How to find room for urban aboriginal people in nation-to-nation relationships

According to the 2011 Census, nearly 60 per cent of aboriginal Canadians live in cities. So when Justin Trudeau and the new Liberal government promised to build a new "nation-to-nation" relationship with First Nations, it left some urban aboriginal advocates wondering what that means for them.

Christine Smith-Martin, the executive director of the Vancouver Aboriginal Transformative Justice Services Society, says it's time for a new approach. 

The full interview is available in the audio player above. The following portions have been edited for clarity and length. 

Prime Minister Trudeau has promised to build a nation-to-nation relationship with First Nations. How do you think that relationship will account for all of the aboriginal people who live in cities? 

Well, I first want to acknowledge the amazing work that we've seen in this little time that the new prime minister has taken his office ... I'm not going to lie, I think we're a little concerned about how this is going to roll out in the urban aboriginal community. It leaves out a huge population of approximately 65 per cent of us who don't live on our reserves, and not many of us have connections to the bands that we come from. Some of our people who live here in Vancouver have never been to the band that they come from, let alone be active participants in it. 

Because they were born in the city and just stayed there? 

Yeah, because they were born in the city and just stayed there, and they don't really have that many connections to home communities. So we really want to make sure — you know, give him enough time to have those talks with the First Nations, and then we're hoping his next plan is, how do we reach the rest of the 65 per cent of this indigenous community? And, you know, with the urban communities, we're all different, just the same way the First Nations are all different. Vancouver is a lot different from Winnipeg, from Calgary, from Edmonton — so this could almost take that same approach, that we're not all the same, that we're very different. 

Even the language — when you hear nation-to-nation, does that even make sense if we're talking about an urban context?

Well, it definitely wouldn't in our situation, because we are a melting pot here in Vancouver. We have every single nation from across Canada that is a part of our community here. We have approximately 65,000 people here in the greater Vancouver area that are aboriginal, so you can imagine the diversity that we have within that. 

If the new federal government wants to improve its relationship with aboriginal city-dwellers — so over and above the nation-to-nation relationship with First Nations councils that was discussed this week — what would you recommend? 

I would recommend that he come and speak with us. I'm putting out the invitation to the prime minister to come into our urban communities and have conversations with us. I think that we will be a valuable asset to them. And we have already in place an urban aboriginal strategy that is not funded as well as it should be, and it doesn't work specifically with the communities. So there is a measure in place — he just needs to expand on that and have those conversations. Maybe he has a gathering that's all of the urban communities coming together and having that discussion with them. I think that's the whole picture. 

Click the blue button above to listen to the full interview.