Indigeneity,Immigrant Newcomers and Interculturalism in Winnipeg,Canada

Introduction

Canada’s population of 32.9 million at the 2011 National Household Survey included 3.5 per cent immigrant newcomers (i.e. people who have lived in Canada for less than five years) and 4.3 per cent Aboriginal peoples (Statistics Canada, 2013a, 2013b). ¹ Indigenous peoples in many settler countries are highly urbanised, following national population trends. In Canada, roughly 54 per cent of the Aboriginal population live in urban centres (Statistics Canada, 2008). In Australia and New Zealand, the figures are 76 per cent and 85 per cent respectively (Kukutai, 2013; Taylor, 2013). Like Canada, these countries have significant rates of immigration from other countries, mostly to cities. Indigenous peoples and immigrant newcomers are embedded economically, culturally and politically in the urban fabric of modern settler states.

In this paper, we examine the ways in which Indigeneity is influencing the integration of immigrant newcomers in Winnipeg, a census metropolitan area of 714,640 at the 2011 National Household Survey, contributing to the emerging framework of intercultural urbanism. Immigrant newcomers comprise roughly 6 per cent of Winnipeg’s population, while immigrants (i.e. foreign-born) in general make up close to 21 per cent (Statistics Canada, 2013a). The three most common countries of birth of immigrants in Winnipeg are the Philippines (30 per cent), India (8 per cent) and the United Kingdom (6 per cent) and the three largest (non-Aboriginal) visible minority groups are Filipino, South Asian and Black (Statistics Canada, 2013a). Winnipeg has the highest proportion of its population comprised of Aboriginals among large Canadian cities, at 11 per cent overall, of which about 7 per cent are Métis and 4 per cent are First Nations (Statistics Canada, 2013b). Aboriginal peoples and newcomers are living side-by-side, with Aboriginals representing a larger proportion of the population (20 per cent) than newcomers (4 per cent) in Winnipeg’s inner-city neighbourhoods (Carter, 2009).

By taking a rare position of occupying a leadership role for orienting newcomers to Winnipeg and Canada, Ka Ni Kanichihk Inc.—the focus of our case study—is producing space for intercultural relationships, articulating Indigeneity and in effect taking steps to decolonise the city. Decolonising the city requires decentring ‘Western’ Eurocentric authority over procedural and substantive knowledge that presumes cultural neutrality in the physical, social, economic, aesthetic and political production of space (Jacobs, 1996; Shaw, 2006). Ka Ni Kanichihk (KNK) is a not-for-profit community-based Aboriginal human services organisation in Winnipeg which was created and is governed by First Nations and Métis people. The translation of the phrase “Ka Ni Kanichihk”, from the Ininew (Cree) language, means “those who lead”. ² The organisation begins from a rich inheritance of traditional teachings, languages, practices, customs and values from their ancestors and engages in processes aimed at decolonising urban life and embedding Indigeneity in a variety of sectors throughout the Winnipeg community. The specific focus of our research is on United Against Racism (UAR)-Aboriginal Youth Circle (AYC), a branch of KNK that addresses community-level racism in Winnipeg’s inner city and empowers Aboriginal youth through anti-racism training programmes. The UAR-AYC branch collaborates with newcomer settlement organisations (for example, the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organisation of Manitoba) and other community organisations (for example, the Institute for Community Peacebuilding) to build two types of cross-cultural relations: Aboriginal awareness among newcomers; and cultural exchange between Aboriginals and newcomers.

Awareness and exchange are pursued mainly through the delivery of the Aboriginal Awareness Workshop and Youth Peacebuilding Gathering programmes respectively. The Aboriginal Awareness Workshop programme was designed by staff at KNK in the UAR-AYC branch and delivered as part of newcomer orientation programmes and English as an Additional Language initiatives offered by newcomer settlement organisations and language training schools. The monthly workshops welcome newcomers into the traditional territory of Aboriginal peoples and educate them about First Nation, Métis and Inuit histories and cultures. The Winnipeg Youth Peacebuilding Gathering programme is a summer camp that brings Aboriginal and newcomer youth together, organised annually in partnership between the Institute for Community Peacebuilding, the UAR-AYC branch at KNK and several other community organisations. Newcomer participants experience cultural practices such as the First Nation sweat lodge, smudging, traditional foods and spiritual beliefs. Aboriginal participants learn about Muslim culture and spirituality, African drumming and dancing, and ethnic foods. Youth enjoy a variety of cookout nights, recreation and drama skits, among other things, and meet in facilitated dialogue groups to talk about self-expression, identity groups and cross-cultural relationships.

The Winnipeg context and the presence and role of KNK in immigrant integration and cross-cultural relationship building initiatives provided a rare opportunity to examine an area of importance in cities across Canada and throughout Western settler states. Our central argument in this paper is that the initiatives led by KNK are creating spaces of interaction between Aboriginals and newcomers in Winnipeg, contributing to intercultural communities at the local scale. The case study makes clear that Aboriginal community organisations can assert the place and rights of Aboriginal peoples as original occupants of Canada, and re-engage as hosts to orient new waves of newcomers to Canada in ways that generate mutual understanding and respect and the dynamic potential of intercultural urbanism. We argue that this is an important function in the cultural and political project of 21st-century urban Indigeneity.

The next section examines the conceptual intersections between immigration, Indigeneity and Aboriginal community organisations working at the urban scale, and interculturalism, building to a point of departure for our research. It is followed by a discussion of research methods. Results that explore how spaces of engagement have been created and a foundation built for intercultural urbanism between Aboriginals and newcomers are then interpreted. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the results.

Immigration, Indigeneity, Interculturalism and Decolonising the City

In Canada, all senior levels of government (i.e. federal and provincial) and many municipal governments have developed or are implementing settlement and integration programmes to attract and retain newcomers (Garcea, 2006). In many large Canadian cities, the Aboriginal population also accounts for a significant and rising proportion of the total urban population and is generally a younger population. For example, in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba by 2017 it is estimated that Aboriginal people aged 20–29 could make up 30 and 24 per cent respectively of people in their twenties (Statistics Canada, 2008). The continuous increase in Canada’s overall urban population is fuelled by immigrant newcomers and in some cities a growing young Aboriginal population (Townshend and Walker, 2010). By the 1990s, nearly 80 per cent of newcomers to Canada were coming from countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean (Townshend and Walker, 2010). Social diversity on the basis of visible minority status and ethnicity has increased the social mix in Canada with important implications for urban life. One implication is the search for “voice mechanisms and new forms of collaboration” within ethnically diversifying urban neighbourhoods (Cornelius and Martinez Lucio, 2012, p. 589).

Historically, Aboriginal peoples were the original receiving communities and source of assistance to newcomers coming to this land. In spite of their many cultural differences, Aboriginal peoples welcomed and helped to integrate the early European newcomers and taught them how to live in their new climate and landscapes, extended friendship, traded, intermarried and made it safer and easier for them to settle in Canada (Saul, 2008). John Ralston Saul (2008) concludes that Canada has been significantly shaped by the influence of Aboriginal peoples and not, as some may mistakenly assume, exclusively from the ideas and concepts inherited from Europe. Notable examples of practices that originated from Aboriginal peoples include the creation of inclusive deliberative circles for decision-making that have raised Canada’s esteem internationally in diplomacy and peace-keeping, and the legal concept of common-law partnership (Saul, 2008). In effect, intercultural relationships between Aboriginal peoples and settler peoples have created many attributes of what we value as our ‘Canadian’ (hybrid) culture and institutions.

In this paper, we pick up the historical thread of relationships between Aboriginal peoples and what were originally European newcomers to Canada, and move forward in time to examine what present-day cross-cultural relations with newcomers to Canadian cities have arisen from settlement and integration assistance from Aboriginal peoples through their urban organisations. With hundreds of thousands of immigrant newcomers arriving in Canadian cities each year and the rate of population increase among Aboriginal peoples higher than the mainstream Canadian urban population, it would seem culturally advantageous for Aboriginal peoples through their community organisations to take a leadership role in building cross-cultural relations with present-day newcomers. Arguably this would ensure that newcomers have an understanding of the history, contributions and challenges of Aboriginal peoples, and would help build cross-cultural relationships that strengthen social cohesion.

Claude Denis (1997) uses the concept of ‘Aboriginality’ to signify a comprehensive cultural project that brings the inherency of Aboriginal ways of life and the international right of Indigenous self-determination to bear on how we understand the relationship between Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal peoples. Roger Maaka and Augie Fleras (2005) use the concept of ‘Indigeneity’ to encapsulate a broad political project to re-assert Indigenous rights in the universe of political discourse in settler states. In this paper, we employ the term Indigeneity, but combine the cultural and political components in a way that represents the composite efforts by Indigenous communities to create Indigenous-inclusive citizenship in modern cities and settler nation-states.

Cities have historically been critical to the establishment of the colonial state and continue to be the key sites for the reproduction of modern colonial relations (Stanger-Ross, 2008). They are also within the treaty, traditional, and settlement areas of Indigenous peoples. Scholars have grappled with how to give effect to Indigenous-inclusive citizenship in cities where the public sphere is perceived as culturally neutral by the general public and municipal authorities (Shaw, 2007; Walker and Barcham, 2010). Leonie Sandercock (2003) points out that cities of the 21st century will be the sites where we need to rewrite the Canadian modern mytho-poetic story in a way that embraces Aboriginal cultures and viewpoints. The cultural and political project of Indigeneity stands in contrast to the tendency in Canadian public discourse to engage in what Denis (1997) calls ‘whitestreaming’. Linked to this, a series of discourses centred on cultural neutrality, colour blindness and universal citizenship provides mainstream societal institutions and people with a workable rationale for setting aside Indigeneity (Walker, 2006).

