If you’re one of those Twitter types or you’re paying close attention to the news, you probably read/heard/saw that campers at Oppenheimer Park have set up a makeshift sweat lodge.
You may have also read/heard/saw that Audrey Siegl of the Musqueam Indian Band gave city council an earful last week about the need to provide housing for homeless people camped at the park and others on the streets.
She was on the front page of our newspaper.
So you might be thinking the protest at the park is all about First Nations’ rights to land. Not surprised, you say, at the need for such a protest since aboriginal people far over represent the number of homeless on the streets.
Nor, you say, are you surprised at the timing of the protest since city council recently passed a motion to have city hall “formally acknowledge that the city of Vancouver is on unceded traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.”
Council carried the motion unanimously.
Vision Vancouver Coun. Andrea Reimer introduced the motion and it was seconded by Mayor Gregor Robertson, who last year declared a year of reconciliation in an “effort that seeks to heal from the past and build new relationships between aboriginal peoples and all Vancouverites, built on a foundation of openness, dignity, understanding and hope.”
Robertson is the same mayor who also spent some time last year participating in the Musqueam’s protest outside a piece of private property in Marpole, where ancestral remains were discovered during the development of a condo project. The Musqueam has since purchased the land.
So you get the picture — Robertson and his Vision-led council are extremely sensitive to the rights of First Nations.
That said, the protest at Oppenheimer Park does not fall into this category, according to Robertson, who begins many speeches by first recognizing the unceded territory of First Nations.
“This is an issue primarily about homelessness, and the people who are camped out in the park right now do need support,” the mayor told reporters last week. “We are going to be working with them, going to the B.C. government and the federal government calling for more investment in housing and shelter to make sure people aren’t stuck outside.”
And then this: “This is not a First Nations’ land rights and title issue.”
He went on to say Musqueam Chief Wayne Sparrow visited the park and “clarified that” with campers. Sparrow, of course, is in charge of the band’s territory on which Siegl lives but she made it clear she is not speaking on behalf of Musqueam.
So I asked her why she went to council last week.
“What brings me here today is a longstanding history of displacement — not just of Downtown Eastside residents, but of the original people of this land, my people, the Musqueam people.”
So whether the issue is about homelessness, First Nations’ issues or something else, the semantics of it can’t be lost on this fact from the 2014 Metro Vancouver homeless count: Aboriginal people continue to make up nearly one third, or 31 per cent, of the total homeless population. This year’s count identified 582 aboriginal people who were homeless. That’s up from 394 in the 2011 count.
twitter.com/Howellings
