‘Smacks of deportation:’ Mayor’s office pitch on helping DTES Indigenous residents relocate gets pushback

A leaked memo proposed helping Indigenous people living on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside to leave the city, an idea critics say “smacks of deportation.”

First Nations leaders and frontline service providers are pushing back against a leaked memo suggesting the City of Vancouver should convene a roundtable focused on helping Indigenous people living on the Downtown Eastside move out of the city and return to their home communities.

At an estimated 31 per cent, the neighbourhood has the highest proportion of Indigenous residents in the city – and for many, it is the only home they have ever known.

There is no other home community for them to return to.

“A lot of people, especially urban natives, don’t have the opportunity to learn where they’re from or practise their culture,” said Jade Diamond Doolan with the All Nations Outreach Society.

The society is known for promoting First Nations cultural practices and helping people reconnect with relatives, and sometimes return to their home communities.

That might be why it is mentioned as a potential partner in a leaked memo from Trevor Ford, Mayor Ken Sim’s chief of staff.

The document, marked ‘Confidential’, includes a section about creating a ‘Reunification roundtable’.

“Many members of the Indigenous community have expressed a desire to live in their home communities,” the memo says.

It is framed as a step towards reconciliation – but critics don’t see it that way.

“This notion of removing people from their home that they’ve enjoyed for a number of decades, and sending them home, smacks of deportation,” said Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs. “That’s really what it is and that’s never going to happen.”

Phillip believes a plan from the mayor’s office to rejuvenate the neighbourhood does not come from a place of compassion for the people who currently live there but is an attempt to move vulnerable residents out and gentrify the area.

“The dream on the part of the city council has always been to transform the Downtown Eastside into another Yaletown,” he said.

The mayor insists nobody will be forced out of the neighbourhood and – despite the memo specifically singling out Indigenous people – says the offer to return home could apply to anybody.

“This isn’t just addressed to Indigenous peoples. It’s for anyone who, at some point in time, if they express a desire to go back to their home community,” Sim said. “On a case-by-case basis, we will do whatever we can from the City of Vancouver’s perspective to empathetically and compassionately help them out.”

Both Doolan and Phillip say Indigenous people seeking reconnection can do so in multiple ways and not all involve moving out of the city.

They say it can be emotional reconnection with family, spiritual reconnection with culture, and sometimes physical relocation – or a combination of all three.

Doolan was unaware the All Nations Outreach Society had been mentioned in Ford’s memo.

He invites the politicians and bureaucrats to join volunteers on the streets helping people if they really care about the neighbourhood.

“They need to be a part of this community to help this community,” Doolan said. “They can’t just make a decision and tell other people to do it. People will listen to people that they trust.”

For many local residents, the connections and trust built with their friends and neighbours are the reason they call the Downtown Eastside home.