Wendy Shaw (2007) shows how Whiteness in Sydney, Australia, operates as a set of privilege-making processes and codified practices that are flexible and place-based, suppressing and displacing Aboriginal people and culture. Self-governing Aboriginal urban organisations in sectors like housing, health, education and child and family services have enriched the complexity of Aboriginal cultures in the city and pushed back against the systemic power of Whiteness (Peters, 2005; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996; Silver, 2006; Walker, 2008). They have done so through their own urban leaders, most often women; their approaches have been consistent with Aboriginal cultural values of community and sharing (Silver, 2006). By and large, however, these organisations have focused inward on Aboriginal communities of interest in cities (DeVerteuil and Wilson, 2010). The next logical step to positioning self-determination in support of Aboriginal density and complexity in urban areas (Andersen, 2009) is to develop Aboriginal initiatives through self-governing organisations that engage the non-Aboriginal community, particularly immigrant newcomers. This is important because it may permit modern cultural hybridity in ways that are led by the strength of Aboriginal cultures in ways that are not fixed in a static idyllic past or in negative modern misperceptions of a ‘whitestream’ society. Our paper investigates the extent to which KNK is resituating Indigeneity in the perceived and lived experience of newcomers in the city, in spite of the pervasive power of Whiteness.

The role of community organisations (for example, Aboriginal self-governing urban organisations, immigrant newcomer settlement and support organisations) is important in creating the spaces of interaction where new intercultural dimensions of social, economic, political and material spatiality of the city can be produced (MacKenzie et al., 2012). The importance of their role is magnified by the diminishing role of the state in newcomer settlement services and the augmented role of non-statutory, civil society organisations, often working together in partnership (Cornelius and Martinez Lucio, 2012; MacKenzie et al., 2012). Just as urban Aboriginal organisations have become the tools for manifesting self-determination among communities of interest in cities (Peters, 2005; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996), it will arguably be Aboriginal and newcomer community organisations that facilitate the generation of intercultural trust through meeting and exchange (Deuchar, 2011).

The role of urban areas themselves in producing and reproducing their own intercultural spatiality is critical as cities become “microcosms of the world in all its teeming diversity” (Wood and Landry, 2008, p. 25). In his examination of the American Indian Movement in the US, Bruce D’Arcus (2010, p. 1242) concludes that the city is not a “passive container” but rather a “dynamic field” providing the spaces of interaction for resistance and identity formation that in turn reach from the urban locality into national and international scales of influence (Routledge, 2010). Our research examines a collaboration within a Western city where ethnic/racial diversity issues are a key feature of how urban spaces are transforming (Cornelius and Martinez Lucio, 2012).

Settlement and integration services take place within both macro and micro scales within a country’s realm of political, social and cultural discourses. At the macro scale, Canada has adopted multiculturalism as its official federal policy (Fleras and Elliott, 2002). Even against the policy backdrop of a multicultural society, scholars must do more to understand how intercultural citizenship practices can be cultivated (Wood and Landry, 2008), so that citizens are “curious rather than fearful about other peoples and cultures” and “open to learning about other ways of life”, learning how civic issues look from other cultural vantage points (Kymlicka, 2003, p. 157).

Leonie Sandercock (2003) argues that we must move well beyond macro-level citizenship policy and legislation and engage more fully in the active construction of new ways of living together, new forms of spatial and social belonging and the long-term process of building communities during which fears and anxieties are not simply dismissed but worked through by the receiving society and newcomers. In our research, we ask: who holds the privileged position of ‘host’ to newcomers in the Western city? And why, when there is a growing number of Aboriginal-run urban community organisations focused on the needs and aspirations of Aboriginal people (Peters, 2005), should we be satisfied with whitestreaming our newcomer settlement and integration processes, perhaps the most important early building blocks of social cohesion between the receiving community and newcomers? In the spaces of interaction produced at the micro scale, who delivers these services on the ground will have an impact on the development of cross-cultural relations. Our paper investigates the development and impact of these spaces of interaction.

