Research Profile - The orphans among us

A long history of removing Aboriginal children from their families has resulted in homelessness for many First Nations, Métis or Inuit who make their lives in urban centres.

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The dream of starting a new life in a big city has a potent appeal, but it can turn into something of a nightmare if the dreamer is not prepared for the faster pace and different values that come with the bright lights.

"Cities can have no mercy," says Dr. Peter Menzies, the Clinic Head of Aboriginal Services at Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. "Like anybody else, Aboriginal people come to cities with dreams and hopes. If they don't get support or have the supports in place before moving into the city, then they can easily fall through the cracks – as we see through homelessness."

Contrary to the popular image of Aboriginal people living mainly in First Nations or rural settings, more than half reside in cities. Published in April of this year, an Environics Institute survey that included 2,614 Native people living in 11 Canadian cities found that 71% percent considered the city their permanent home and 94% enjoyed city life. However, while many are thriving in urban centres, Aboriginal people are over-represented in homeless populations of major Canadian cities. In Winnipeg, for example, local estimates put the homeless population at between 70-80% Aboriginal.

Dr. Menzies, points to "intergenerational trauma" as a key reason why so many Aboriginal people walk like orphans among our cities' homeless and suffer the health deficits that accompany life without permanent shelter. He defines it as trauma passed down from one generation to the next and traces its origins to the years between 1840 and 1983, when more 100,000 Aboriginal children were placed in the Indian residential school system. According to Dr. Menzies, even while the residential schools were being shuttered, Aboriginal society continued to be destabilized by provincial child welfare policies that saw thousands of children removed from their families and communities and placed in institutional or foster care.

"For Aboriginals, homelessness is not simply the result such factors as poor life choices, a lack of affordable housing supply or poorly implemented health care policies," Dr. Menzies wrote in a 2007 report in the Canadian Journal of Native Studies. Residential school and child welfare policies "disconnected the physical ties between parent and child and child and community" and created a condition in which homelessness was far more likely.

"Without tangible emotional and physical ties to their place or family of birth, many of the men (in the study) alluded to a lack of a sense of belonging or having a 'home.' These men were without a connection to their communities of origin and were, in effect, homeless from an early age."

A member of the Sagamok Anishnabek First Nation, Dr. Menzies understands first hand the life realities faced by so many Aboriginal people born in the 1950s and 1960s. He was raised in residential care from age 3 until 13, and then placed with the Children's Aid Society. He has been candid about the anger, sadness, sorrow, loneliness, shame and confusion that come from being raised outside of his birth family and Aboriginal community. He can bring that perspective to his counselling work in the heart of downtown Toronto.

"But the key is to not over-identify, to not project," he explains. "The key is to allow the person in front of you to talk about their experiences and to allow them to see themselves through their own eyes rather than telling them what you think. I run into therapists who are like, 'If I can do it, you can do it.' But everybody's different. Don't compare yourself, because clients are going to react negatively and they're going to pull out."

Dr. Menzies sees drug addiction and alcoholism – common afflictions of the homeless – as symptoms of larger mental health issues. You can't treat one, he says, without dealing with the other. And that requires mainstream health and social service agencies to work in partnership with Aboriginal peoples' organizations to design programs that take intergenerational trauma into consideration.

"I've always believed that there are Native agencies that can provide a certain amount of services, and then there are mainstream agencies that can provide other types of services. We created a men's 21-day inpatient residential treatment cycle here at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health that was done in partnership with Native agencies. It was just an amazing process. Now we are looking at a women's cycle." While the program is still in the evaluation stage, preliminary results show that over 80% of the participants stopped using substances and got involved in after-care programs and Aboriginal cultural activities.

As someone involved in both counselling and creating mental health programs, he sees the importance of drawing upon Aboriginal peoples' cultural resilience to deal with intergenerational trauma.

"Resilience to me means that you operate from the point of view of 'What are your strengths?' 'What did you learn from your negative and even positive experiences?' and 'How can these strengthens/learnings work for you?' When I look at the men or women when I'm working with them, I always ask 'What got you here today?' I'm amazed that they managed to live through all their hardships – whether it was sexual abuse, or coming out of child welfare or prisons, or experiencing violence – and yet they are sitting in front of you. That's strength."

"You may not have been to a residential school but you're carrying your parents' unresolved trauma … because they did not learn how to control their anger and process what happened to them. And, of course, many people who experience trauma resort to some type of medication or substance."
-- Dr. Peter Menzies