A man runs to catch the 505 streetcar. A woman enters the Gap on the corner of Yonge and Dundas. A senior ties his shoes as he waits for his wife to leave the Eaton Centre. James Ignace, Bruce Matinet, and Bradley Matinet sit on the hard, cold sidewalk of one of the busiest corners in the country, and serves as a backdrop to these men’s lives.

“Some people stop and give us change, some look and smile, some walk past like we are invisible,” said Bruce.

They are three aboriginal brothers who are homeless in their own land. And they are not alone.

In Toronto, Aboriginal Peoples make up only one per cent of the total population, but account for 25 per cent of the homeless population.

For the past three months I’ve been getting to know these brothers, hoping to learn their story.
James Ignace is 29-years-old, and has been living on the streets of Toronto since 1998. He is originally from Lac Seul First Nations reserve.

“There was nothing to do in the bush,” said Ignace as he sat on Yonge Street panhandling. “That’s why I like it here in the city.”

Ignace is polite and always has a smile on his face. For him, everything is “OK.”

Bruce Matinet’s life has changed drastically from the elementary school days when he won spelling bees.  Matinet previously lived on the Whitesand Indian reserve.  He’s been living on the streets of Toronto for five years.

The 28-year-old was recently released from prison, where he spent 14 months for assaulting a man with a weapon.

“I was fighting this guy, and he tried to hit me with a broom stick. He missed, so I grabbed it from him and beat him with it,” said Bruce, while eating a Big Mac.

Addictions

As we sat in the McDonald’s on Yonge Street, Bruce saw a homeless woman sitting on the ground across the street. He got up, grabbed his fries and gave them to her.

“That woman has addictions just like me,” he said as he came back to his seat.

Then there is 25-year-old Bradley Matinet. During the past three months, I haven’t seen him sober. Whenever he’s around, Bruce is taking care of him because he is too drunk to function on his own.

“Me and my brothers are god damn close,” said Bruce.

The dirty corner in O'Keefe Lane the brothers call home.

Like many homeless Aboriginal Peoples, these three brothers have an alcohol problem.
“Alcohol is a disease for young Natives,” said Ignace. “It buries the hurt.”

William Kaminawash, 45, a counsellor at Canada’s largest aboriginal shelter, the Native Men’s Residence (Na-Me-Res) in Toronto, agrees with Ignace and adds that residential schools are the main cause of this hurt.

Residential Schools

Canadian churches ran more than 120 residential schools in Canada between 1831 and 1998.  In 1998, the Department of Indian Affairs estimated that approximately 107,000 people who attended these schools were still alive.

“Alcoholism is not a problem, it is a symptom of residential schools,” said Kaminawash, who, like many Canadians, thinks Aboriginal children were sent to these schools not to learn, but to erase everything they knew.

There is documented abuse within these schools involving rape, beatings and children having to endure needles pushed through their tongues or made to wear soiled underwear on their heads because they spoke aboriginal languages.

According to Kaminawash, residential schools did not allow Aboriginal Peoples to develop parenting skills. “They were not able to become good, caring people,” he said.

This loss hits home for Kaminawash because his father was a victim of residential school abuse. “My father was an alcoholic at times,” said Kaminawash. “He has never said ‘I love you’ to me.”

Kaminawash said that Aboriginal Peoples like himseIf, and Ignace and his brothers, are the second generation who have been impacted by residential schools, and considers himself lucky for being able to break out of this circle that imprisons so many others.

The 'Baby Scoop'

As residential schools started to close in the 1960s, another form of assimilation, nicknamed the “baby scoop,” became common. It was a program that allowed the Children’s Aid Society to come into aboriginal homes and take their children.

As part of this second generation, Ignace said he and his brothers experienced the baby scoop first hand. “C.S. (Childrens Aid Society) took all of us from mom and dad when we were five,” he said.

“We were given to a Croatian family who lived in Thunder Bay,” he remembered.  “I hated it there.  They abused me and my brothers.”

Taking aboriginal children from their parents continued for more than 20 years.  It is an issue that Roger Abonsawin, chair of the Aboriginal Peoples Council of Toronto (APCT) has brought up in discussions with both Paul Martin and former prime minister Jean Chretien. 

“There are still policies today that…try to assimilate Aboriginals,” he said. “Education on the reserve is much lower, and doesn’t prepare kids for high school.”

