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"\u201Ckap\u012Btipis \u0113-pimohteyahk: Aboriginal Street youth in Vancouver, Winnipeg and Montreal\u201D\r\nseeks to gain insight into life on city streets for Aboriginal youth: why they go to the street, how they\r\nsurvive, what kinds of services they are more likely to use, what changes they envision for services\r\nprovided to them, and finally to recommend corresponding changes in service delivery and\r\npreventative measures. The primary interest is their perceptions of their experiences on the Street\r\n\u2014 as Aboriginal people \u2014 as much as possible in their own voice, and in such a way as to\r\ncontextualize their lives in Canadian structural colonial history and in modern urban terms.\r\nUtilizing a critical case study method, in-depth interviews were conducted with nine youth,\r\nages 14-20, currently involved in urban Street life and two people who have lived on the street in\r\nthe past. To contextualize their experiences, several parents of street youth and street services\r\npersonnel in Vancouver, Winnipeg and Montreal were interviewed, although with less depth. Each\r\ncity has an Aboriginal population in excess of 35,000.\r\nThe literature on street youth in general is growing, but a paucity of information exists on\r\nAboriginal street youth experience in Canada, even though they are over-represented in the street\r\nyouth population in most cities. By placing Aboriginal street youth in the larger context of\r\nmainstream society and the urban environment, and by highlighting the role of current and historical\r\nstructural impacts, this research has been able to access a holistic view of their lives.\r\nThe interviews suggest that Aboriginal street youth run to the streets for many of the same\r\nreasons as any other street youth, and once they get there their methods of survival are also\r\nsomewhat the same as those of many runaways. Their cultural backgrounds, history, and structural\r\nconditions at point of origin are, however, different from non-Aboriginal street youth. These\r\nconditions make them subject to harsher conditions in state care situations (a common entry-point\r\nto street life) and on the street. Many experience overt racism, in addition to the stigmatization that\r\nstreet people encounter, in their everyday lives. The youth interviewed told of identity confusion\r\nand self hatred, dislocation from home and surrogate parent communities, difficulty in reunification,\r\nand ignorance about Aboriginal rights, history and culture.\r\nThe nature of the relationship between Aboriginality and being a young street person is\r\nclearly established in that ethnicity was a salient factor in the antecedents to street life and in the\r\nconditions once on the street. Interviews with former street persons suggest that race and culture\r\ncontinue to be salient in the process of leaving the street and in staying off the street."@en
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