Indians on Skid Row
Paperback, 86 pages
ASIN: B003OG2ITS
Published 1971 by Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Ottawa
Digitized edition from print [produced by Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada].
Includes bibliographical references.
Edition Language: English
Issued also in French under the title: Les Indiens dans le quartier interlope
Indians on Skid Row: the Role of Alcohol and Community in the Adaptive Process of Indian Urban Migrants
Note from Hugh
In 1969 I spent five months living in and near the skid row area of Edmonton.This was a project commissioned by the then Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, through its Northern Science Research Group. It was my first experience of working and living in Canada, and a remarkable opportunity to enter very quickly and directly into the challenges faced by many Aboriginal people who, at that time, were experiencing severe dislocation from both heritage and lands.
I also discovered in an extreme social environment the way many First Nation and Metis people would offer generous friendship to those they saw to be vulnerable and in need. It was a project that also introduced me to the bureaucracy of “Indian Affairs” - with its blend of supportive and developmental mentalities. In particular, it was through this project that I met Moose Kerr, Graham Rowley and Peter Usher - people who would for the following decades be among the most important allies in project after project in the Canadian north.
Living on Skid Row convinced me that the Indian Friendship Centre should be given far more direct support, and that economic development projects should seek to build reliance on indigenous resources and skills. I recommended that these be given very high priority in ongoing policy decisions. The beginning of a long series of appeals to government.
Abstract
The life style of Indian migrants in a skid row community of a large urban centre is the basis of this study. The sources of income as well as the nature of drinking in the community are detailed.
The Socio-economic position of the Indian migrants, it is argued, is that of lumpen proletarean: he is dislocated from both mainstream economic opportunities and traditional or pseudo-traditional Indian life. In the light of this socio-economic position it becomes possible to understand the attractions and advantages of a skid row milieu. Displaced as the Indian migrant is from any economic structure, white middle-class values can have no force: acceptance of such values, it is argued, would be irrational. Persistent drinking is intelligible in that light. By means of analysis of Indian-white skid row interaction, the recurrent violence of skid row can also be better understood. The principal finding of the study can be summarized: skid row resolves the most acute difficulties facing the Indian migrant — the very difficulties which mainstream or middle-class urban life tend most acutely to aggravate.
