Production weaves together voices of the homeless

The Housing First program in Edmonton has participated in an exciting project with the city’s Aboriginal population. Susan McGee is executive director and stated that many homeless people self-identify themselves as Aboriginal and often have travelled a journey impacted by residential school experiences.

“These circumstances are unique to them and we needed to conduct a research program so we could determine how to help them and how to use funds for an Aboriginal housing team,” she said.

Housing First is an initiative which has proven successful in recent years in urban communities, replacing the old emergency/shelter temporary model of assistance.
Working with Blue Quills First Nations College, stories of Aboriginal participants in the Housing First program were told through an interactive play.

Ralph Bodor, associate professor at University of Calgary but based in Edmonton, has worked extensively in rural, remote and Aboriginal communities. “He ensured an honourary and traditional approach to research was accomplished, with the narrative and the storytelling through the interviews, yet presented in a conventional way in terms of a proposal,” said McGee.  “He recognized the many common themes amongst the stories.”

With storytelling a traditional component of the Aboriginal culture, it was an easy step to decide to pull them together in the medium of a play. There was a respectful process through which Bodor or his associates interviewed people who had lived on the streets for many years. Matt Mackenzie was the playwright who took all of those stories and amazingly translated them into a shared perspective, said McGee.

“There were 25 different interviews that were given, some quite lengthy, so we pulled all of those conversations together, and what really comes across is four voices. It’s a narration, without any interaction between characters, but it represents people who were homeless and are now in a program,” she explained. “With their housing accomplished, they can now consider their own identity, and how they can work through other issues.”

In some cases, coming to grips with those issues has been a struggle.

The launch of the play was held in August to a stakeholder audience, not open to the public at this time, said McGee. “Frontline organizations and others connected to the Housing First program found the presentation helpful and got some guidance from that perspective.”

It’s hoped the production created a broader understanding of the Housing First program and how it’s experienced by Aboriginal partners who are being housed.

“There needs to be support for cultural identity and the journey that they’re on and it’s all a learning process that the practitioners will add to their evidence-based hard core numbers and statistics, putting a more human face on the research findings,” said McGee.

The non-Aboriginal staff and participants are also becoming more aware of the unique circumstances and viewpoints of their Aboriginal participants in the process.
“It’s much more personal,” McGee said. “It’s really all about what’s in our heads being connected to our hearts.”    
    
Caption: Members of Old Earth Productions performed, “Perspectives on the Housing First Program,” written by local playwright, Matthew Mackenzie, and based on the Blue Quills First Nations College’s research project, “Perspectives on the Housing First Project with Indigenous Participants.”