Marcus GeeDeborah Baic/The Globe and Mail
For generations of native Canadians, the city was the white man's world. Natives might migrate there to escape the stagnation and despair of the reserve, but to do so was often considered a kind of cultural betrayal. It meant giving up the attachment to the land that was considered the essence of native identity. It meant abandoning native spirituality and submitting to the materialism of urban life. In short, it meant an end to being native.
Gradually, that is beginning to change. An important new study shows that many natives are developing a deep attachment to life in the city while still holding on to their identity.
The Environics Institute report suggests that native Canadians continue to flow to the cities in large numbers in search of jobs and better education. About half of the aboriginal population of 1.17 million lived in cities as of the 2006 census. Toronto's aboriginal population was up 30 per cent between 2001 and 2006, reaching more than 26,000. The unemployment rate among urban natives, though still much worse than that of non-natives, is improving. A large majority of urban natives told the pollsters they like living in the city and seven in 10 said the city is their settled home.
Cities, in other words, are no longer just the place that natives flee to out of desperation, dodging back to the reserve when they strike out in town. It is becoming the place they go to seek, and, in many cases, achieve a lasting, better life.
To a certain extent, that means becoming more like other Canadians. A majority of urban natives, for example, feel that it is not important to choose a spouse who s also native. At the same time, though, the Environics study says they "show great reverence for their heritage and express strong indigenous pride." Fifty-four per cent said that aboriginal culture in their community had actually grown stronger in the past five years and 45 per cent said that native spirituality was very important in their lives. One participant told the pollsters: "You have to know where you're coming from to know where you're going."
James Carpenter is a case in point. His parents migrated to Toronto from Ontario reserves and, like generations before them, struggled with the experience. His mother had a nervous breakdown after her 14-year-old daughter was found dead on Yonge Street. She was the victim, the family suspects, but never confirmed, of foul play. His father ended up homeless, bumming change at Queen and Bathurst.
Mr. Carpenter struggled himself, skipping school to do odd jobs, until his mother organized a ceremony to give him his native spirit name when he was 17. Attracted to traditional culture, he now works in a Toronto native health centre assisting with traditional healing techniques.
At 28, he is a cell-phone-toting urban dweller with a non-aboriginal partner. His home is Toronto, though he often visits his mother's old reserve in Alderville, Ont. With its network of friendship centres and other native organizations, Toronto is a place where he can be urban and native at the same time.
As the Environics study puts it, the experience of urban natives shows "there is no contradiction between success, power and knowledge in 'mainstream' society, and a strong First Nations, Métis or Inuit culture."
That finding challenges the old view that cities steamroller natives and their culture. It also threatens the traditional native leadership, with its focus on winning land-claim fights and wresting more support from government for reserve-based natives.
If natives can make a go of it in the city without losing their culture, then the notion that they must cleave to the land to survive as a people is weakened. Why maintain hundreds of thousands of people in often-deplorable conditions in remote communities with no access to paying jobs or good education if they might fare better in cities?
Cities are no native utopia, of course. Plenty of aboriginal migrants end up in poverty or on the skids, as anyone in a Canadian city - especially a Western Canadian city - can plainly see. But the fact that so many are adopting the city as their home without giving up on their native identity changes the way we think of native life in Canada.