Multiculturalist and interculturalist frameworks both share some key principles: the principle of recognition; pluralism and the politics of difference; and the principle of reasonable accommodation (Bouchard, 2011; Qadeer and Agrawal, 2011; Taylor, 1994). In practice, both multiculturalism and interculturalism facilitate the integration of minority ethno-cultural groups, especially newcomers, into the broader mainstream host society. They each require programmes and facilities at the community level that facilitate cross-cultural exchange (Sandercock, 2003). The main difference between the two frameworks is that multiculturalism centres upon respectful co-existence, side-by-side, of multiple cultures. Interculturalism, on the other hand, focuses on the relationships between cultural groups and the creation of space for hybrid cultures and citizenship practices (Fleras and Elliott, 2002; Sandercock, 2003). Gérard Bouchard explains that from the interculturalist framework stems

the idea that beyond and separate from ethnocultural diversity, elements of a common culture (or a national culture) begin to take shape, giving birth to a belonging and an identity that grafts itself onto initial belongings and identities. This is a logical, predictable, and welcome consequence of the goals of integration and the dynamic of interactions that are at the heart of interculturalism. In the long-term, both the majority culture and the minority cultures will find themselves changed to varying degrees (Bouchard, 2011, p. 460).

Bouchard is focused in his use of the interculturalist framework on integration of newcomers within the (Canadian) national minority culture of Francophone Quebec, a founding province of Canada and a national group that precedes the Canadian state (Kymlicka, 2001). We, on the other hand, are interested in the application of the interculturalist framework to Canada’s other national minority group—one present in other Western settler nations – the Aboriginal peoples (Kymlicka, 2001). As original occupants, preceding French and English charter groups, their basis for claim to the endurance of their cultures and political communities as dominant features of Canadian society and its perpetuation in dynamic interrelationship with newcomer cultures is as strong, or stronger, than that of the other two charter groups.

Engaging in new ways of living together in the 21st-century city must move beyond the macro-scale multiculturalist framework and focus intently upon intercultural exchange in the micro-scale spaces of the city and neighbourhood. The modern city is precisely the place to develop a nation’s “‘habit of solidarity’ towards the stranger”, an urban solidarity of relatedness that strengthens political community through cultural dialogue (Amin, 2006, p. 1016). In her examination of what it will take to practise ‘cosmopolitan urbanism’, and appealing to evidence from the successful practices for newcomer integration of Collingwood Neighbourhood House in Vancouver, Sandercock offers a pragmatic argument, that

intercultural contact and interaction is a necessary condition for being able to address the inevitable conflicts that will arise in multicultural societies. Another way of looking at the question of why intercultural encounters might be a good thing would start with the acknowledgement that different cultures represent different systems of meaning and versions of the good life (Sandercock, 2009, p. 198).

Newcomers from independent post-colonial nations (for example, in Africa, the Caribbean, South America) and Aboriginal peoples encounter colonialism and prejudices practised in the cities of settler nations like Canada and Australia (Ghorayshi, 2010; Jacobs, 1996). The potential for alliances and cultural exchange between Indigenous peoples and newcomers is greatest in cities (Morgan and Gulson, 2010). Interculturalism must embody engagement with the reality of persistent socioeconomic inequality that affects the material reality of many newcomers and Indigenous peoples, rather than simply become a local or senior government’s opportunity to celebrate diversity as a place-marker in the global economy (Collins and Friesen, 2011; Ghorayshi, 2010).

By rejecting multiculturalism policies which seek to bestow ‘universal’ citizenship status to Indigenous peoples, struggles for recognition as original occupants have gained importance in settler nations like Canada, New Zealand and Australia (Cairns, 2000; Collins and Friesen, 2011; Jacobs, 1996). Indigenous urban cultures are dynamic and continuous, formed through generations or centuries of dialogue, engagement, resistance and the incorporation of elements of colonist cultures (Greenop and Memmott, 2013; Morgan, 2006; Silver, 2006; Wilson and Peters, 2005). The growing strength of urban Indigeneity is well suited to filling a missing link with regard to incorporating the history, traditions and cultures of Aboriginal peoples in settlement and integration programmes for newcomers to Canada. Our research begins to develop a base of knowledge on how the operations of agencies like KNK—and its partnership initiatives with newcomer settlement organisations—can enhance the mutual understanding between Aboriginal peoples and newcomers, and resituate the role of Indigenous peoples as the receiving community for newcomers to their (urbanised) land. Our research examines how the work of KNK enhances urban Indigeneity as a political and cultural project, and intercultural relationships created at the micro scale of shared spaces in inner-city Winnipeg. There is great potential to learn from this rare example of Aboriginal–newcomer relations cultivated by self-governing and community-based urban organisations.

Methods

An in-depth examination of Ka Ni Kanichihk was undertaken in 2009, using a combination of personal interviews and focus groups, all digitally recorded and transcribed prior to analysis. To begin, a research partnership agreement was reached with the staff and board at KNK, an important step in building rapport and relational accountability for the research process (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999; Wilson, 2008). Semi-structured personal interviews, averaging 40 minutes in duration, were then completed with seven people who were employed either by KNK or partner newcomer settlement organisations. The main purposive sampling criterion for interview participants was direct involvement in the planning and delivery of the Aboriginal Awareness Workshop or Youth Peacebuilding Gathering Programs. The data provided the rationale for establishing programmes to bring Aboriginals and newcomers together and the key features of the programmes.

