When Diana Barrientos left the small, wintry city of Punta Arenas, Chile to do her masters degree in the thriving Chilean city of Santiago, she was surprised at the discrimination she encountered.
“They laughed at my accent, told me I was different,” she said, noting she many faced stereotypes about her life in southern Chile. “They asked me if penguins walked on the street or if I drank frozen beer. I felt intimidated and lonely.”
Even with her unique heritage of Scottish and ethnic Huilliche roots, Barrientos said she had never questioned her identity before her move to the city.
However, her studies in history and culture led her to see her identity crisis as a larger societal issue.
Now at the University of Calgary on a graduate exchange program scholarship to complete her thesis titled “Urban Native Identity,” she has discovered indigenous people worldwide encounter the same identity issues when they move to the city.
When she visited her boyfriend’s home in Inuvik, Northwest Territories–amazingly similar to her home town in climate and geography–she discovered aboriginal people in Canada often shared her experience. A move to the city in hopes of seeking educational opportunities can mean a loss of the benefits of living in a smaller community.
Barrientos also said she has found very few grants for projects targeting aboriginal people in education, health and tourism in urban areas, something she said she has seen in smaller communities.
Traditional elders do not want to give up their power to urban aboriginals, she said. The gap has widened between aboriginals living on reserves and in smaller communities and urban aboriginals, who have difficulty relating to a more traditional identity that often includes cultural drums, dancing and clothing.
“The city homogenizes culture,” said Barrientos. “In the 19th century the idea was created of one nation, one culture, one language. So in both Canada and Chile, urban aboriginal people do not have enough rights.”
To avoid the problem of giving rights to one group and not another, Barrientos said that as a political strategy the government recognized the rights of the indigenous and French in their communities, but not in the city.
The resulting homogenization and lack of rights have had the effect of making many of the social problems experienced by aboriginal people, such as homelessness, alcohol and drug abuse and high incarceration rates, worse. Such problems have not been helped by the failure of research to recognize the impact of city life on the aboriginal experience, she said.
The U of C’s Native Centre administrative co-ordinator Cheryle Chagnon-Greyeyes called the discrimination faced by aboriginal students “blatant.”
“They are stereotyped as poor, having no talent or gifts,” she said.
Students who come from small communities where they have been unquestioningly included can find the systemic discrimination they encounter in Calgary frightening, said Chagnon-Greyeyes. When they encounter larger problems such as affordable housing, food and clothing, the experience can be harsh.
“Some fall through the cracks, give up their studies and go back home,” said Chagnon-Greyeyes. “It leads some to the bottle.”
The Native Centre, located in the MacEwan Student Centre, is working on developing a transition program so new students can easily access cultural supports and services. The centre seeks to supplement the experience of students’ home communities with cultural events, access to elders, a smudge room, counselling, outreach programs and scholarship information, as well as a service that links graduates with employers, said Chagnon-Greyeyes.
Native Centre student advisor Carole Tucker said the centre has two binders full of scholarship information from organizations such as Health Canada, Shell Canada and CIBC, but some remain untouched because students don’t know about them or don’t apply.
Recognizing the systemic nature of the problem, Barrientos sees the Inuvialuit and Gwich’in’s successful achievement of land claims and self-government in Inuvik as a model that urban aboriginals in both Canada and Chile can use.
In Inuvik, Aurora College has served as a focal point for groups to meet, communicate and effectively organize. Similarly, the U of C could help urban aboriginal groups unite and focus their efforts, she said.
“It’s absolutely possible for aboriginal people to combine a new urban identity with traditional culture,” she explained.
Barrientos said she’s excited that some aboriginal groups have achieved the right to draft affirmative action policies and control their own research noting that indigenous peoples in Chile could benefit by following their lead.