Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

This paper explores the narratives of Métis men who were involved in the child welfare system and later found themselves homeless. Indigenous peoples in Canada are over-represented among the homeless but there remains little information on their experiences, especially in the case of Métis individuals. Métis perspectives are missing from the already limited research, specifically within the city of Calgary. Provincially, Alberta has a large Métis population, as 19.5% of the total Canadian Métis population resides here (Statistics Canada 2017). However, Métis peoples are often excluded from Indigenous-focused research, with the majority focusing on First Nations peoples. This paper looks at potential connections between the child welfare system and Métis men's later experiences with homelessness. Métis children have been actively removed from their families and placed in child welfare since the infamous "Sixties Scoop". Métis peoples deserve the opportunity to share their experiences, to help inform policies that address child welfare and homelessness, both of which have health implications. Métis men are the focus because the limited research has tended to look at the experiences of women and mothers. First Nations scholar Peter Menzies (2009) suggested that looking at men and women separately ensures that the experiences of each gender cannot be generalized, which is important as Indigenous men and women will undoubtedly have unique experiences based on the different social factors surrounding them. This paper utilizes health and sociological perspectives in order to share Métis men's experiences while highlighting homelessness as a social determinant of health. Stafford and Wood (2017) note that homelessness is not only a driver of poor health, but is itself socially determined, often resulting from accumulated family and other social adversities. A health perspective is needed in order to view homelessness as the social determinant of health that it is.