The Hope Mission, still Hopeless

 

I posted this on Facebook a couple years ago, I was just recently there for a visit and it seems very little has changed on how they view the Indigenous People, very little indeed.

Johnny Lee

December 15, 2018  · 

Hope Mission (Edmonton) laughs at and ridicules the indigenous and elderly clients. Sure they feed us. And most times it's edible. Sure they give us a place to sleep at night, but they also don't provide blankets to many of the clients and we can go a week without heat at nights, just like last week. But hey, they also laugh at me, as an Indigenous person, if I complain about them mishandling my smudged, hand-carved with an Eagle feather, walking stick. Or they'll just laugh at and mock an old man for complaining about them opening up the shelter a half hour late in the cold, while preaching at us in the morning about how much "Jesus": and they love us. You folks can praise them all you want for a meal given, when Christianity and colonialism created these problems of poverty in the first place. but me, I'll eat the food they steal from others with lies, because they forced me to with their oppression and racism. I'll sleep on their mat because they forced me to with their Doctrine of Discovery and the fact they've labeled me and my people... SAVAGES! End Poverty Edmonton.... they cut back funding and services to the drop-ins so we're forced onto the streets with no place to go. sure End Poverty by allowing us to die in the cold. by making it so bad on the streets we're forced to assimilate into the colonial system or die where we lay... be it the river valley or in front of an unwelcoming shelter. End Poverty Edmonton... do nothing for the homeless, but give lots of money to consulting groups to study us, survey us... only to give a report that says NOTHING WE DON'T ALREADY KNOW. !!! I've been on the End Poverty Edmonton Committee for 3.5 years and nothing is changing on the streets, they're even getting worse, even after all my reports on what's going on.. I've been with them for three and a half years and have been homeless for most of that time... Not once have they tried to get me housed.

{contact your local shelters and find out if they provide their staff with Trauma Informed Practice training. And everyone could use more Indigenous/colonial history awareness and discussions on how to rectify that history and perhaps save our ability to live on this planet in the future.}

UPDATE:

So last night I received an "implied" threat to be denied entry into the Hope Mission shelter. Staff stood blocking the doorway as I stood there with my backpack already bagged for their overnight storage and asked the obvious question, "you want to come in?" then repeated, with a little more emphasis ":You Want To Come In?" Their excuse was because, like many other of the guys who stay there, I yelled out "shut up" to the staff member who goes on preaching after reading the morning scriptures they use to wake us up. Ok, I can understand a few morning scriptures seeing it's a "christian" organization. Even though it was christianity which stole this land through the "Doctrine of Discovery" in the first place. But they go on and on, to them it's a joke and the best "Alarm Clock" they know of, which is what I overheard a staff member and client(white guy of course) speaking and laughing about THAT VERY MORNING.  This morning they said, "if you don't want to hear the scriptures you can just get up and leave" then immediately goes into his spiel on their version of god and love. Without giving us the chance to "get up and leave" . Yes, other guys yell at them every morning but they singled me out, why? perhaps it's because I speak out against their abuse, arrogance and continued forced assimilation into their money, land and children hungry religion. Even after traumatizing generations of my people with their form of religion in the residential schools, we are still subjected to their form of brainwashing because we have no place else to go in this city to sleep, unless we want to take our chances freezing to death on the streets to where it's illegal for us to loiter and camp. Their are residential school survivors who get re-traumatized every morning by this organization of charity where the CEO makes HOW MUCH MONEY?!!! Well I couldn't find out with a quick search but simple managers make over a hundred thousand dollars a year. And other listed charitable organizations list CEO'S making 2-4 hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.... So much for doing God's work out of Love for "the least of these".

Wanna let them know what you think?... we.care@hopemission.com