In Canada, many aboriginal children can study only until Grade 8 on the reserve and if they wish to obtain a higher level of education they have to leave their community and go to the nearest town.

Often, when aboriginal teenagers enter high school they find themselves behind other teens – they don’t have the knowledge, materials or even clothes that the rest of the students are equipped with.

“Everyday they see the things they don’t have, this becomes a reminder of their disadvantage,” said Na-Me-Res counsellor Kaminawash.

According to Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 70 per cent of First Nations students who live on a reserve will never complete high school.

Education was a major issue in a Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples report released by the UN last year.  It stated that, “There is no system, no education accountability, no goals, or objectives, and in many cases investments in Aboriginal education face comparative disparities.”

The report, issued by the UN Human Rights Commission stresses that Canada’s top 10 ranking on the UN’s human development scale would drop to 48 if it was judged solely on the economic and social well-being of its First Nations people.

In Toronto, homelessness is only one issue aboriginal organizations are fighting. Others, including infant mortality, suicide, criminal detention, and child prostitution, are all higher amongst Aboriginal Peoples.

Walter Lindston, manager of the Babishkhan unit at Anishnawbe Health Toronto, says curing the spirit will put an end to all of these issues.

“Aboriginal people are sick, very sick,” he said.  “Here at Anishnawbe we have the tools to help people through the violence and abuse they have endured.”

Lindston wishes he could help more people, but Anishnawbe Health has reached full capacity.
“I put a referral for a new building five years ago,” he said. “Look at this little clinic, I only have three vans and seven outreach workers.”

As successful as Na-Me-Res and Anishnawbe Health have been, both centres acknowledge there is still a lot of work to be done.  Everyday more young Aboriginals fall into the deadly cycle of poverty and alcoholism.  Those who are in it, find it harder and harder to escape.

“When I try to stop drinking, I do more crack,” said Ignace, who feels completely lost in Toronto. “This is a concrete jungle,” he said looking up at the skyscrapers.

Urban Influx

More and more Aboriginal Peoples are moving into urban centres like Toronto – the APCT said that 60, 000 now live in the GTA.

At one time Aboriginal Peoples migrated to follow herds; today they migrate to find jobs and obtain a better education.

“I went down the wrong god damn path,” said Bruce Matinet.

Recently, after water contamination was discovered in Kashechewan, Ont., aboriginal issues became a hot topic again. At last year’s Aboriginal summit in Kelowna B.C., Prime Minister Paul Martin, wearing a traditional Metis buckskin jacket, said that Canadians have to tackle unacceptable gaps in education and housing, as well as the shortfall in health-care Aboriginal Peoples face.

Another issue revolved around those like Ignace, who make up 4.4 per cent of the Canadian population, but account for 17 per cent of people in prison.

He has over 70 convictions and was recently arrested again. “I was sleeping in front of City Hall when they caught me,” he told me from behind a glass partition at the Don jail. “I had missed a court date a couple weeks ago, I slept right through it.

“There are a lot of other natives here,” he noted. “We play cards and talk.”

He says he is trying to get off the streets.

Before he was arrested he was trying to get housing through Na-Me-Res, but he missed his appointments. “I want to get a place for me,” he said. “I was going to get housing, but I get distracted with the crack, and the wine,” he said.

This distraction Ignace speaks of is a common thread in the lives of these three brothers.
In a regular day Bruce sits in front of Burger King until he makes $6.65 panhandling – the price of a cheap bottle of wine. Then he makes his way to the LCBO on Dundas Street. After he buys a bottle, he finds a homeless friend and downs it.

When asked if he drank about four times a day, Bruce responded with, “Times that by 12, that’s how many times I drink a day.”

One morning, Bruce had just returned from the hospital. His friends had taken him there because he got into a big fight the night before.

He told me that the doctor didn’t know whether he was bleeding internally, or whether it was the wine.
“What kind of a doctor is that?” he asked.

Theirs is one story that highlights the hopelessness and lack of resources thousands of Aboriginal Peoples face in Canada, forcing them into homelessness. Some think the $1.2 billion the Government recently announced for housing will help, but others believe the money won’t have an effect on Aboriginals like these brothers.

The damage has already been done.  They are already caught in the cycle.

But to James Ignace, it’s “just life.”

 He says he feels no hate for Canadians, and believes what goes around, comes around.

“Evolution my friend,” said Ignace with a smile. “Maybe one day we will take it back.”