Climate Justice Toronto (CJTO) is hosting this fundraiser in partnership with Project Land Back - Wiigwaasikaa. We are raising $6000 to purchase two Teepees for Wiigwaasikaa that will be used for ceremony and land based teachings. Wiigwaasikaa is an Indigenous youth led land reclamation in the region of Tkaronto covered by the Rouge Tract Claim of the Mississaugas of the Credit River First Nations that was submitted in 2015.

It is an autonomous space that has been created to operate under Indigenous governance and provide their community members with much needed access to learning, healing and teaching. The Teepees are an important part of their vision to provide a safe space for Indigenous and Black youth where they can work to find grassroots solutions to urban homelessness, over incarceration and overrepresentation in foster care. In recognition that the Canadian state has continually failed to implement the vast majority of the 94 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Recommendations, these youth organizers are taking their implementation into their own hands and aim to build a world for Indigenous people free of settler-colonial oppression.

Actions like this are of crucial importance due to the conditions that Indigenous youth in Toronto and across Canada are facing. Data released by Statistics Canada shows Indigenous youth in Canada made up 46% of admissions to correctional services in 2016-17 while making up only eight per cent of the youth population. Indigenous children accounted for 7% of all children in Canada but for almost one-half (48%) of all foster children. Indigenous children in Ontario are 168 % more likely to be taken into care than white children.

Urban Indigenous Peoples experience homelessness at a disproportionate rate and make up a significant percentage of the homeless population in cities. In Toronto, Canada’s largest urban centre, Indigenous Peoples constitute around 15% of the city’s homeless, even though they make up only around 0.5% of the total population. One study found that 1 in 15 Indigenous Peoples in urban centres are homeless compared to 1 in 128 for the general population. This means that Urban Indigenous Peoples are 8 times more likely to experience homelessness.

These problems are symptoms of the colonial occupation of Indigenous lands and will only be solved by autonomous action led by Indigenous people themselves. By participating in this fundraiser settlers can pay reparations that support Wiigwaasikaa’s crucial assertion of Indigenous sovereignty and their resistance to on going processes of forced assimilation and genocide. Please donate and share generously!! Any funds donated above the $6000 dollar target will go to purchasing camp equipment needed during winter.

These links posted below provide more information about the Indigenous overrepresentation in prisons, foster care and homelessness: