Finding Home
As cities across Canada failed their unhoused populations, one Indigenous-led camp in Edmonton offered support
As cities across Canada failed their unhoused populations, one Indigenous-led camp in Edmonton offered support
last july, an encampment appeared on an unassuming two-acre plot of grass in Edmonton,almost in the shadow of the Alberta Legislature Building. A collective of outreach workers and advocacy groups erected a tipi and a few tents and started a sacred fire. They were there to increase visibility of the sometimes brutal treatment of unhoused people and to aid Indigenous people in a country where, due to colonization, they are more likely to be homeless than non-indigenous people are.
Intentionally established on an ancestral Indigenous gathering and burial place, the camp was named Pekiwewin, Cree for “coming home.” It quickly began welcoming unhoused people, offering critical essentials like food, water, and ceremony. Within weeks, the camp grew to around 170 tents and served 400 people. Elders offered prayers, volunteers prepared meals and handed out supplies, and medics stood by in case of emergencies.
Lack of access to safe, affordable housing has been a rising issue in Canadian cities for years, with 235,000 people experiencing homelessness each year. In Edmonton, the covid-19 pandemic upended services for the city’s approximately 1,900 unhoused people in a way that made survival difficult. Restrictions for physical distancing meant they had even less access to basic needs like food, health care, and housing support. The Alberta government committed $48 million to expanding emergency shelter space and funding services, and opened new spaces with more beds, but many in the city’s homeless community preferred to avoid a shelter’s proscriptive rules and close quarters — particularly concerning during a pandemic — and found safety and support in Pekiwewin.
Camp organizers called for the city to divest $39 million from Edmonton police, waive transit fares, and put an end to tent-slashing and bylaws that target homeless people. Pekiwewin called itself a prayer camp; officials saw it as a protest camp. It stood for more than a hundred days and closed in November, under threat of eviction. The next day, a city-run shelter hit capacity and had to turn people away in the midst of a snowstorm. And, within days, police evicted those who remained at Pekiwewin. Camp organizers and officials agree that there are no shortterm solutions to homelessness, but the pandemic has forced a reckoning. And no one wants things to go back to the way they were.
amber bracken is an Edmonton-based photographer who has been published in National Geographic, the New York Times, and the Globe and Mail.