Opinion: Home sweet home: Place-making in Canada

By Justin Rhoden

With each passing holiday season, it’s always so heartwarming seeing families come together to decorate their houses in line with the seasons’ theme. This winter holiday has been no different as I walk along my street and see my neighbours and their kids decorate their houses in bright lights and festive signs. I’ve only seen a few families transform their houses, but almost all the houses are beautifully decorated. At the end of my well-lit street sits my house that appears as if the Grinch stole our holiday spirit weeks before Christmas. In reality, it’s filled with university students who couldn’t return home to their families because of travel restrictions and health concerns over the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

We all get along, but the holiday festivities often evade us in the same way it animates our neighbours. With the short winter break from courses, it can be hard mustering the energy to get excited over such things. Often, I want to relax in celebration and try new hobbies; I know my fellow housemates share the same sentiment. Beyond just a general lack of motivation, I can hardly imagine my landlord being content with us driving up her hydro bill with tons of flashing lights. We don’t have that understanding of this space. We’ve never negotiated such things, and we all believe it’s much easier to avoid any unnecessary misunderstandings. I can see why she likes us so much.

My neighbours are free to make decisions as they please. Most are homeowners given that flexibility and having the resources to go all out whenever they can. So, every season they gather their household and spend quality family time transforming their houses into beautifully decorated homes. These types of place-making are essential for building bonds and transforming spaces into places of belonging and comfort. Place-making takes a house and makes it a home sweet home.

I’m always intrigued by the day-to-day lifestyles in Canada. When I look at families decorating or hanging out on their lawn, their cheerful faces remind me of the ordinary ways many of us exist in a context of violence and dispossession. The joy, sadness, excitement, love, loss, and fulfillment we experience from living in a country that continues to dispossess Indigenous peoples to secure its sovereignty is polarizing. To experience such a range of human emotions in an inhumane context- how complicated it is to be.

When I consider this larger context of state dispossession, I end up asking myself, what is the role of place-making in Canada? Can I make this place my home sweet home?

Settler place-making has been a significant part of the violence it produces and, in many ways, violent itself. When settlers first encountered Turtle Island, they determined the lands were available to be claimed because they were not ‘civilized’ or under the control of ‘civilized’ people; however, thousands of Indigenous nations were living off the lands since time immemorial and continue to do so today. But without White western systems of land enclosure and ownership, settlers believed the lands and the relationship nurtured with them provided houses but not quite homes yet. As a result, the state mobilized (and continues to mobilize) western place-making as a way for it to validate its claims to sovereignty.

This belief is rooted in the western Latin concept of ‘terra nullius’ translated as ‘nobody’s land.’ Settler primary assumptions about place-making center Whiteness and its notions of ownership; beliefs that govern how the Canadian state is organized today. Our every-day landowners are a testament to this claim. Lands can be privately bought and owned by individuals, corporations, and the state in a transactional relationship juxtaposed to pre-existing relationships with the land, centred around a connection with and care for.

The Canadian state’s ongoing project to make Turtle Island its home is violent. It assumes that the lands and all they embody are not already a home. Many, including myself, are deeply embedded in this reality. It is almost natural to default to thinking about homes along strictly human dimensions and modern infrastructures. When thinking about home, I will imagine a built house, a family, and time and freedom to make lifelong memories with each other. It’s no surprise to me that I isolate and prioritize myself from the non-human world, seek ownership of a space, and confine meaningful connections to an immediate human family— it’s what I’ve grown to know my whole life.

Indigenous teachings tell us that since creation, the human, non-human species, trees, waters, plants and all that is bounded by their relationship to the land makes Turtle Island home to many. These relationships create binding memories, embody knowledge, purposes, connections, and meaning. However, the state does not see these beings and their relationship as sustaining a home for each other. So, it destroys and degrades to create spaces of its own, laying pipelines through traditional lands without the consent of the humans and non-humans who live on those lands. Pollutes waters, erodes soil, murders Indigenous women, and kidnaps their children. Place-making by the state is an ongoing process of death, destruction, and dispossession.

Canada’s violent place-making is continuously contested by Indigenous peoples, who identify themselves in relationship with the lands. Even as the holidays approach, land defenders continue to mobilize all over Turtle Island, protecting the homes of many. From the Anishinaabe women gathered at Enbridge line 3 drill pad construction sites on the Mississippi River banks to the unseen poet who sits at their desk beautifully weaving together guiding messages towards justice and sovereignty. Each time my attention is drawn to their conviction, I witness that they understand that the land provides a home with the varying relationships it embodies. Therefore, protecting the land is necessary to make sure their homes stay home. A valuable lesson I continue to learn.

How profound is it to think of the land, its peoples, and all it offers as sustaining a home? In a settler context that requires its citizens to reproduce western logic about belonging, seeking to transform spaces into our own passively reinforces the state’s claims to sovereignty. There is great power in Indigenous teachings about land and relationships with it. It moves us beyond a single home and the hegemonic notion of ownership tied to belonging. It brings me great comfort reflecting on how Turtle Island is already home to many Indigenous peoples, plants and trees, animals, waters, and histories. Through treaties like Treaty 13, here in Toronto, I have the opportunity (and responsibility) to be an active guest in what is already a home sweet home.