Three focus groups were held, each on a different evening during one week, with past participants of KNK’s Aboriginal Awareness Workshops and Youth Peacebuilding Gatherings to understand the impacts of these programmes. One focus group consisted entirely of Aboriginals (five people), one entirely of newcomers (six people) and the third focus group had four Aboriginals and four newcomers (eight people). Conventional practice on the number of focus groups held (three to five), and the number of participants in each (four to twelve), was followed (Krueger and Casey, 2000; Morgan, 1997). Convergence on key concepts and themes occurred by the third focus group.

Focus groups were held at a neutral space, a community organisation unaffiliated with the study, in Winnipeg’s inner city, and each lasted two hours with a 15-minute break mid-way, including the sharing of food and drink. Chairs were organised in a circle, with one seat outside the circle for the assistant/note-taker. An Aboriginal woman, who was a university student in Winnipeg, was hired to assist the authors with participant recruitment and to act as a note-taker and observer during focus groups. The lead author of this paper was the focus group facilitator and is himself a newcomer from Ghana. Together, the two researchers mirrored the subject groups. While there was at least one male in each focus group, all of the groups had mostly female participants and a mix of youth and adults. Aboriginal participants included First Nations (i.e. Ojibwa and Cree) and Métis. Newcomer participants included people from Ethiopia, Nigeria, Sudan, China, Japan, the Philippines, Kazakhstan and Moldova. Participants were each paid an honorarium of $50 at the start of the focus group. The exclusively Aboriginal and newcomer focus groups provided environments where intragroup similarity enabled an open sharing of perceptions of Aboriginal or newcomer ‘others’ prior to, during and after participating in KNK programmes. The mixed focus group, on the other hand, permitted an examination of how robust the findings were from the first two focus groups and whether new ideas emerged during the deliberative production of data when Aboriginal and newcomer participants were together.

The conventional process for facilitating focus groups was adapted according to talking circle protocols used in deliberations by Aboriginal communities. The talking circle guidelines are a means of purposefully engaging Indigenous protocols with Western research methods and are a natural tool for promoting a respectful sharing of perspectives, equality among participants and shared responsibility for the production of knowledge (Ball et al., 2007; Kovach, 2009). The following protocol was explained at the start of each focus group and described in its cultural context: participants speak one at a time; discussion moves around the circle in a clockwise direction; listen attentively to the person speaking; respect the views of others and do not interrupt the person speaking. The adaptation of the talking circle protocol encouraged some participants who might otherwise have been shy and reluctant about asserting themselves in a deliberative process to talk freely and share their views when they held the floor at their turn. This methodological ‘cultural hybrid’ of focus group-talking circles also addressed a common concern of conventional focus group moderators, the problem of overrepresentation by dominant voices in the focus group dataset. In effect, the research method itself is an intercultural approach, embedding method within the conceptual basis of the study.

ATLAS.ti qualitative data analysis software was used to reduce the volume of interview and focus group-talking circle data and to facilitate the process of organising, coding and categorising narrative excerpts to meaningfully represent the results (Dey, 1993). Themes were developed from interconnections within and across categories of data. Two researchers reviewed the data categories for emergent themes, providing a means of analytic triangulation.

Creating the Spaces of Interaction between Aboriginal Peoples and Newcomers

There were four main catalysts prompting the creation by KNK, with partner community organisations, of new spaces of interaction between Aboriginal hosts and immigrant newcomers through the design and implementation of Aboriginal awareness and cross-cultural exchange programmes. These were the paucity of interaction between Aboriginals and newcomers in shared neighbourhoods; misunderstanding and negative perceptions between them; segregation and tension among Aboriginal and newcomer youth in high schools; and, their common history of colonialism, racism and socioeconomic challenges.

The lack of interaction between Aboriginals and newcomers, especially in several inner-city neighbourhoods where the population is made up mostly of Aboriginal, visible minority and newcomer populations (Carter, 2009) was one of the most significant catalysts for the creation of the KNK programmes. Interview participants noted the importance of encouraging cross-cultural understanding and interaction in shared neighbourhoods. They also discussed the rise in gang operations which was creating fear among neighbourhood residents about turf boundaries and safe movement. Aboriginal and newcomer focus group-talking circle participants explained that, even though they resided in the same inner-city neighbourhoods, they had not been interacting and had instead kept to themselves and within their own ethno-cultural circles. The spaces of interaction created by the programmes of KNK, and its location in the neighbourhoods where Aboriginals and newcomers were living in close physical proximity, brought newcomers and Aboriginals together. This was important to participants because it was bridging the socio-cultural distance between Aboriginals and newcomers that had been the product of fear and an absence of positive interaction.

Where it [KNK offices] is located, there’s Aboriginal culture, and the newcomers all around, and so there is that gap, and I think they really felt like they needed to do something about it because they [Aboriginals] would stay in their corner; they [newcomers] would stay in their corner, and they [KNK] really needed to do something about interactions (female youth newcomer, mixed focus group-talking circle).

It’s just like a tree. It [KNK] grew as a little tiny seed, and then grew into a building, and then there was different programmes that came from it and now it’s just like a snowball; it’s getting really, really big and … we’re talking not just Aboriginal people but newcomers too and … we know we share the same struggles as newcomers and now it’s just building another branch off the tree to create relationships with newcomers (female, Aboriginal focus group-talking circle).

Misunderstanding and negative perceptions by Aboriginals and newcomers of one another were seen by interview participants as an important catalyst for KNK’s programmes. The gap in mutual understanding based on partial accounts conveyed by media and on the street has prompted negative stereotyping, leading to social distancing.

One thing that’s very common is our new Canadians don’t necessarily understand the context and history of oppression and colonialism that happened to our Aboriginal peoples and so trying to find spaces where we can explore that and create that opportunity for education is really important (staff member, partner organisation A, interview-3).

Newcomer negative perceptions derived from viewing Aboriginals on the street were confirmed in focus group-talking circles.

The first time I came to Winnipeg, the few people who I met … who are drunk outside, begging for money and all the time I was wondering, man, I was coming to Canada, life is golden. How come these people are begging? How come these people are drunk all the time and for a while my perception of [the] Aboriginal community was defined by that group that I met … (male adult newcomer, mixed focus group-talking circle).

Aboriginal participants in focus group-talking circles confirmed that their perceptions of newcomers were formed in large part by media where they were conveyed as living in extreme poverty and in need of charity (for example, commercials by Christian charitable foundations or the United Nations Children’s Fund). Or newcomers were perceived by Aboriginal participants as violent.

It’s like what you see on TV on the news … like wars and people throwing bombs [in] Afghanistan and stuff like that … and that’s our perception of what’s going on overseas and stuff. So I guess when people think of newcomers they’re thinking like what they see on TV because it’s the only thing they have to relate to (female youth, Aboriginal focus group-talking circle).

The naturalisation of ‘othering’ between Aboriginals and newcomers was seen by some as a strong and persistent influence of colonialism.

I think that we try to … understand a shared heritage [between Aboriginals and newcomers] and a shared experience because we understand what racism is about … We have that understanding and while we may experience it differently and we may even experience inter-racialism … and that also exists here … I know Indigenous people that think that African people don’t belong here … They’re here to steal our jobs, but a White person kind of belongs here, eh? So we’ve internalised those kinds of notions as well, those dangerous notions (staff member, KNK, interview-1).

Some Aboriginal focus group-talking circle participants explained that they stayed away from newcomers because they simply did not know much about them, sometimes because they had moved to Winnipeg from reserve communities where they had no occasion to interact with an ethnically diverse public. Even among those not new to Winnipeg, they had learned over time, through persistent racism in the city, that it was best to interact only with Aboriginal peoples in their own neighbourhoods.

Being raised in between the 200–600 block of the north end … I never stepped out of that environment until I was about 22 years old because I was taught by my family that have been hurt very much, First Nations, my grandmother, my grandfather, my mother, by racism and mostly White racism (female adult Aboriginal, mixed focus group-talking circle).

Segregation and tension among Aboriginal and newcomer youth in some inner-city high schools has served as a strong catalyst for KNK to partner with newcomer settlement organisations to deliver the Youth Peacebuilding Gathering programme, with the aim of creating a socio-cultural space for interaction that would bridge some of the social distance.

We bring them [the youth] together, not because they’re fighting each other, but because they’re not relating to each other. They’re either not relating to each other at all, even though they’re beside each other, or there is, in fact, some tension (staff member, partner organisation C, interview-5).

Through cross-cultural youth programmes, it was anticipated that a greater understanding of one another’s histories and cultures would go side-by-side with cross-cultural friendships, mutual understanding and trust. This represents the kind of active construction of new ways of living together, building communities where fears and anxieties are worked through by the receiving society (i.e. Aboriginals) and newcomers rather than dismissed or avoided (Sandercock, 2003).

The common history of colonialism, racism and socioeconomic challenges was cited as the fourth main catalyst to establish partnerships between KNK and newcomer settlement organisations in the shared urban spaces of inner-city Winnipeg. Aboriginal peoples and many newcomers (for example, from African countries) have a common history of repressive colonial rule which for a long time denied them a holistic entitlement to the natural resources on their own land as well as their fundamental human rights as distinct peoples. Even though they have different experiences in different colonised places (of origin), they have shared similar struggles that structure their now intermingled spatial practices of urban life. Aboriginal peoples and newcomers face racial discrimination which makes it difficult for them to access adequate social and economic resources like housing, employment, education and health.

The newcomer and Aboriginal populations have had a common struggle in a way … a lot of our new Canadians have come from societies where colonisation was one of the root causes of conflict …, where they’ve had an oppressor and where they’ve had to fight for their liberation and for their own … control of resources and sovereignty so I think there’s a lot of commonalities (staff member, partner organisation A, interview-3).

A lot of the newcomers go through the same things that Aboriginal people do, like getting targeted for gangs, the racism and the lack of good opportunities for jobs and … housing, so a lot of the same issues that we have, the newcomers have, so it just seems right to hook up with them, or team up with them (staff member, KNK, interview-2).

The spaces of interaction created through the Aboriginal awareness and cross-cultural exchange programmes were a result of four catalysts, examined in this section of the paper. The leadership taken by KNK is a modern example of the role of ‘host’ played by Aboriginal communities to White European newcomers centuries ago (Saul, 2008), long since taken over by the descendant settler government agencies. The growing role of self-governing urban Aboriginal organisations as the modern vehicles of self-determination (Walker, 2008), working with partner community organisations serving immigrant newcomers, is an expression of Indigeneity (Denis, 1997; Maaka and Fleras, 2005) and an example of the role of community organisations in creating urban change (MacKenzie et al., 2012). Spaces of interaction are necessary precursors to building interculturalism at the micro level, turning the focus of Aboriginal organisations outward beyond their common focus on exclusive services to Aboriginal peoples (DeVerteuil and Wilson, 2010) and thereby increasing the density and complexity of urban Indigeneity (Andersen, 2009) within the broader tapestry of the decolonising city (Shaw, 2007; Wood and Landry, 2008). Physical proximity in inner city neighbourhoods was in itself insufficient. The programmes created by KNK with its community partners ensured that the necessary socio-cultural spaces were created through exchange and interaction.

Building Intercultural Urbanism for Newcomers and Aboriginal Peoples

Building cross-cultural understanding and relationships that bridged social distance was the greatest impact of the Aboriginal Awareness Workshop and Youth Peacebuilding Gathering programmes. After the intercultural encounters and interaction created by participating in UAR-AYC programmes, Aboriginals and newcomers realised that they share many things in common, such as the effects of colonialism and barriers like racial discrimination, giving rise to a common identity that “grafts itself onto” initial identities (Bouchard, 2011, p. 460). Mutual understanding was an important result for newcomer and Aboriginal programme participants.

When we first came here, I had no idea what’s Aboriginal like, you know? I would see a lot of people on the streets and I had this idea of how they look, but then like I think this year, I’ve had a lot of contacts with them and it really changed my opinion like going to peace camp changed a lot (male youth, newcomer focus group-talking circle).

To add on to what [male youth Aboriginal] had mentioned in terms of just being more open minded … but also knowing that … any newcomer faces certain barriers when they come here too, right, to Canada, to our grounds … they face some barriers as well in society that I’ve experienced in a sense too, you know for being a woman, for being Aboriginal; I mean sure they come here and maybe they’re getting mistreated because they’re women and their face is all covered … we’re not the only ones that face certain stereotypes … it’s newcomer people as well, any different cultures (female adult, Aboriginal focus group-talking circle).

Youth at the peacebuilding gathering camp discussed how their confidence was boosted when they realised that other people were interested in their culture and wanted to learn more about them, a key step in cultivating intercultural citizenship practices (Kymlicka, 2003).

Before I went to the peace gathering … I felt like the people who grew up here wouldn’t understand me, like wouldn’t understand my culture and it would be … useless if I talk about it and I was more shy. But after a week in the camp, we were talking about how we got here and everything … they were telling us what they think when we come to their country and most of them … they still want to know more things about us. That made me feel good, to actually talk about myself to them (female youth, newcomer focus group-talking circle).

Mutual understanding between newcomers and Aboriginals provides the basis for building cross-cultural relationships that open up different cultural systems of meaning and overcoming the social distance that would otherwise inhibit intercultural urbanism (Sandercock, 2009). Newcomer and Aboriginal participants explained that they had established friendships and social networks with each other as a result of their participation in the KNK programmes.

Most of them [friends developed] were newcomers and Aboriginals so I just got their email address, like Facebook, and just get in contact … and we just talk randomly, like how are you and stuff (female youth, newcomer focus group-talking circle).

I’ve established a lot of friendships … Sometimes when I’m walking out, the kids that I met through Ka Ni Kanichihk, they still remember my name because of the relationship I built with them … They remember that I’m Aboriginal and that I’m friendly and then they forget that I’m Aboriginal (male youth, Aboriginal focus group-talking circle).

It was definitely like a sisterhood … I definitely have some really good friends that I trust a lot and will go to with certain things and … so like very personal relationships with that newcomer community through going to [Youth Peacebuilding Gathering] camp mainly (female youth, Aboriginal focus group-talking circle).

