation is primarily understood as Indigenous peoples being reconciled to the status quo.