“Home has always been at the heart of our self-government”: Housing, home and Indigenous self-determination in Fort Good Hope, Canada

Abstract

The colonial geographies of northern and Indigenous housing have long been the focus of research attention, particularly the transformative and destructive role the assimilative power of social welfare has played in State interventions into Indigenous lives at the bodily, familial, community and national scales. Recent literature in the areas of northern and Indigenous housing has underscored the need for increased community self-determination over housing in order to uproot structures of colonial domination and attend to specific cultural and contextual realities, visions and needs—necessary for the sustainable alleviation of a longstanding “housing crisis” in northern Canada. This paper examines differing discourses of Indigenous self-determination through recent efforts by the K'ásho Goťįne Housing Society (KGHS) – an Indigenous community housing organization – and the territorial and federal governments to promote Indigenous self-governance of housing. Drawing on critical analyses of self-determination led by Indigenous scholars, and engaging a series of qualitative interviews with Indigenous and settler policymakers and housing administrators at the community, territorial and federal levels, we examine how differing Indigenous and settler conceptualizations of the self-determination of housing are evident in critical barriers presented by the governance of land and the “compartmentalization” of home. Ultimately, we argue that full self-determination of Indigenous home through housing is fundamentally impeded by current housing governance processes, though the multiscalar nature of Indigenous home simultaneously challenges the capitalist, settler-colonial structures holding up these processes, and also cultivates the everyday, placed-based resistance of the individual, family and community by creating space to imagine housing through Indigenous epistemologies.