The Indigenous Housing and Homelands Toolkit offers solutions to help First Nations set up innovative community-centred housing governance models that are self-determined and based in cultural, ecological, and economic well-being. There are printable worksheets to explore your community’s values and principles, especially around housing and lands governance, and to reflect on how these values and principles are represented in everyday practices and policies. A basic understanding of property in a legal context is presented in the title and tenure module. There’s an explainer on how a Community Land Trust works, and how it could work on First Nations housing and lands.
This toolkit has been informed by the challenges, realities, and innovations within partnering communities including Yuneŝit’in First Nation, Huu-ay-aht First Nations, and the Nuxalk Nation.
This project has been funded and supported by
Territorial Acknowledgements
Ecotrust Canada respectfully acknowledges the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Coast Ts’msyen (Tsimshian) peoples on whose traditional territories our two offices are located.
The funding proposal for this project was supported by the Tŝilhqot’in National Government and Xeni Gwet’in First Nation.
Credit
Some modules in this toolkit were produced as part of the UBC Sustainability Scholars Program, a partnership between the University of British Columbia and various local governments and organizations in support of providing graduate students with opportunities to do applied research on projects that advance sustainability across the region.
Information in this toolkit includes research from literature reviews (primarily grey literature) and interviews with the following people and organizations, who generously contributed their ideas and case studies to this project:
- Brandy Gallagher (O.U.R. Ecovillage)
- Shelagh McCartney (Together Design Lab)
- Shirley McLeod (Te Puni Kōkiri, Māori Housing)
- Henrik Moller (Ecosystems Consultants, Aotearoa)
- Katie Rabbit-Young Pine (Changing Horses Non-Profit Society)
- Lyana Patrick (Faculty of Health Sciences, SFU)
- Robin Phillips (JFK Law, Victoria, BC)
- Crystal Sedore (Yale First Nation)
- Tim Tailfeathers (Changing Horses Non-Profit Society)
- CHANS Lab, Spring 2022 cohort (IRES, UBC)