Description
The Dene, a traditionally nomadic folks, don’t have any word for homelessness, a rare condition within the Canadian North prior to the 1990s. Julia Christensen documents the upward push of Indigenous homelessness and proposes solutions by interweaving analysis of the region’s unique history with personal narratives of homeless women and men in two cities – Yellowknife and Inuvik. What emerges is a larger story of displacement and intergenerational trauma, hope and renewal. Figuring out what it means to be homeless within the North and the way Indigenous folks take into accounts home and homemaking is step one, Christensen argues, at the path to decolonizing existing approaches and practices.