Going from negative perceptions about each other to building intercultural friendships involves creating the space for Aboriginals and newcomers to develop mutual understanding and bridge histories and cultures through friendships and social networks. These relationships based on mutual respect, recognition and friendship create the intercultural social capital that is the foundation for intercultural urbanism (Deuchar, 2011; Sandercock, 2009). Ka Ni Kanichihk’s leadership in reaching out to newcomer settlement organisation partners and teaching newcomers about Aboriginal culture and histories, through programmes based not in the abstract realm of disciplinary education, but in the bonds of interactive mutual learning and friendship, is an articulation of modern urban Indigeneity.

Conclusion

The results of our research indicate that newcomers and Aboriginal peoples in Winnipeg are starting their co-existence, largely in inner-city neighbourhoods, with mutual misunderstanding and misperceptions. Our findings are supported by those of Parvin Ghorayshi (2010, p. 91), whose analysis of interviews with Aboriginal and newcomer inner-city residents in Winnipeg indicated that “racism, misinformation, isolation and lack of inter-connectedness between ethno-racial groups continue to be a problem, over and above the problems of housing and jobs”, a composite of issues that she describes as ‘layers of separation’. The strength of social and cultural bonds between Aboriginal peoples and newcomers can be augmented by their mutual recognition of common histories of colonialism in countries of origin and in Canada, and by the socioeconomic challenges and racism encountered in the Winnipeg inner city (Collins and Friesen, 2011; Morgan and Gulson, 2010). These similar experiences were clear especially with newcomers who have emigrated from independent nations formerly under colonial rule. It is remarkable that both Aboriginals and newcomers knew little about these challenges they share in common and have tended to avoid interacting with each other. To our knowledge, joint programmes such as the Aboriginal Awareness Workshops and Youth Peacebuilding Gatherings, to bring Aboriginal peoples and newcomers together, are rare in Canadian cities. Aboriginals and newcomers have created shared spaces of interaction and learned from one another’s personal stories, cultures and spirituality, creating friendships and intercultural bonds that may translate into durable intercultural social capital (Deuchar, 2011; Vermeulen et al., 2012).

Aboriginal communities have been at the site of Winnipeg and surrounding territory, and similarly for other Canadian cities (for example, Stanger-Ross, 2008), longer than the Euro-Canadian settler population; yet it is the institutions of the latter that typically have the larger role to play in welcoming newcomers. The work of KNK with newcomer settlement organisations represents re-engagement in the process of integrating newcomers into communities in Winnipeg, in effect picking up where they left off generations ago (Saul, 2008). Welcoming newcomers to one’s home-place, as host, may indeed be one of the most powerful expressions of sovereignty and occupancy as a political and cultural community. Considering the power positions of both newcomers and Aboriginal peoples vis-a-vis established settler culture and institutions, we conclude that there is an instrumental logic for developing a habit of solidarity and relatedness in urban areas (Amin, 2006) and bridging the layers of separation between Aboriginals and newcomers (Ghorayshi, 2010). The logic is only stronger by virtue of the fact that immigrant newcomers and Aboriginal peoples form the two largest contributors to urban population growth in many large cities in Canada and across other settler states (such as New Zealand).

Breaking through the power of Whiteness as a set of privilege-making processes and practices (Shaw, 2007) that is critical for creating the decolonised (Jacobs, 1996; Shaw, 2006; Silver, 2006), cosmopolitan (Sandercock, 2009) and Aboriginal (Newhouse and FitzMaurice, 2012) urbanism aspired to in the 21st century, will require leadership by Indigenous urban organisations. We have argued in this paper that one of the next critical phases for increasing the density and complexity of urban Indigeneity (Andersen, 2009) is to turn it outward, as in the past, directing Indigenous organisations and institutions toward greater roles in newcomer settlement and integration, giving effect to the role of original receiving community in Western nations which are now mostly urbanised. Ka Ni Kanichihk provides some promising and pioneering examples of movement in that direction by an Aboriginal urban organisation.

Co-existence by virtue of living side-by-side between newcomers and Aboriginals is not enough at the micro scale to build intercultural social capital. Rather, as Ghorayshi explains, interculturalism will require

meaningful and repeated contact, the experience of working, being and living with others, the everyday fusion of cultures in what we see and consume, where we travel, play, and socialize (Ghorayshi, 2010, pp. 99–100).

The role of Aboriginal community organisations, with their newcomer partners, and the constitutive role of urban spaces of interaction in cultivating intercultural urbanism are clear from our analysis (D’Arcus, 2010; MacKenzie et al., 2012; Routledge, 2010). They are fundamental to turning spaces of multicultural co-existence into spaces of interaction and intercultural citizenship in the Western decolonising city.