7 Ways Kinship Creates Safety in Community
Today I was honoured to attend a report launch for a project that has the potential to revolutionize security and community safety in Winnipeg and beyond. How Community Safety Hosts Practice Wâhkôhtowin has been released by researchers from the University of Manitoba and the University of Winnipeg that examined the work of the Indigenous led security guard initiative spearheaded by PCS and Zoongizi Ode. It shared some findings on the many different ways that the community safety hosts create true safety in the spaces they get invited into but also centered it around Cree and Metis teachings and featured the beautiful artwork of Jordan Stranger @totemdoodem.
FROM THE REPORT: Safety requires that all members of the community can access services and public spaces without being profiled, watched or excluded
Personally, as someone who is reclaiming my language of Ininew, it was beautiful and powerful to see non-Indigenous researchers treating the teachings, language and relationships with their Indigenous colleagues with such reverence and respect. As a co-founder of Zoongizi Ode and a long time Indigenous trouble maker in the city, I believe they demonstrated a meaningful understanding of the law of kinship, I have witnessed and experienced these researchers walking in a good way alongside us. I appreciate the emphasis on stories in the report but the data nerd in me is also grateful that we have some powerful numbers in there to back up our claims too. I hope you will take the time to read the report and if you have a chance to sway your workplace, employer or other space that requires security services, consider what benefits wahkotowin and this approach to community safety may have.
7 Ways Community Safety Hosts Practice Wâhkôhtowin
1. Sharing with others to show kindness and concern
2. Taking care of those who need protection and guidance
3. Giving people loving support without judgment or condemnation
4. Connecting people to a circle of relationships
5. Holding people accountable in the community
6. Helping people find their role and responsibility
7. Giving gifts of our time and willingness to listen
Please take the time to download and read the entire report. Thank you once again to our amazing researchers, the whole team of community safety hosts and corresponding support organizations. But probably the biggest love, goes to the urban Indigenous young people in Winnipeg aging out of the child welfare system who helped author a report that featured a Road Map that prominently featured this concept. Their vision and their wisdom are what planted the seed that grew into this beautiful initiative and I cannot wait to see where we are able to go next.
