I grew up in a small native community. My home was stereotypically native: abusive relationships dominated my younger years and permeate every aspect of my life today. My family, friends, and community have seen, and continue to see, disproportionate levels of murder, suicide, violence, sexual abuse, prostitution, alcoholism, drug addiction, emotional abuse, homelessness, and poverty and the criminality that follows from all of this.

We feel the intergenerational effects of residential schools, dislocation, and many other policies designed to civilize and assimilate us at best, and to exterminate us at worst. Every native person I know has, to varying degrees, lost his or her language, traditional knowledge, and sense of identity and belonging as native people.

I grew up in a town, province, and country that reinforced this as the dominant narrative about native people, except when we parade out a few traditional-looking natives to show off an integral part of the rich tapestry of the Canadian identity and imagination, and then congratulate ourselves for being so tolerant and multicultural.

When I moved to an urban centre to attend university, I noticed that the native people I saw in the city fit the stereotype: they were homeless, jobless, hopeless.